M79 Dumb Type

Flyer for Plan for Sleep #1 (1984)

Dumb Type are a visionary multimedia performance collective founded by students from Kyoto City University of the Arts in Japan in 1984 and still active today. The English name ‘Dumb Type’ was chosen partly because the group were anti conventional theatre, choosing not to use scripts or scenarios in their work, but also to articulate their belief that there is an overabundance of redundant information in modern society. Their original aim was to create an alternative art that was inclusive and immersive, had no fixed aesthetic, and cut across genres, and so their early performances pioneered a new, interdisciplinary approach to art-making that combined performance, computer graphics, lighting and music.

Much of Dumb Type’s work has examined the effects of consumption, globalization and technology on contemporary Japanese society, in particular the ‘lost decade’ of economic and social stagnation caused by the financial crash of 1991. In 1995 the group’s most prominent member, Furuhashi Teiji (1960–95), died from complications relating to AIDS. In the preceding years, the group had staged a number of performances that confronted HIV and the discrimination experienced by members of the LGBT community in Japan.

Dumb Type’s manifesto appeared in the flyer for their inaugural work, Plan for Sleep #1 (Suimin no keikaku #1), which was performed at Kyoto City University of the Arts in November 1984.

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‘I’ connotes every self and every other person and, simultaneously, the whole of time and every instant. It is ‘he’ and at the same time ‘we’.

– Sleep. An eternally unchanging group behaviour. An accumulation of the loneliness of ‘I’. The work of shedding signs. An agreement between the shadow of the sun and a blueprint.

– The accumulation of trajectories that are left in our wake on a very sunny day continue to move in parallel, turning into inorganic matter.

Compared to theatre in the past, Dumb Type is a group that advocates a freer relationship between the audience and the stage. And based on the premise that a reaffirmation of the existing theatre space should not serve as our sole objective, we have begun our activities with a core group of members from the Karma theatre company, which served as a prototype for Dumb Type. Over the past year, these activities have comprised a series of works: 1m² Dining Table [1m² shokutaku], An Admirable Health Method [Shōsan-subeki kenkōhō], and An Asteroid Addition [Hitode no tashizan]. Hereafter, under the new name of Dumb Type, considering the potential of artistic and theatrical acts as live productions that violate the concept of performance and utilizing all types of elements that can be subjected to analysis, including vision, the body, the voice, sound, and objects, we will create ‘theatre’, which might be seen as creatively regressive, through experimental activities and the experience of real feelings.

– This plan for sleep is one part of the new Dumb Type’s first project.

Members

Furuhashi Teiji, Koyamada Tōru, Andō Yuriko, Hozumi Yukihiro,

Yasuda Masako, Hagi Yurie, Tomari Hiromasa, Ikubo Mari,

Yabuuchi Masako, Jindō Tomoko, Fukuhara Masami, Miyamoto Sakiko, Okamoto Kōji, Takatani Shirō, Hanaishi Masato, Harada Naoki, Ōuchi Seiko, Kitamura Misaka, Matsui Yōko