From 10 July
Site-wide
o to da te $5
Laundry sessions $25 — $39
From 10 July
Site-wide
o to da te $5
Laundry sessions $25 — $39
o to da te
Suzuki’s residency project at Abbotsford Convent explores the Japanese concept of o to da te — the act of listening deeply to place. Moving through the precinct, Suzuki will tune into its acoustic character marking out a site specific sound walks without technology. The residency project culminates in a series of self-guided public encounters that invite audiences to experience the Convent through heightened listening and sensory awareness.
Presented internationally across museums, festivals and biennales, their work offers a rare invitation: to slow down, to listen differently, and to experience the world through sound, presence and connection.
Performance
Based in coastal Kyotango, Japan, this long-standing duo brings together Suzuki’s pioneering sound practice with Miyakita’s intuitive, site-responsive performance, creating works that are both deeply meditative and alive with spontaneity.
Suzuki, a globally celebrated figure in experimental sound, is known for his handmade instruments and the iconic o to da te listening projects, while Miyakita’s movement responds with sensitivity and play, transforming space into a living composition. Together, their performances blur the boundaries between music, sculpture and dance.
Since his infamous “Throwing Objects Down a Staircase” event at Nagoya Station in 1963 and the self-study events which followed, where he explored the processes of “projection” and “following” in the natural world, Akio Suzuki has pursued listening as a practice. In the 1970s he created and began performing on a number of original instruments, including the echo instrument Analapos. In 1988 he performed his piece “Space in the Sun”, which involved purifying his ears for twenty-four hours in nature on the meridian line that runs through Amino, Kyoto. In 1996, he began his “o to da te” project where he seeks out echo points in the urban environment. Has performed and exhibited at many venues and music festivals around the world, including Documenta8 (Germany, 1987), the British Museum (2002), Musée Zadkine (France, 2004), Kunstmuseum Bonn (Germany, 2018), Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo(Tokyo, 2019), etc.
Hiromi Miyakita graduated with a BFA in Dance from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After performing and choreographing for the stage, Miyakita began to explore the possibilities of improvised performance and visual art. Her dance practice is based on the idea that any movement, even simple ones like standing, walking, or sitting, can all become dance, as well as the discovery of dance through the objects and phenomena surrounding us.
Miyakita moved to the Tango Peninsula on the Japan Sea coast in 2012 and developed her NuTu dance, which involves striking together natural stones collected on the beach. Today, Miyakita creates site-specific performances in a variety of spaces including museums, railroads, parks, streets, and Japanese gardens. She has also applied her dancer’s sense of space and time to visual art and has presented art works at 3331 Arts Chiyoda (2019) , Kunsthaus Dresden (2021), and Tottori Prefectural Museum (2023).
