Homage to Joseph

In my performance, Homage to Joseph, I wanted to create a kind of parody of Joseph Beuys’ 1974 performance, I Like America and America Likes Me. While Joseph’s performance was held at Rene Block Gallery in New York City, my performance was staged on a lake bed in the Nevada desert. An unidentified flying object (UFO) replaces the coyote as a contemporary belief object. Where Beuys positioned himself as a shamanic figure mediating between cultures and mythologies closely with the coyote, my actor distanced herself with the UFO meaning to be intentionally less authoritative—mirroring to a witness navigating uncertainty. The open and indifferent landscape of the desert shifts the controlled ritual of the gallery space. Homage to Joseph compares past and future, animal and machine, spiritual faith and speculative belief; suggesting that today’s mythologies are no longer grounded in nature and culture but in imagination, technology, and collective doubt.