Fierce Unworking

A collection of writings by one of the most important performers and choreographers in the contemporary Japanese performance scene.

Ko Murobushi was one of the most important performers and choreographers in the Japanese performance scene of the twenty-first century and a key figure in the mediation between the experimental Butoh tradition of Hijikata Tatsumi and anti-logocentric French avant-gardes such as Antonin Artaud and Gilles Deleuze. Radically positioned at the intersection of the two movements, Murobushi reveals himself as an extraordinary and poetic author in his “thinking of the body.”

Fierce Unworking highlights his role as an unparalleled pioneer of contemporary paradigms such as body language, the third space, and embodied knowledge. Published ten years after his death, this volume brings together writings, poems, and diary fragments—many of which are available in English for the first time—in collaboration with the Ko Murobushi Archive in Tokyo.