‘Luck in the Double Focus’ (2017) is a Mobius-strip-cartoon. This artist book twists an anthropological text by Roy Wagner into a seminal artwork by Joseph Beuys, forming a Mobius loop.
In I Like America and America Likes Me (1974) Beuys spent three days and nights with a wild coyote. Coyotes hold a mythic status in the USA, featuring in indigenous folklore, lending their name to illegal cross-border traffickers, and appearing in news reports for their opportunistic encroachment into human cities. A coyote identity is also borrowed by anthropologist Roy Wagner in his book ‘Coyote Anthropology’ (2010).
Luck in the Double Focus overlays these two works. In doing so a third actor emerges: the crooked walking stick, brandished by Beuys and bitten by Coyote. In my own Mobius strip cartoon, Beuys and Coyote discuss their species’ identities and their relationship to culture and language, whilst Beuys falls increasingly in love with this stick. A bipedal tool, a human identity prop.
Produced as part of the "AoOA" exhibition Third House at Titanik Gallery, Turku, Finland. Email hermione.spriggs@gmail.com for details of the edition.