ICC

Preface
Admission
Works
Video Screening
Showing Program
Participation Artist's
Related Events

Artists' Talk "dumb type + ASADA Akira"
Concurrent Exhibition

IKEDA Ryoji "db"
August 23(Friday) - December 1(Sunday), 2002 Gallery A


Preface


dumb type, an artists' collective formed in 1984, mainly by students at the Kyoto City University of Arts, brings together artists from a variety of fields-including theatre, dance, video, painting and sculpture,music,design, architecture-to create performances and installations that cut across all those fields. A group of artists exemplifying Japantoday in the arts, their work has been performed or displayed throughout the world to international acclaim.

The work of dumb type covers a diversity of forms and media, including performances consisting of computer-controlled stage devices, video, and acoustic effects as well as the bodies of the performers, as well as installations, CDs, and printed matter. It addresses, with humor and irony, the information-intensive society, gender issues, AIDS, and themes such as the life/death boundary and memory.

Despite the death in 1995 of one of dumb type's leading figures, FURUHASHI Teiji, during a performance of the collective's signature work, S/N, the group has transcended that tragedy to continue to present performance pieces of overwhelming power, including OR (1997) and memorandum (1999) and to open up a new phase in its work. Its Installation OR is in the NTT/ICC permanent collection.

dumb type premiered a new performance, Voyage, at Toulouse, France, this past April and will perform it in Saitama and Osaka in August and September. NTT/ICC is proud to present a new installation, Voyages, in conjunction with the first Japanese performances of Voyage. Videos of earlier performances, from 1988 to 2000, will be shown as well.

During the dumb type exhibition at NTT/ICC, the museum will also be presenting a new installation, db, by IKEDA Ryoji, the sound artist who is dumb type's music and sound director.

With works composed ascetically and hyperdensely of sine waves, white noise, and other elements, IKEDA is regarded as on the cutting edge of contemporary electronic music. His manysound installations, exhibited in Japan and overseas, include Sound Art-Sound as Media (2000), at NTT/ICC, and Sonic Boom (2000), at the Hayward Gallery in London. IKEDA's work are awe-inspiring aural experiences that encourage, nay, demand, an expansion of the listener's consciousness.