Akio Suzuki’s work speaks to the conditional relations between material objects, environmental forces, and perception. In 2023, he ventured to the Tottori Dunes on the Sea of Japan to explore the wind’s effect on the Analapos, a percussive device he created in 1970 comprising two open metal cylinders connected by a spring. Video recording of this experiment echoes documentation of an earlier performance, which took place in 1982 at the Senrihama Dunes in Hamamatsu, Japan. Although the core elements remain the same—i.e., the instrument and the windswept dunes—the 2023 iteration captures entirely new sounds, a dialect of the wind changed by energies unique to that specific time and place.
Akio Suzuki
Akio Suzuki’s artistic practice has been guided by two words: “throwing” and “following.” His methodology, which involves casting energy out into the world and receiving it back, is his way of testing spatiality and materiality, allowing him to strike a dialogue between the dynamism of his environment and the range of his instrument.