Akio
Suzuki

The Japanese artist Akio Suzuki was born in 1941 in Pyongyang, North Korea. At the age of four, he moved to Aichi, Japan. In the 1960s, he began his Self-Study Events, during which he spent years exploring natural sites and architectural spaces as a researcher of sound, investigating their acoustic qualities. He examines places by creating a topography of sound based on the principle of call and echo.

His intense engagement with the phenomenon of reverberation and echo led him in the 1970s to invent his own instruments, such as the Suzuki-style glass harmonica and the spiral echo instrument ANALAPOS. Since the 1970s, he has performed using these self-built instruments. In the late 1970s, he also developed his sound-concept performances using everyday objects such as newspaper and plates, as well as other simple materials.

In 1981, Suzuki received a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation in New York. 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. Since 1989, he has often collaborated with the dancer and performance artist Junko Wada.

In 1994, he was a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. In 1996, he began his o to da te project where he seeks out echo points in the urban environment. Today, Suzuki lives in the countryside near the Sea of Japan.

In May 2026, Akio Suzuki returns to Berlin upon a renewed invitation, where he will present his installation oto-date berlin 2026 in public space as part of singuhr XXX.

Oto-date is an ongoing project series by Akio Suzuki in which he invites the audience to stand still at specific locations in the urban environment. These sites are marked by a pictogram combining human footprints and ears. The project aims to encourage people to listen attentively to the sounds of their surroundings.

The Japanese term oto-date is composed of the characters for “sound/listening” and “point,” hence “listening point,” and is inspired by the Japanese tea ceremony nodate, which takes place outdoors. As the audience is invited to experience the city’s sonic environment directly, there are no audio recordings of these walks.

selected exhibitions:
1976 
Solo sound exhibition, Minami Gallery, Tokyo;
1978 
Festival d’Autonome à Paris
1983 
Performing Original Music, Japan House, New York;
1984 
Pro Musica Nova, Bremen;
1987 
Pro Musica Nova, Bremen;
1988 
Space in the Sun, Kyoto;
1993 
Solo sound exhibition and performance “+ – 0”, Xebec, Kobe;
1994 
Inventionen 94, Berlin; Cause and Effect, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde; Het Apollohuis, Eindhoven; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin;
1995 
Make-up, 7th international Contemporary Music Forum of Kyoto;
1996 
otodate, sonambiente festival, Berlin;
1997 
Klangräume, Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken;
1998 
Chorus Donaueschinger Musiktage 98, Donaueschingen;
1999 
soundculture 99, Auckland / Neuseeland; Klang Kunst Festival – UND II. Wiesbaden; tubridge 99 – 00, daadgalerie, Berlin

Akio Suzuki 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.