concrete

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’.

Event/Workshop
For a Friend, To a friend, …
This piece is dedicated to two Indonesian art masters, Gunawan Maryanto, who died in 2021, one of Indonesia's most prominent poets, with whom Morinaga worked on several projects, and Bambang Mbesur, a vocal artist who died in 2020. The texts were created for the sonic theater project “Gong ex Machina”, by Yasuhiro Morinaga and Yudi Ahmad Tajudin. It is recommended to use headphones while listening to the piece. --TEXT 1 Be my back I am a turtle traveling in time The pounding gong composes the body we inhabit Composing the islands we live in Composing I Composing you. The vibration of the sound harbors the memories of a far and lengthy travel That pounding gong Reverberating time TEXT 2 in the beginning was sound. A bang: be! And then, vibration, a long hum that creates a wave Creating space, and also: time And then nebula, partly clumping up, hardening, becoming planet. Add infinite numbers of planets, add trillions of galaxies. And among them all a little dot, so little it is insignificant: Earth: Us In the beginning was sound A bang and a long hum that create everything within seven days TEXT 3 “Do you hear me? Do you really hear me? Do you understand me? Do you really understand me?” Track List: Javanese instrument, Gender for Ruwatan rituals [recorded in Yogyakarta, Indonesia] Voice by Gunawan Maryanto & Rizman Putra [recorded in Tokyo, Japan] Threshing by Ede-Bih Group [recorded in Dak Lak, Vietnam] Meras Gandrung by Haidi, the Osing Group [recorded in Banyuwangi, Indonesia] Saggeypo by Kalinga Group [recorded in Luzon, Philippines] Pinwheel by Ede group [recorded in Buon Ma Thuot, t, Vietnam]

Cinema
渦
The Autumn Festival of Dogo, one of the most violent religious festivals in Japan, takes place each year in the town of Matsuyama on the island of Shikoku. From the meticulous preparation to the battle, it is above all an immersive plunge into a mysterious and abstruse ceremony reported by Gaspard Kuentz (to whom we owe notably Kings of the Wind & Electric Queens, co-direct- ed with Cédric Dupire, VdR 2014). Alternating between external and distant viewpoints – such as the women leaning on the balcony to watch – and the perspective of an on-board and subjective camera, intertwining silence into the tumult of the collective trance, Uzu builds the immersive account of an event and conserves the tension required to evoke the brutal assault. Somewhere between visual ethnography and war reporting, a sensorial choreography imbued with violence, in submission to the chief.