ten more glances

Joseph Beuys’ “I Like America & America Likes Me” & Harold Jaffe’s “Jesus Coyote” : Syntheses of Resistance & Transformation

In I Like America & America Likes Me , one of Joseph Beuys’ numerous performance pieces — or “Actions” as he called them — he lived & coexisted with a Coyote for three straight days, in a room at the Rene Block Gallery in New York

Garbed in his signature attire comprised of a felt hat, a fishing vest, a long sleeved white shirt, & a pair of jeans, Beuys set his eyes on every movement the Coyote made during the entire three days — movements which were either caused or manipulated by Beuys — movements which were neither inherently nor even remotely natural from the Coyote’s standpoint

When Beuys swathed his entire body in a large, oversized felt blanket, with nothing but his wooden cane protruding from a slit just large enough for his eyes to peer though, the Coyote, eagerly steadfast & resolute, pried the felt blanket from Beuys until the blanket was completely off

After a fresh, healthy stack of fifty Wall Street Journals was delivered to the space which Beuys & the Coyote shared & inhabited, the Coyote urinated on the stack — & the subsequent stacks delivered on the second & third day

During the entire three days, the only times in which the Coyote was considerably “idle” were in those few moments where Beuys distanced himself from the Coyote, sat in one of the four corners of the room, & smoked his pipe

By the end of the “Action”, Beuys was convinced that his attempts to transform the Coyote were no match to the Coyote’s resistance

(excerpts from “I Like America & America Likes Me” : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTOD5Pu6uVM)

In Jesus Coyote, one of Harold Jaffe’s numerous “docufictions” — a term he uses to refer to his own unequaled brand of synthesized fiction/non fiction— Jaffe deconstructs mainstream culture’s depiction of Charles Manson & the Manson family’s imprints on culture & society

Charles Manson & his cohorts’ mass murders were first reported & documented by the LA Times with subheadings beneath the headlines which were — appropriately so — saturated with both hints & overtones of sheer brutality — brutality which was either caused or exacerbated by the fundamental details of the murders — brutality which were neither inherently nor even remotely natural from the standpoints of corporate media outlets who milked & profited off the sensationalistic aspects of the murders — brutality which kept the populace pent with fear & purged of concern for larger issues — such as the prolonged war concurrently held in Vietnam

As Jesus Coyote transforms from a laterally upright novel brimming with fragmented facts, artifacts, accounts, & evidence into an infallible instrument for nuanced, oblique, & understated takes & commentaries on Charles Manson & the Manson family, readers are given various declarative interrogations on how “official lies” & “unofficial truths” were composed & decomposed, intermittently

When victims speak for themselves & offer their own takes on the murders, readers experience the LAPD’s blunders, mismanagement, & obstructions; when Q & A forums were held as to why the LAPD did what they did with the evidence, readers are able to confiscate lines upon lines of reasoning as to why the media would relegate such evidence as leverage to further inflate & accentuate the scarlet letters stamped on the Manson family’s collective chest

& when Charles Manson defends the parallels between him & the devil, in the midst of serving an ongoing, thirty year sentence in Pelican State Prison, readers of Jesus Coyote can then understand as to why Manson’s legacy is ultimately an objectified, dialectical breed of resistance — a necessary mirror held against society’s boundless hypocrisy, impractical righteousness, & delusional transformation

(Jesus Coyote by Harold Jaffe is available both in hardback & paperback)

the overzealous zoo animal : Antonin Artaud

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