Collecting Coups

 This is an urban tree that seems to be using autumn as an attempt to blend into its surroundings.The tree project has made me notice trees more. Perhaps this is the point. Radical hope was good on Friday I forgot I said I would contribute which was useful as I'm at my best when I improvise.  The story of Sitting Bulls horse dancing when he was shot in the shoulder on Res is both poetic and sad. Vanessa Toulman told me about it, she is a living connection to Wild Bill Cody. It is a story that does not need to have actually happened for it to be true.  I was pleased that the session went so well, for me it was proof that working remotely can on occasion bring us together. The technology got in the way but it also enabled something else to happen. 

Reading about Plenty Coups has made me think about trying to live a good life as an artist - how I still try to collect coups but they have stopped making sense in a world that is fast changing.  Noticing the tree above is a coup. I shared it with Alice because she is a youngster in the tribe of artists and she understands why it is a coup.   I share pictures like this with Kate Genever, even though I haven't seen her for two years we connect through the temporality  of counting visual coups.

The question we need to think through is how do we learn to see trees collectively? How can a project about trees connect to Sittings Bulls horse dancing or the inability to see your family locked inside an impenetrable Palestine?  To gather together our hopes for the future is to collect coups and to plant our coup sticks.  Guattari liked the idea of the Nomad traveling through smooth space and avoiding capture. The forest is as close as we get to the wilds and to navigate it we need to make our own pathways.  I left the meeting feeling more hopeful - the group was becoming more of a tribe.  In the story of Sitting Bull's death I had collected a coup and planted my coup stick.