suzueri & Julia Santoli

Wednesday, May 3rd at 8pm, ISSUE and AvanToyko are pleased to invite members and special guests to a reception and presentation of the first live duo collaboration between multi-disciplinary artist and experimental musician Julia Santoli and Tokyo-based sound and visual artist suzueri (Elico Suzuki). The debut collaboration will be presented at Fridman Gallery in the Lower East Side.

For their first duo collaboration, suzueri and Julia Santoli offer a mutable score for improvisation with light, sound objects, voice, and movement. The performance transfigures senses of space and time with playfully resourceful interventions.

Elico Suzuki, also known as suzueri, is a sound artist based in Tokyo who is currently residing in NYC as an Asian Cultural Council (ACC) NYC Fellow. Her relationship with Julia Santoli began in 2019 when Julia was also an ACC artist Fellow in Tokyo after completing an ISSUE Project Room residency in 2018. During Julia's stay in Tokyo, they had their first concert together as a trio with Yoko Ikeda at Ftarri, Tokyo's representative experimental record shop and live space. Since then, their collaboration continued from afar on Santoli's "Soleil Solace” 2021 digital commission for ISSUE's With Women's Work series, alongside Caroline Partamian. Their cultural exchange has persisted throughout this year, culminating in their first duo collaboration.

Julia Santoli is a multi-disciplinary artist and experimental musician. Santoli creates immersive and precarious environments with voice, feedback, electronics, and installation. Her approach to vocalization integrates embodied practice with an attention to close listening and empathetic response, in electroacoustic compositions and structured improvisations often tipping the scales between resonant clarity and extreme sonic states. Solo works, collaborations, and sound design have been presented at spaces including ISSUE Project Room, Roulette, Judson Memorial Church, Queens Museum, Drawing Center, Widow Jane Mine Cave, and artist-run spaces across the United States; Leipzig, Germany; Japan; and elsewhere. Santoli has been an Artist-In-Residence at ISSUE Project Room, Pioneer Works, and Leipzig International Art Program, and had the honor of being an Asian Cultural Council Artist Fellow in 2019. She is currently pursuing doctoral studies in music and social practices in the Ethnomusicology program at The Graduate Center, CUNY.

suzueri (Elico Suzuki) is a sound/visual artists, mainly active in Tokyo. Exploring her interests in the gap between physicality and interaction with tools and musical instruments as well as narratives emerging from relationships with actions, suzueri’s practice encompasses both live performances and exhibitions. Her work is particularly characterized by combining pianos or lights with self-made devices to make a roundabout, restless form of expression where musical instruments, devices, performance, and song all interfere with one another. Her recent appearances include in 2022, AIR TAIPEI, Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival and 'Tool for Play' at NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC], as well as Audiograft Festival in 2021 and Tsonami Sound Art Festival in 2019. She has also released several albums including “Fata Morgana” (solo, Ftarri, 2020) and “Live at Ftarri" (Ftarri,2016) with Roger Turner, Tetuzi Akiyama, and Makoto Oshiro. In 2023 she will release an album with Toshimaru Nakamura on SUPERPANG. She is also involved in several collaborative projects, including the band 'a.hop', with members from nine countries, including Ryoko Akama, Anne-F Jacques, and Bonne Jones, and as a contributor of Tokyo to Mopomoso TV, organized by the late John Russell. Elico is in NYC as a current Asian Cultural Council New York Fellow. https://suzueri.org