The Japanese collective Dumb Type, which in 2019 marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of its formation, occupies an exceptional position at the intersection of art, politics, and technology with its invention of new vocabularies and expressions of intermedia performance as vehicles of cultural critique. Dumb Type: Actions and Reflections, curated by Yuko Hasegawa at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT), illuminated the collective's living legacy, which has been insufficiently acknowledged despite its resonant aesthetics in art history, theater, and new media art.
Dumb Type was founded in 1984 by Kyoto City University of Arts students who were dissatisfied with the restriction of art education and the rigid categories of high art. Although the leadership of Teiji Furuhashi brought the group together, at Dump Type's core were its six founders from different disciplines including the visual arts, theater, music, architecture, graphic design, and computer programming.1 Self-described “political theatre,” Dumb...
University of California Press