Wandering Position

I have just recently encountered the amazing art work of Yukinori Yanagi.

In 1997 he made (performed might be a more accurate term) a work entitled Wandering Position, in which he crawled behind an ant, tracing its path with a red crayon, within the confines of a 5 x 9 foot prison cell in Alcatraz.

In exhibition, the floor drawing shows the typical floor area of a cell, and the three surrounding walls are the same surface area as the walls of the cell. Prisoners typically spent 16-23 hours a day in these cells.

Much like Jackson Pollock, these drawings, once you understand how they were created, can be seen as the passive recording of a dance. However, the ant is not dancing, it is trapped and wandering.

Yanagi says:

"We feel that the incarcerated lack liberty, and that all of their activity is controlled and watched and we assume that this is completely opposite to the way we live our daily life, but I ask myself...Is what I watch, what I watch by my will? Is the direction I am walking determined by me? Is what I am thinking really thought by me? What drives our journeys through life?

If the travels of the ant show us anything, it is that he wanders to resume the task he has been programmed to perform, not to acquire freedom. "