Akio Suzuki
oto - date berlin 2026
Permanent Installation in the Public Space
Klosterviertel, St. Elisabeth-Kirche, daadgalerie, silent green


Streetmap oto - date (PDF)


Japanese artist Akio Suzuki presented his first “oto - date” 1996 at the sonambiente Festival in Berlin. Since then, “oto - date”—which translates to “echo point”—has been a staple of Akio Suzuki’s works. The echo points, which he marks with a pictogram on the ground in which the shapes of a foot and an ear are intertwined, designate special locations—places where Suzuki’s perception of the acoustic and atmospheric qualities of the surroundings seems to be concentrated in a unique way. In this version of the piece they can be found in locations that vary greatly in atmosphere, function, and sound within the Klosterviertel, at Elisabethkirche, at the daadgalerie, and at silent green—the venues where the singuhr XXX festival took place. The marked points not only indicate the exact location but, through the “oto - date” pictogram, also specify the direction of listening. They are the result of a deliberately subjective process of acoustic appropriation of urban space. On the surface, one hears what is always there to be heard. Suzuki’s echo points, however, draw special attention to places and lift them out of their everyday functional and urban contexts. Suzuki sees this as an action that can sharpen the senses. “Listening in a specific direction that is indicated is an unusual, refreshing action,” writes Suzuki. “A suggestion to pause at the marked spots and open one’s senses.”



Akio Suzuki

Since his infamous “Throwing Objects Down a Staircase” event at Nagoya Station in 1963 and the self-study events which followed, where he explored the processes of “projection” and “following” in the natural world, Akio Suzuki has pursued listening as a practice. In the 1970s he created and began performing on a number of original instruments, including the echo instrument Analapos. In 1988 he performed his first outdoor installation “Space in the Sun”, which included a twenty-four hours performance in nature on the meridian line that runs through Amino, Kyoto. In 1996, he began his “oto date” project where he seeks out echo points in the urban environment. Suzuki has performed and exhibited at many venues and music festivals around the world, including Documenta 8 (Germany, 1987), the British Museum (2002), Musée Zadkine (France, 2004), Kunstmuseum Bonn (Germany, 2018), Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2019).

Organized by singuhr e.V.
Funded by Musikfonds e.V. by means of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
Supported by:
Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD, Toshiaki Ogasawara Memorial Foundation, Kulturbüro Elisabeth, Silent Green