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"Paper, not plastic" Album Release Live
"Paper, not plastic" Album Release Live

Sat, Sep 09

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AIRMW Cultural Hub

"Paper, not plastic" Album Release Live

Celebrate the release of Kioto Aoki's second solo album with a performance event also featuring a set by Takashi Shallow. FREE ADMISSION (donations accepted at door)

Time & Location

Sep 09, 2023, 7:00 PM

AIRMW Cultural Hub, 4875 N Elston Ave, Chicago, IL 60630, USA

About this event

Tsukasa Taiko and AIRMW's own Kioto Aoki celebrates the August 25th release of her second solo taiko album, Paper, not plastic. The evening opens with a set by Takashi Shallow, who collaborated with Kioto on a special edition for her album, to be released in Spring 2024; and ends with Kioto's solo set on taiko. 

From FPE Records:

Paper, not plastic is the second album of solo taiko recordings by Kioto Aoki, and her first for FPE Records. Fusing the minimal with the maximal, Kioto creates a space where melody is embodied by rhythm, and composition’s relation to motif is questioned. As with all of Aoki’s practice (she’s also a photographer and filmmaker), the medium imparts a veil: you can’t see her choreography in this sonic space, but her movements are integral to the way it sounds, broadcasting through stick hits and hollow echo a robust and nuanced practice of being through time.

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Takashi Shallow is a socially specific artist whose experiments complicate notions of medium. His ongoing projects include operating the label Gesamt, organizing Percent–a collective of mixed race artists–and independently publishing Insider Art, a series of critiques. Dazed Digital includes Shallow in the article 10 of the best Chicago artists right now, and he has received fellowships and residencies at institutions like the Arts Club of Chicago and the Cliff Dwellers. He shows work at spaces like Links Hall and Elastic Arts and is a lecturer at the University of Chicago where he teaches art, music, and fashion.

Kioto Aoki is an artist whose musical practice is as taiko performer, specializing in shamisen and tsuzumi as well. She is a 5th generation of the Toyoakimoto house, an okiya (geisha house) performing arts family from Tokyo with roots dating back to the Edo period. Studying under her father Tatsu Aoki (Toyoaki Sanjuro) who was born in Tokyo and now performing shamisen under her professional name Toyoaki Chitose (豊秋千東勢) and paving the way as taiko artist, Kioto continues this artistic family lineage in Chicago, through both traditional okiya and contemporary musical contexts. Her musical practice maintains a balance of retaining the artistic and aesthetic integrity of traditional Japanese music with a musical flexibility that extends beyond the measures of cultural preservation. Her taiko playing is informed by the Japanese aesthetics of ma while challenging the common misinterpretation and beliefs of percussion as rhythm, and uses often stoic gestures of sonic textures, abstracted soundscapes and embodied phrasing that incorporates choreography as part of melody.

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This album and performance is part of the AIRMW AA Arts Initiative program.

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