Vertical Elegies 6

Sam Tru­itt

Street Mete’s mul­ti­me­dia mon­tage is a per­for­ma­tive work in language/photo art. Tru­itt cre­ates a poet­ics of tran­scribed voice record­ings and on-the-spot pho­tos made in the streets and sub­ways of New York between 1996 and 2004. Infused jour­nal entries give auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal edge to its some­times harsh his­tor­i­cal land­scape that includes the fall of civ­i­liza­tions, yok­ing for exam­ple the Mayan ruins of Chichén-Itzá to our cur­rent walk­ways. At core is spon­ta­neous com­po­si­tion on the hoof, the “sud­den dic­tion” aris­ing from a lan­guage artist meet­ing the world with recorder in hand, speak­ing forward—”a bit of rub­ble wear­ing clothes walk­ing past madi­son square gar­den with a pair of enor­mous inflated box­ing gloves old­en­ber­gian in the car line catch­ing fire…”