Dumb Type

Dumb Type is an interdisciplinary art collective founded in 1984 in Kyoto by students at the Kyoto City University of Arts. Spanning visual art, theatre, dance, architecture, music, and programming, they built a reputation for multimedia performances interrogating consumer culture and information overload. Their 1994 performance S/N confronted Japan's silence around AIDS, addressing gay identity, sex work, and stigma at a moment of near-total suppression. The work followed founding member Teiji Furuhashi's disclosure of his HIV status; he died in 1995. Under Shiro Takatani, the collective maintains an international presence with retrospectives at the Centre Pompidou-Metz and Haus der Kunst.

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