Tokio Florist Project

A video and sound installation by Susie Kozawa, Brigid Kelly, and Alex MacInnis, with technical design by Laura Luna Castillo

In this immersive sound and four-wall video projection, sound artist Susie Kozawa explores the resonance of her empty childhood home, which also served as the storefront of her family’s business, Tokio Florist.

Visitors sense her playing unconventional instruments in the room above, around, and beyond them, improvising with the noise from the world outside and deep within the house. Using her voice, the walls, and found objects to generate otherworldly timbres and pitches, Susie explores the space and then releases it.

About Tokio Florist: Susie's family bought the house after they returned from incarceration at Manzanar, one of ten concentration camps where the US Government held people of Japanese descent during WWII. Before the war, alien land laws, redlining, and housing covenants kept Japanese-born people from purchasing land and restricted where they could rent. In 1960, Yuki and Susie's parents saved enough money to buy property and, for the first time in their lives, became housing secure. In 2019, the City of Los Angeles made Tokio Florist a Historic-Cultural Monument. It is in this house where Susie's performance in the Tokio Florist Project is captured.

Susie Kozawa was born in Los Angeles in 1949 and moved to Seattle in 1967. She creates site-specific installations and performances, often cas appeared at LACMA, Wing Luke Museum, Seattle Art Museum, and Henry Art Gallery. Nearly Seen, Closely Heard, a collaboration with artist Jesse Minkert, was the first installation presented in the Jack Straw New Media Gallery in 1999. The instruments she makes out of found objects such as sea kelp, pipe fittings, toy parts, and teapots have unrecognizable timbres, which, when unseen, cause audiences to lean in, trying to determine what they are and how they fit into the location. Susie listens deeply to the naturally occurring sounds of the space, using her instruments to engage it in conversation and drawing attention to noises often blocked from consciousness. Every performance is a unique experience.

Brigid Kelly's projects explore missing histories and the contributions of overlooked activists, artists, and everyday people. Her work has appeared on NPR's Code Switch, KCRW's All Things Considered, PBS, and other networks. Presence, a documentary-based collaborative work, was in the Crossing The Line Festival in New York City.

Alex MacInnis has decades of experience creating experimental documentary media. Notably, Alex was the editor and technical director for the Bill Viola Studio and worked with opera director Peter Sellars as editor of The Tristan Project. He's also composed music and sound-designed projects for Higher Ground, Audible, Audiochuck, and iHeartMedia.

Laura Luna Castillo is a Mexican multimedia and new technologies artist and composer. Luna Castillo has developed multimodal audiovisual performances, installations and interactive works where different materials and technologies coexist and has performed at different international festivals, such as MUTEK Montréal, 2016, Unsound Krakow 2016, and CYNETART Festival, 2016. Luna Castillo is currently a PhD candidate at the Digital Arts and Experimental Media department (DXARTS) at UW.

Dates: March 22 - May 17, 2024

Opening Reception: Friday, March 22, 7pm

In person at Jack Straw

Artist Talk: Friday, April 12, 7pm

In person and streaming on YouTube and Facebook Live

Youth and Family Workshop: Saturday, May 11, 2pm

E-mail [email protected] for information or to sign up.

Location: Jack Straw Cultural Center, 4261 Roosevelt Way North East, Seattle, WA

Call 206-634-0919 or email [email protected] to schedule a visit.

For more information, follow Tokio Florist Project on Instagram @tokiofloristproject.