In May 1974, the German avant-garde artist Joseph Beuys flew to New York to stage one of his most famous and symbolically loaded performances: *I Like America and America Likes Me*. Reflecting on the trauma of the Vietnam War and the historic violence against Native Americans, Beuys refused to set foot on American soil. Upon landing at JFK Airport, he was wrapped in felt, loaded into an ambulance on a stretcher, and driven straight to the René Block Gallery in Soho, without ever touching the ground. He was placed in a room enclosed by wire mesh alongside a wild coyote.

Beuys spent three days (eight hours a day) cohabiting with the coyote. His tools were minimal: heavy felt blankets, a shepherd's staff, gloves, a triangle, and daily copies of the *Wall Street Journal* delivered to the gallery. The performance was a symbolic attempt to heal the split between colonial white America and its indigenous roots. To Native Americans, the coyote was a sacred creator and trickster spirit, but it had been demonised by European settlers. By sharing his felt, making eye contact, and laying out the financial newspapers for the animal to urinate on, Beuys built a relationship of mutual trust. By the third day, the coyote allowed Beuys to hold him and lay down on his felt. Beuys left America in the same manner, carried by ambulance directly back to the airport.

Beuys viewed art not as an object to be looked at, but as a shamanic healing process—a concept he termed 'Social Sculpture' (Soziale Plastik). The felt and staff were key symbols from his personal mythology, rooted in his story of being rescued by Crimean Tatars who wrapped his burned body in felt and fat after his plane crashed during World War II.

By blurring the boundaries between artist and audience, human and wild nature, this action remains one of the most powerful political performances of the 20th century.