Installation

The Voice of Inconstant Savage
Commissioned for the Engawa – Japanese Contemporary Art Season programme organized by Calouste Gulbenkian Museum's Modern Art Center, The Voice of Inconstant Savage is an immersive installation that superimposes a prayer inspired by the story of a 16th-century Portuguese missionary, a chant from a Kakure-Kirishitan (hidden Christians) prayer – a religion rooted in Nagasaki Prefecture –, a chant from the Karawara spirits of the Awá indigenous people – who live in the Amazon rainforest – and a chorus of Western Gregorian chant. Morinaga questions the position of the aesthetics of inconstancy in relation to the discourse of the “savage” that modern society confronts.

Field recordings

Sombat Simla: Master Of Bamboo Mouth Organ
Simla is known in Thailand as one of the greatest living players of the khene, the ancient bamboo mouth organ particularly associated with Laos but found throughout East and Southeast Asia. His virtuosic and endlessly inventive renditions of traditional and popular songs have earned him the title ‘the god of khene’, and he is known for his innovative techniques and ability to mimic other instruments and non-musical sound, including, as a writer for the Bangkok Post describes, ‘the sound of a train journey, complete with traffic crossings and the call of barbecue chicken vendors’.

Outland ethnologies

HOKKAIDO WITH & LIJIANG WITH/OUT
The experiments presented here, Hokkaido With and Lijiang With/Out are, if you will believe it, connected. Think of them as an evolution of inquiries into an artist’s presence or absence in an unfamiliar place, built on both doubt and confidence, both a lack and a surfeit of context. Both projects put pressure on artists by putting them in difficult situations, but by working directly with these problems, the projects and the artists open up new possibilities in their unusual approaches.

Outland ethnologies

Thang Mo by Ngoc Dai [Vietnam]
「Thang Mo」は、ベトナム国内で政治風刺や過激な性的表現による歌詞が原因で販売中止となった問題作です。ベトナム北部の伝統民謡を想起させるダイ氏の歌声とシャンソンをベースに繰り広げられる本作は、2017年のTPAM(国際舞台芸術ミーティング-横浜)で初めて披露されました。本作は、TPAMでダイ氏が歌った曲目を中心に構成しており、ミキシングやレコーディングには、ベトナムの舞台芸術界で圧倒的な支持を得ている音楽ディレクター、ニャット・リー氏が務めています。リー氏による繊細なミキシング処理も本作の聞きどころの一つといえるでしょう。

Cinema

恋の罪
A grisly murder occurs in Maruyama-cho, Shibuya, Tokyo – a love hotel district – where a woman is found dead in a derelict apartment. Whilst the police investigate, the story interweaves with that of Izumi, the wife of a famous romantic novelist whose life seems just a daily repetition without romance. One day, to break away from the loveless monotony, she decides to follow her desires and accepts a job as a nude model enacting sex in front of the camera. Soon she meets with a mentor and starts selling her body to strangers, whilst at home she hides behind the facade that she is still the wife she is supposed to be.