Come Coyote shows the continuing story of the ReStacks, whose creative and personal partnership has amplified frequencies brought forward from their individual practices into a newly-formed synergetic creative practice. This follows on from the first chapter Strangely Ordinary This Devotion (which screened in BFMAF 2017) in the trilogy of the same title, which we could consider the realisation of an implicit artistic manifesto or perhaps more simply a document of their lives.
Clocking in under eight minutes, the video is full of memorable images and sequences while at the same time not feeling overstuffed. The artists play with the ambiguity between documentary and fabulation, knowing that we might be inclined to receive the video with an assumption of verisimilitude. The heart of the work is a sequence on reproduction, which treats this act often solemn in consideration as a fun and playful act of creative ingenuity within the ReStacks’ queer context. Their work as a whole doesn’t shy away from irreverence, but rather sees life through moments of humour, joy and pain, emotions that puncture our equilibrium and remind us what it is to feel. In this way, Come Coyote is tender but not sentimental, unafraid of exploring conflict and difference, but mostly free to indulge in the pleasures and sensualities that unexpected meetings, situations and settings can bring. —Herb Shellenberger
