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’.

Cinema
籠城
旧制第一高等学校（通称、一高）は、1935年に本郷から駒場へと移転するが、そこでの生活は、本郷時代以来の「籠城主義」と呼ばれる自治寮での共同生活に支えられた、独特かつ閉鎖的なものだった。だが、1941年、1942年と戦時色が深まるにつれ、一高のアイデンティティともいえる「籠城主義」は、そのまま維持することはできなくなってくる。本作は、あたかも一高生らに同一化するかのように、アイデンティティの拠りどころを求めて研究に専念する大学院生の主人公「わたし」の意識を通じて、駒場時代の一高を描き出す。

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.

Installation
CDOSA
the critical dictionary of southeast asia (cdosea), begins with a question: what constitutes the unity of southeast asia — a region never unified by language, religion or political power? cdosea proceeds by proposing 26 terms — one for each letter of the english / latin alphabet. each term is a concept, a motif, or a biography, and together they are threads weaving together a torn and tattered tapestry of southeast asia. cdosea is a platform facilitating ongoing research, a matrix for generating future projects and an oracular montage machine.