"I Like America & America Likes Me"(from an essay by David Levi Strauss)
You could say that a reckoning has to be made with the coyote, and only then can this trauma be lifted.
For three days in May of 1974, Joseph Beuys lived and communicated with a coyote in a small room in the newly-opened Rene Block Gallery at 409 West Broadway in New York.
Coyote, ululating on the hill,
is it my fire that distresses you so?
Or the memories of long ago
when you were a man roaming the hills.Native American Coyote tales speak of a time long ago "when animals were people" and everyone communicate with each other.
During Sacred Time, the time of Creation, Coyote taught humans how to survive, and the incredible survival of the coyote, both mythologically and biologically, continues to be one of the great American mysteries.
Many people feel that the Vietnamese mistake was the first war that the United States didn't win. That isn't true. For forty-five years, Uncle Sam has fought a war against coyotes...and lost! In the years between 1937 and 1981, minions of the Fish & Wildlife Service scalped 3, 612, 220 coyotes. The ears with a connecting strip of skin were sent to a central tallying point as proof of their 'body count.' If my calculations are reasonable, coyotes suffered six million casualties in this war with Uncle Sam. Yet, we would have to admit that the coyotes have won the war.
Mythologically and biologically, Coyote is a survivor and exemplar of evolutionary change. This is what attracted Beuys to Coyote.
Like the American Indian, he was the Other in our midst, and we did everything we could to eliminate them both.
The white man does not understand the Indian for the reason that he does not understand America.
The man from Europe is still a foreigner and an alien. . . . Oglala Sioux Chief Luther Standing Bear in his autobiography, 1933
The American intelligence is an indigenous plumage. Is it not evident that America itself was paralyzed by the same blow that paralyzed the Indian! And until the Indian is caused to walk, America itself will not begin to walk... Jose Marti, "Autores americanos aborigenes," 1884
The Trauma Coyote Old Man is a fine doctor, a great medicine man.
Beuys's intentions in the Coyote action were primarily therapeutic. Using shamanic techniques appropriate to the coyote, his own characteristic tools, and a widely syncretic symbolic language, he engaged the coyote in a dialogue to get to "the psychological trauma point of the United States' energy constellation"; namely, the schism between native intelligence and European mechanistic, materialistic, and positivistic values. Arriving for his first and only action in America in an ambulance, with "Emergency" emblazoned across its front and marked with the red crosses so prevalent in his earlier drawings and paintings, Beuys left no doubt about the purpose of his trip. Wrapped in a felt cocoon inside the ambulance, Beuys recalled his own myth of origin, in which he was shot down over the Crimea and rescued by nomadic Tartars, who wrapped him in insulating felt to warm him.
Here again, the artist journeys to another world (the New World) through ritualizing threshold rites. Again he is wounded and in need of treatment. The trauma is always double. The Coyote action is an updated version of the masked dance dating from the Upper Paleolithic. In 1974, a New York art gallery replaced the cave as temenos.
Beuys's "medicine" in this action consisted of his usual costume (felt hat and fishing vest), staff, flashlight, two large pieces of felt, a musical triangle, a pile of hay, and stacks of the daily Wall Street Journal.
Upon arrival in the room with the coyote, Beuys began an orchestrated sequence of actions to be repeated over and over in the next three days. A triangle is struck three times to begin the sequence. This triangle that Beuys wears pendant around his neck is the alchemical sign for fire (dry, fiery, choleric warmth), which ancient glacial Eurasian shamans sorely needed. It is also a sign for the feminine element (earthy & mercurial) and for the creative intellect, and it is the Pythagorean symbol for wisdom. Striking its three sides three times, Beuys calls himself, Coyote, and the Audience to order. After the triangle is struck, a recording of loud turbine engine noise is played outside the enclosure, signifying "indetermined energy" and calling up a chaotic vitality. At this point, Beuys pulls on his gloves, reminiscent of the traditional bear-claw gloves worn by "master of animals" shamans such as those depicted on the walls of Trois Freres, and gets into his fur pelt/felt, wrapping it around himself so that he disappears into it with the flashlight. He then extends the crook of his staff out from the opening at the top of the felt wrap, as an energy conductor and receptor, antenna or lightning rod. The conical shape of the felt resembles a tipi, the nomadic shelter which migrated from Siberia to North America with the hunters. Topped with the crooked staff, it also recalls both the stag and the shape of the lightning The felt enclosure doubles as a sweat lodge for Beuys, accumulating the heat necessary for transformation.
Beuys bends at the waist and follows the movements of the coyote around the room, keeping the receptor/staff pointed in the coyote's direction at all times. When the beam of the flashlight is glimpsed from beneath the felt, we recognize the figure of the Hermit from the Tarot--an old man with a staff, holding a lighted lamp half-hidden by the great mantle which envelopes him.
After awhile, Beuys emerges from the felt and walks to the edge of the room, marking the end of the sequence of gestures. There is a pile of straw, another piece of felt, and stacks of each day's Wall Street Journal in the room. Beuys sleeps on the coyote's straw; the coyote sleeps on Beuys's felt. The copies of the Wall Street Journal arrive each day from outside (like the engine noise) and enter the dialogue as evidence of the limits of materialist thinking.
Beuys's ongoing argument with materialism is what most clearly identifies him as an Anthroposophical artist. Following Rudolf Steiner, Beuys was not against materialism, per se. He valued it as a positive result of Christianity and recognized its historical necessity, but believed that humankind's survival depends on its letting go of materialism in order to move on to the next evolutionary stage.