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

Lonely Lodger by Li Jianhong [CHINA]
Li Jianhongは、中国大陸の即興音楽や実験音楽のシーン最初期より活動してきた音楽家です。同時に、キュレーターとしても実験音楽のイベントやフェスティバルを数多く手がけてきました。本作の『Lonely Lodger』では、環境音と即興演奏による音の融合を目指した「Environmental Improvisation」という録音/演奏手法に基づいて、自身が雲南省の麗江に滞在してレコーディングした音素材を使い制作したものです。

Performing arts

GONG ex MACHINA
A sonic theatre "Gong ex Machina" is created based on the sound composition. The event will also highlight and develop the presence of sounds as its anchor. “Gong ex Machina”, is a word play from a technical term in ancient Greece in the 5th century: Deus ex Machina, which more or less means God in or out of the machine. The term refers to the technique to present actors playing as gods on the stage of a Greek tragedy using equipment like cranes, moving up and down, or a trap door, to allow the actor coming from below the stage. Hence, Gong ex Machina, a gong in or out of the machine. The concept of the performance evolves from a reflection following an extensive research by Morinaga on the gong culture throughout South East Asian countries. Gong ex Machina also stems from the history of an encounter between music or sound cultures and the modern technology of sound recorder and player: phonograph or gramophone. Similar to other encounters between tradition and modernity—happened against the background of the industrial revolution and European colonialism in the 17th to 20th century—the encounter of gong culture with gramophone is a story of a complicated acquaintance. Apart from stories of adaptation and appropriation are also stories of distortion and manipulation. It was an encounter that changed the way we experience and understand music, in particular, or sounds in general.

Event/Workshop

最後の話し手たち
世界各国津々浦々の現地の音を拾い集めるワールドミュージックに特化したイベントです。世界を舞台に活躍を続ける写真家の田原桂一氏、アジアを中心にフィールドワークを実践しながら様々な音楽制作を行うサウンドデザイナー森永泰弘氏、日本のアヴァンギャルドミュージックシーンを切り開いてきた灰野敬二氏の3方をゲストセレクターに招き、ゲストバーテンダーとしてファッションシーンを牽引する長瀬哲郎氏がおもてなし役をします。