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’.

Publication
Yasuhiro Morinaga + Roberto Paci Dalo 『Japanese Girls at the Harbor』
『Japanese Girls at the Harbor』
CONCRETEが送るCDリリース第二弾は、日本の無声映画『港の日本娘(監督:清水宏)』から想像するサウンドスケープを、サウンドデザイナーの森永泰弘とイタリアを代表するマルチメディア・アーティストのロベルト・パチ・ダロによって作り上げた作品です。森永による多彩稀な録音のテクニックとライブエレクトロニクス、パチダロによる編集技術とクラリネット演奏とが組み合わさって、無声映画における音響作品というユニークな側面を打ち出しました。 映画が撮影された横浜での録音、フィルムとデジタルが織りなす電子音、過去と現在の音環境や文化の多様性を互いに検討しながら、映画の持つ「時間」に沿いながら制作された本作は、森永とパチダロが推進するプロジェクト『SOUNDGRAPH』の第一弾作品です。『Soundgraph』とは、無声映画の音響化を文化学的な側面から捉え、映画特有の物語構造と時間に沿って音響の制作が行われるものです。今後、様々なアーティストがこのプロジェクトに参加する予定です。

Performing arts
MEDIUM
Medium is a deeply personal portrait of Rianto the dancer. Featuring himself and Javanese musician Cahwati on a bare stage, the piece goes to the roots of Indonesian traditional dance and music, exploring nature, spirituality and ritual with a stark minimalism. Rianto, who dances barefoot with trance-like concentration, moves from controlled, hypnotic movements to frenzied shaking. In his body, we see a fluid amalgamation which has stored movements from contemporary dance, classical Javanese dance and lengger, a traditional cross-gender dance from Central Java, in which he has trained since young. Accompanying him, alternating between roles as partner, lover, friend and mother, is Cahwati, who plays a variety of instruments and contributes live vocals.

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.