Meander
Artist
Yuji Agematsu (b. 1956, Kanagawa, Japan, lives and works in New York) has, since the 1980s, taken daily, wandering walks through New York City, collecting small objects from the street as he goes. He is interested in the metabolism of the city and the habits and desires of its residents. The artist, who refers to his finds as detritus —“trash,” he believes, is too disparaging — sees New York as a place of profound pluralism and extends this same courtesy to things. Agematsu’s practice is both rhythmic and improvisational, like that of his longtime mentor, the free jazz and visual and martial artist Milford Graves (1941–2021); his imperative is to keep moving.
Yuji Agematsu
Take daily, meandering walks in your neighbourhood, collecting detritus as you go.
Invitation
Set yourself a time frame of one week to take daily, meandering walks in your neighbourhood, collecting detritus as you go.
Record each walk in your notebook either during or after: note the date, the duration of your walk, and sketch or otherwise represent the debris you discovered along the way.
At the end of the week, make a list of everything you collected, being as specific as possible about your findings: red plastic Dairy Queen spoon, metal pull tab, broken glass, cellophane wrap, etc.
Rearrange your list by sound, grouping words that chime, echo, and rhyme together until you have a sonic, musical poem-sculpture.