Kioto Aoki: Findings

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

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. 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, and 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.

PROGRAM

On the Grand Scale of Things
2014, 6 min
A playful look at the relation between words, implied actions, and potential consequences through light, hands, and shadow.

Mornings in Orange
2017, 3 min
An early morning fishing excursion.

Findings
2017, 3 min
An environmental exploration of space through bodies of light, with nods to Uta Barth, John Smith, and Maya Deren.

For Mt. Shamao
2018, 3 min
A film adaptation of Milad Mozari and Mitsu Salmon’s site-responsive performance Mt. Shamao, commissioned for Experimental Sound Studio’s Florasonic series at the Lincoln Park Conservatory.

????
2024, 3 min
Details on the ground and in the sky.

For Bucky Fuller
With Maggie Wong, 2019, 3 min
An homage to Buckminster Fuller, drawing on his belief that the Earth’s rotation could be felt by a body aligned with the North Star.

Aperture
2013, 9 min
A quiet investigation of the camera’s aperture that draws attention to how we see.

Untitled 35mm Slide Performance
2026, 10 min

??????: If Pinholes Were Right Side Up, I Would Be Doing Handstands
2024, 3 min
A play between the filmmaker and a matte box, drawing a parallel between handstands (??? / sakadachi) and the camera obscura, where inversion becomes an essential orientation.

Tamago Stories One
2026, 3 min
The first in a series about mechanisms, economies, and ecologies of production through the confluence of eggs, photography, and the sun.

Double Run Eight
2022, 2 min
Sidewalks, trees, and sky run forward and backward across four frames of unslit double 8mm, reflecting embodied perception through the film’s very structure. Shot on a Bell & Howell Filmo Double Run Eight camera from the Rod Slemmons Camera Archive.

Lightly Heeled
2024, 3 min
The artist’s feet frame quivering flames in this hand-processed play of light.

Of What I Can See
2014, 3 min
A self-portrait through the artist’s eyes and her cinematic instrument.

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

Purchase

$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

Articles, interviews, and other material related to upcoming artists and events. Available here.