Shoji Yamasaki's Littered Mvmnts: Dancing Trash Goes Viral

Performance artist Shoji Yamasaki (born 1989, Torrance, California) creates viral split-screen videos for his ongoing project Littered Mvmnts, in which he dresses as discarded litter and mimics its wind-driven movements. The project has attracted millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram. Yamasaki, a first-generation LA County native of Japanese descent, studied at UCLA and earned an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. During the 2020 pandemic, he began filming a surgical mask hanging from a tree, which led to a 2021 collaboration with Brian Eno at Jerry Moss Plaza, The Music Center, Los Angeles. In 2023 he started posting 15-second 'trash vignettes' on TikTok, then Instagram, and has posted every Friday since 2024. Yamasaki makes costumes from his own or friends' clothing, never buying new items. His work is currently featured on a digital billboard on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood through the West Hollywood Moving Image Media Art Program until end of May. Funding comes from grants and brand collaborations with environmentally aligned companies like Paloma Wool and Harper Collective. Yamasaki views Los Angeles as a choreography and sees litter as a global, uniquely human phenomenon. He draws on Shinto beliefs that inanimate objects have a soul, aiming to shift behavioral change by making people see trash differently. The project will continue as long as litter exists.