Shiro Takatani
Co-founder and visual creator of the group Dumb Type since 1984, he also became artistic director of the group from 1995 and also started an active solo career in 1998. Biography. Dumb Type. Graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts, Shiro Takatani co-founded Dumb Type in 1984 with other students from different sections of the university, including Teiji Furuhashi, Toru Koyamada, Yukihiro Hozumi, Misako Yabuuchi and Hiromasa Tomari. Dumb Type began touring around the world and got recognition with their multidisciplinary shows "Pleasure Life" (1988), and "pH" (1990–1995) and "S/N" (1992–1996) After the death of  the artistic director Teiji Furuhashi in 1995, some members left the company, while new ones joined it, as the composer Ryoji Ikeda. They continued working under Shiro Takatani's direction and created the performances "OR" (1997–1999), "memorandum" (1999–2003), "Voyage" (2002–2009), and the related installations "OR" (1997), "Cascade" (2000), "Voyages" (2002) and "MEMORANDUM OR VOYAGE" (2014). Solo Projects. Alongside his activities within Dumb Type, Takatani has created a number of installations and performances under his own name. Since his first installation "frost frames", created at Canon Artlab in 1998, Takatani has been invited by museums, festivals and theatres worldwide. Among others , he was commissioned by the Natural History Museum of Latvia in Riga to create two video installations: "Ice Core" and "Snow Crystal / fiber optic type", for the group exhibition "Conversations with Snow and Ice", dedicated to Ukichiro Nakaya' scientific work on snow and ice, in 2005. This exhibition was one of the nominees for the Descartes Award for Excellence in the Explanation of Scientific phenomena in 2007) The following year he was hosted in residence in Australia and presented the installation "Chrono" in Melbourne, as part of the Australia-Japan exchange program "Rapt! 20 Contemporary Artists from Japan", commissioned by  the Japan Foundation. He also joined the three-week British expedition "Cape Farewell" (a cultural response to climate change) in the Arctic, with scientists, writers, journalists and other artists from different countries. The related group exhibition was presented at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo, in 2008. His more recent creations include the laser installation "Silence" (2012), commissioned by Radar, Loughborough University Arts, the fog installation "Composition" (2013) for the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates and one of the first animation artworks for the 3D WATER MATRIX, inaugurated at the exhibition "Robotic Art" at  the Cité des sciences et de l'industrie in Paris, in 2014. Some of his installations are part of permanent collections of museums, for example "Camera lucida" (2004) and "Toposcan / Ireland 2013" at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and "optical flat / fiber optic type" (2000) at the National Museum of Art in Osaka. In 2013, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography presented "Camera lucida", a dedicated exhibition with a wide range of the video and photographic artworks, he created both as solo artist and artistic director of Dumb Type Another solo exhibition, held at the Kodama Gallery in Tokyo in  2014, featured his photographic series "Topograph" and "frost frame Europe 1987". Takatani also created and directed three theatre/dance performances: "La chambre claire" (2008), referring to Roland Barthes's essay "la camera lucida", "CHROMA" (2012), inspired by Derek Jarman's "Chroma: A Book of Color", with original music by Simon Fisher Turner, and "ST/LL" (2015) in which he is exploring how to consider the micromeasure of time and whether "art or science can ever truly express this hourglass world". Collaboration Projects. Shiro Takatani has collaborated with musicians, choreographers and other artists from many disciplines. In 1990, he participated with  Akira Asada in the art project "Stadsmarkeringen Groningen - Marking the City Boundaries", led by architect Daniel Libeskind for the 950th anniversary of the City of Groningen in the Netherlands. In 1998, he was commissioned by Art Zoyd and the Lille National Orchestra to create video images for a piece of the first cycle of "Dangerous Visions", a project combining symphonic music, new musical technologies and images. At this period, composer Ryuichi Sakamoto noticed Takatani's work and asked him to undertake the visual direction of his opera "LIFE", created in 1999. This marked the start of a fruitful collaboration between  the two artists. They co-created later, in 2007, the installation "LIFE - fluid, invisible, inaudible ..." at Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM] (as well as an updated version in 2013), "silent spins" with sound designer Seigen Ono at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo in 2012. They also participated together in three performances directed by Moriaki Watanabe: "Project Mallarmé I, II and III", combining text, music, theatre and dance, at the Kyoto Performing Arts Center - Shunjuza, from 2010 to 2012. During 2013–2014, they presented in Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM], on the occasion of its 10th  anniversary, their performance "LIFE WELL" (with the participation of Noh actor Mansai Nomura), an installation with the same title and a new one: "water state 1". Furthermore, Takatani was the visual director for Sakamoto's project "Forest Symphony" in 2013 and they collaborated again for a special version of "LIFE-WELL", commissioned for the 20th anniversary of the Park Hyatt in Tokyo, in 2014. Since his first collaboration with fog sculptor Fujiko Nakaya at the 1st International Biennial of Valencia in 2001, for the outdoor installation "IRIS" at the port of the city, Takatani co-signed two more large-scale  installations with her: "CLOUD FOREST" (2010), inside and around the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM], and a fog sculpture in the Asuka Historical National Park in Nara. Among other collaborations, he contributed in the exhibition "Kichizaemon X" (2012–2013), consisting of images screened on potters made by Raku Kichizaemon XV at Sagawa Art Museum, and he co-signed the 4K video installation "Mars" with Xavier Barral, for the international festival of photography Kyotographie at the Museum of Kyoto. He also co-created several performances with Noh actor Mansai Nomura: "Sanbaso / Eclipse" and "Boléro", both performed at the MOT  - Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo), and "Aoi no ue", "The Double Shadow", directed by Watanabe Moriaki, at the Kyoto Performing Arts Center - Syunjuza. Takatani's works were presented, among others, at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Romaeuropa festival / MACRO in Rome, Royal Academy of Arts in London, Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon, GREC festival in Barcelona, Festival de Otoño in Madrid, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Lille 2004 - European Capital of Culture, NTT InterCommunication Center - ICC, Tokyo, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]. In 2015, Takatani received the 65th Prize of Fine Arts (Art  media) from the Ministry of Education of Japan. Exhibitions and Performances. Solo exhibitions. 2019-2020 2018 2014 2013 2007 2004 2001 2000 Group exhibitions. 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2003 2001 2000 1998 1990 Tours (performances). 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2010 2009 2008