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red hen[impossible standard]

is a durational performance/installation exploring the presumptive societal expectations of “womanhood” and the architecture of suppression.  Using wire hangers, an iconic symbol of the gristly fight for women’s reproductive rights, to weave a structure based on the form of the Venus of Willendorf, one of humanity’s primordial depictions of fertility/womanhood, I create a jeweled, cage-like garment, crowned with a facial obscuring headdress of foam curlers. Activated in performance, I wear the cage garment and headdress while mixing, punching, and baking dough, serving bread to viewers, to become merely a means of production, a faceless incubator of nourishment.

First presented and installed in 2017 as part of Art in FLUX's Songs Of Freedom.

RUN | RABBIT

​Using projection, mask, movement and sound, aerial elements and narrative dialogue,
RUN:rabbit  is a roller coaster ride through the confusing, frightening, sometimes humorous, and true to life story of a gender fluid human navigating the extreme challenges of mental illness, abuse, a frightening physical diagnosis, and the pressure to hide one's sexual identity.

​RUN:rabbit is created, designed, and performed by Autumn Kioti, inspired by true interactions of therapist Arlene Mehlman and her client, remaining anonymous.
Workshop presented, in excerpt, by DIXON PLACE as part of their 25th anniversary HOT! Festival, a celebration of LGBTQ culture.

BEET POETRY​|FORAGED INKS+DYES+PAPERS

All works are created by gathering plant matter and other found objects, then burning or boiling or otherwise manipulating to create dyes, inks, paints and drawing materials.  Text art becomes the basis for further performance exploration and the inspiration for the creation of the handmade art/activist zine mammalian.

[in|respect|for|food]

[in respect for food] is a series of ongoing performative, installation-based, site specific and community engagement/action explorations focusing on the knowledge of what feeds us, where it comes from, how it is produced, and honoring our connections to the cycle.
ENTOMOFAGIA [in respect for food]
2015 (ongoing)

The practice of entomophagy is widely known among various cultures and nations around the globe. Recently, however, a debate in the West proposes the use of insects for human consumption as a legitimate alternative to cattle and other animal protein. This project takes part in that conversation and asks how we can demystify and introduce entomophagy to North America and Europe.

A multidisciplinary collaboration between myself and my creative partner RSM, the project crosses artistic, scientific, educational, environmental, and social justice boundaries.  We are discussing insects as sustainable food source as well as art, and have been meeting with educators to create curriculum for schools that includes theatre, fine art, science, culinary arts...these little bugs are a big deal!

Multidisciplinary projects include:
+Performance: segement I [in respect for food]: work in process
RSM will transform the chirping of crickets into "musical modes" or formulas to create compositions while I create movement and art to embody the essence of their primal rhythm.  It is suspected that humans received their idea of rhythm and musicality first from insects, before drums, before  music.  They are also one of the most sustainable and highly available protein sources (putting the current factory farming model in this country to shame), and have a prominent place in mythology and folklore, making them highly culturally significant in many areas.
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Sound Wave Balwan by Autumn & friends at the site of the future Hunter Arts & Agricultural Center in Espanola, NM, July 2015
+Sound Wave  Exploration
A Sound Wave  is a physical representation of an aural experience created in order to honor those other entities with whom we coexist and share the life/death/life cycle.  We all feed each other, one way or another.
By recording and watching spectrograms and sound waves, I create visual  representations of the chirps of various cricket species using only materials found within one mile of the building in which I am working. All materials found are photographically documented, discovery location logged, mapped and connected according to which sculpture they are used for.  I have also developed a workshop and hope to implement it this school year along with La Tierra Montessori School, the new Hunter Arts and Agricultural Center, and Moving Arts Espanola in Northern New Mexico.
+Recipe Development
The renewed interest in insects as an alternative protein source is a response to the growing awareness about the wastefulness of producing vertebrate protein.  New studies estimate that livestock is responsible for 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and requires 66% of all arable land. Beef is particularly inefficient, requiring 7 pounds of feed and 53 gallons of water to produce a single quarter‑pound hamburger.  In contrast, crickets need 12 times less feed to produce the same amount of protein as cattle, require little water and space, and produce a negligible amount of greenhouse gases.  It is clear that crickets and other insects form a compelling and sustainable solution to humanity’s ravenous appetite for animal protein.
And so!  I am currently working with Chef Joel Coleman of Fire & Hops Gastropub in Santa Fe, NM, on developing and implementing new insect based recipes, as well as with children and young adults on creating their own take on bug food.
+Cricket Coop Design/Construction
The Cricket Coop project is an exploration of the development of home-scale stations to raise and harvest crickets and/or grasshoppers for human consumption.  The coops are intended to work as well as domestic sonorous lamps that will interact with the insects' chirping and harmonize to it, thus making the device aesthetically appealing as well as functional. The project will involve the collaboration of entomophagists, artists, writers, technologists, enthusiasts and the like, and aims to create a greater network of creative minds to expand the possibilities of introducing the practice of eating insects into a sustainable model with a community-engagement approach.
+Artist Book
+Community Engagement/Action
+Theatrical Development and Performance
And much more.

We are also taking part in the push for the new Hunter Arts and Agricultural Center. and Santa Fe Art Institute's Project 8.

Activities at La Tierra Montessori School, Moving Arts Espanola, and Ohkay Owingeh Community School.

With support from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and Santa Fe Art Institute
AESCULAPIAN HARVEST [in respect for food]
2015
A site specific work created together with artist Alexis Elton, we explore and connect ritual with the repetitive manual labor of the garlic harvest.  Garlic is seen as a healer and protector in both medicine and folklore, and was often left as an offering to Hecate, chthonic goddess of sorcery who brought on or healed illness.  With AESCULAPIAN HARVEST, Alexis and I ask what it means to work to provide others with sustenance for both body and soul and how the process of labor nurtures the earth and the people working, resulting in feeding community. 
That which we choose not to see [in respect for food]  working title
2015 (ongoing)
Landscape architect/artist Christie Green of Radicle in Santa Fe New Mexico combines forces with me for the next iteration of my series [in respect for food].  More to come.

re | sounding the landscape

When we try to pick out anything by itself we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe.
                                                                                                               -John Muir, 1869


Making use of the topography, I create physical representations of a pre-industrial sound landscape using modern detritus collected on the site.  Each "sound wave cairn", a memorial for flora and fauna once found in the area, will then be connected to those on which its survival depended, creating a communal work based on the Muir Web.
​

Viewer participation in the ritual is encouraged in two ways:
First as we gather to collect and clean the area, preparing the site, and second as we use the sculptures and found objects as a starting point to create our web of connection.  
​Eric Sanderson, landscape ecologist, describes the Muir Web as 
"a new grammar for describing habitat entities and their interconnections...
...This grammar can be used to write 'sentences' relating one ecosystem entity to a series of others"…
Research and resources generously provided by Eric Sanderson, Chris Spagnoli, the Welikia Project, and The Mannahatta Project staff at the Wildlife Conservation Society.
The first site-specific performance occurs in Port Morris opposite the entrance to the Randall's Island Connector, south Bronx.
   © Autumn Kioti 2017
     all content sole property of the artist; no content may be reproduced without artist's express permission
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