CONNECTIVITY THROUGH CINEMA PRESENTS:
Dapplings

A solo program of work by experimental filmmaker Kioto Aoki, where interactions with light and
the body in motion become the cinematic apparatus. with Kioto Aoki * IN PERSON *
FRIDAY MAY 29 2026 @ MONO NO AWARE : CINEMA ARTS NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION
33 FLATBUSH AVENUE, BROOKLYN NEW YORK - LIMITED ATTENDANCE TO 40 - MASKS AVAILABLE
DOORS 6 PM – STARTS PROMPTLY AT 7:00PM – FREE OR $5 SUGGESTED DONATION

TRT, 60 minutes. Additional time for discussion / Q & A with Kioto Aoki *IN PERSON *

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:
A solo program of work by experimental filmmaker Kioto Aoki, where interactions with light and the body in motion become the cinematic apparatus.

PROGRAM:

Tamago Stories One
16mm | b/w | sound | 03 minutes | 2026 | USA
The first section in an in-progress anthology of films about mechanisms, economies, and ecologies of production through the confluence of eggs, photography, and the sun. The world emerges from the chaos of the tamago (egg) and emerges into the cycles of the sun to moonlight to sunlight.

Lightly Heeled
16mm | b/w | silent | 03 minutes | 2024 | USA
The artist’s heels frame dancing flames in this hand-processed play of light.

Findings
16mm | b/w | silent | 03 minutes | 2017 | USA
An environmental exploration of space through bodies of light, with nods to Uta Barth, John Smith, and Maya Deren.

Chair Piece
16mm | b/w | silent | 09 minutes | 2019 | USA
A three-part film with dancer Jasmine Mendoza and cellist Lia Kohl A film chair as a visual instrument that shifts the camera, chair and body as visual and formal instruments.

For Bucky Fuller
16mm | b/w | silent | 03 minutes | 2019 | USA
An homage to Buckminster Fuller, drawing on his belief that the Earth’s rotation could be felt by a body aligned with the North Star, with Maggie Wong.

Double Run Eight 
Double 8 as 16mm | b/w | silent | 02 minutes | 2022 | USA
The original 8mm format, known as Regular 8 or Double 8, runs a 16mm gauge film stock through the camera, exposing one half of the frame on the first pass. It is then flipped and again runs through the camera, this time exposing the other half of the frame. The final processed film is traditionally split down the center and spliced together, resulting in a 8mm print. Double Run Eight keeps the un-spliced double 8 format, choreographing formal collisions of the resulting four frames through forwards, backwards, and radial motion as a 16mm print.

逆立ち逆立ち : If pinholes were right side up, I would be doing handstands
16mm | b/w | silent | 02 minutes | 2024 | USA
A short in-camera sequence of play between the filmmaker and a matte box. 
The inversion of the body is a familiar and natural state in gymnastics, where handstands (逆立ち / sakadachi in Japanese) are an essential part of the physical lexicon. Camera obscuras share asimilar state: the image is upside down. 
In both handstands and camera obscuras, the inverted body is the correct orientation. Inside a pinhole camera, we are always inverted, always upside down, except when in an actual handstand. Only then are we right side up, in an upside down handstand. This recurring logic of formal and conceptual reorientation found its way into a vignette using in-camera mattes that playfully inverts and subverts other systems of logic.

6018 | Dance
16mm | b/w | sound | 09 minutes | 2022 | USA
A dance film playing with the malleability of dance, movement, documentation, cinematographyand choreography, moving through four rooms in a classic Chicago home-turned-exhibition space.

Olympic Order
16mm | b/w | sound | 12 minutes | 2025 | USA
Following the Olympic order of gymnastics (vault, bars, beam, floor) the film reimagines a cinematic routine on each of these events.

 Of What I Can See
16mm | b/w | silent | 03 minutes | 2014 | USA
A self-portrait through the artist’s eyes and her cinematic instrument.

Bio
Kioto Aoki (青木希音) is a Chicago-based artist, educator and musician whose visual practice navigates propositions of spatial and visual acuity through research, material and process-based methodologies. Vernaculars of conceptual photography and experimental cinema operate as tangential frameworks to negotiate visual and temporal relations within the mundane. Grounded in an improvisatory sensibility and the embodied physicality of analog filmmaking, the body often serves as an inflection point to balance of revealing and withholding to offer a nuanced attentiveness within the mundane.
She has performed and exhibited at the Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago; Anthology Film Archives, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; the Chicago Cultural Center; The Lab, San Francisco; and the Barbican Centre, London; The International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago;  Heritage Museum of Asian Art, Chicago; 6018|North, Chicago; Gallery Kobo Chika, Tokyo, Japan; among others. Aoki’s work is held in the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Library and private collections.

MONO NO AWARE SCREENING SERIES:
The CONNECTIVITY THROUGH CINEMA series will present the work of artists, film-makers and curators who are traveling or presenting special interactive programs in-person. Our hope is to engage the community by showing work with a focus on post-screening discussion. This series is made possible by support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).