Kioto Aoki: Findings

If pinholes were right side up, I would be doing handstands, Kioto Aoki, 2024. Courtesy of the artist

“Wondrous, extraordinary things are activated and pulled out from the common, everyday objects and environments…in Kioto’s orbit.”—Daniel Hojnacki, Lenscratch

In the finely attuned 16mm films of Chicago-based filmmaker, photographer, and musician Kioto Aoki, everyday phenomena—sunlight pooling on a wooden floor, blades of grass shifting in a lawn—become the material for exquisite compositions of sensorial and perceptual play. Grounded in an improvisatory sensibility and the embodied physicality of analog filmmaking, Aoki often edits her works in-camera and hand-processes them in her own basement studio. For this special evening, she presents a selection of 16mm films and debuts a new 35mm slide work that draws from her photographic practice and turns more explicitly toward the archive and the relations between perception, culture, and history. Musicians Robbie Lynn Hunsinger and Jamie Kempkers accompany the program with a live score, extending Aoki’s improvisatory approach to the event itself—one that opens onto larger questions about how we come to see and understand ourselves in the world around us.

Followed by a conversation with Kioto Aoki and audience Q&A.

2013–2026, USA
Format: 16mm, 35mm slides, live musical score
In English
ca 60 mins

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Kioto Aoki is a Chicago-based artist, filmmaker, photographer, musician, and educator. Her work has been presented at institutions including the Barbican Centre, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; the Heritage Museum of Asian Art, Chicago; Kobo Chika, Tokyo; and The Lab, San Francisco; among others and is held in the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art Library and Archives. A fifth-generation member of the Toyoakimoto house, an okiya (geisha house) performing-arts family in Tokyo with roots in the Edo period, Aoki is a specialist in taiko, tsuzumi, and shamisen. She studied under her father, Tatsu Aoki (Toyoaki Sanjuro), and has performed professionally since childhood. She leads Tsukasa Taiko through Asian Improv aRts Midwest and maintains an active international performance and recording practice across traditional and experimental music.

ACCESSIBILITY

Conversations at the Edge events have live captions (CART). The Gene Siskel Film Center is fully ADA accessible and its theaters are equipped with hearing loops. For other accessibility requests, please visit saic.edu/access or write cate@saic.edu.

TICKETS

$14 General public
$9 Students & seniors
$8 Film Center members
$8 SAIC staff & faculty & AIC staff
FREE for SAIC students with a valid ID

All CATE programs are free for SAIC students. Unless otherwise noted, SAIC student tickets are released five days prior to showtime. Tickets must be picked up in person from the Gene Siskel Film Center box office. A student ID is required.

RESOURCE GUIDES

Conversations at the Edge’s resource guides contain articles, interviews, and other material related to upcoming artists and events. Available here.