LOS ANGELES — Last Saturday afternoon, April 22, a crowd gathered in a mall parking lot in Los Angeles’ Arts District to watch Rafa Esparza’s futuristic performance “Corpo RanfLA: Terra Cruiser.” With handlebars sprouting from his head and his legs encased in a gleaming green fiberglass shell, Esparaza had become a half-human/half-lowrider cyborg. Artist Karla Ekatherine Canseco and other collaborators took turns ‘riding’ on his back, as they listened through headphones to a tale about a time-traveling cyborg sent back in time to preserve the earth for the future . The sculpture was mounted on a frame adapted from a 25-cent children’s pony ride, and between each rider, the entire contraption mimicked the bounce of a lowrider car.
This performance was part of a weekend pop-up show, ASCO and the next generation, which forged ties between ASCO, the influential East LA Chicano arts group that lasted from 1972 to 1987, and a handful of contemporary Latin/a/x artists. The exhibition was curated in conjunction with an upcoming documentary film produced by Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, ASCO: without authorization. Footage from the show and accompanying performances will be included in the film.
“A great approach to the film is to not only tell the story of ASCO, but also to reflect on the relevance of their methodology, their philosophy and their work today,” said the film’s director, Travis Gutiérrez. Senger. Hyperallergic. “The way we approached this relevance is through this new generation of artists who are trying to use this creative modality, this type of framework to create works.
Formed in 1972 by Harry Gamboa Jr., Gronk (Glugio Gronk Nicandro), Willie Herrón and Patssi Valdez, ASCO (“disgust” in Spanish) has operated through a wide range of media including performance, photography, painting , video and muralism. They emerged alongside the Chicano movement with radical, confrontational and inflammatory work, including street theater performances protesting the Vietnam War and police violence. They also staged photographic stills for movies that didn’t exist dubbed “No Movies”, which challenged the misrepresentation or simply lack of Chicanos in Hollywood films. Frustrated by a curator’s dismissal of Chicano art, they spray-painted their names on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, “Spray Paint LACMA” (1972), turning the entire museum into their own ready -made.
Their unorthodox and DIY approach proved influential for the young artists in the exhibition. “[I could relate to] the whole thing about not having space for yourself, not fitting in,” said singer and performer San Cha Hyperallergic. “We started to do performances just for us, to form processions in the street, to take up space in places that are not traditional, that are not intended for us.”
“They performed where I grew up,” said Guadalupe Rosales Hyperallergic. “It was empowering to see these sites enabled by artists.” Rosales presented moody, evocative nighttime images of her neighborhood, countering the associations with violence, police, and gangs often linked to East LA night scenes in the popular imagination. “I wasn’t a person who grew up thinking, ‘I’m going to be an artist.’ I didn’t have the language to describe that,” she added. “ASCO provided the visual language I was looking for.”
Although ASCO’s work can be antagonistic, there is often a sense of irreverence and fun woven through. “There’s a brutality to it, a punk side to it, the idea that you don’t need to do art for a show… It was more for fun, not to take it too seriously. It always intrigued me,” said artist Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya. Drawing inspiration from pre-Columbian mythologies, Montoya creates hybrid creatures made of car parts, silicone, fur, horns and iconic objects from Mexican culture, such as sombreros And luchador masks.
Montoya was one of three artists, along with San Cha and Maria Maea, with whom Gutiérrez Senger collaborated to create new “No Movies”, this time making short films from which the still images are taken. In his No Movie “The Possessed”, a group of possessed migrants hijack a right-wing news station. Maea’s short follows an alien who encounters four children making artwork in a garage, similar to the early days of ASCO, whose members worked together in the garage behind Herron’s mother’s house. As San Cha notes, Hollywood still lags behind in Latino/a/x representation decades after ASCO began pointing out their absence. “We are in Los Angeles. Where are the Mexicans in these films? We are here, but somehow they manage to jump over an entire population.
The Dorian Wood Movie”O(2013) features the entertainer and performer clamoring for Hollywood glamour, as they sing a sultry, melancholy torch song in a “black-and-white fever dream in which I play a female version of myself- same”, they explain. Also featuring Rafa Esparza and Taryn Piana, it highlights an intimacy between two brown artists that expresses solidarity and mutual aid.
This sense of collaboration and community is another guideline of the show. “One of the big takeaways for me about ASCO is what makes them so unique and inspiring and special to me is that they were a band,” said Gutierrez Senger. “It really influenced the way we made the film, building on that through these collaborations… You can have a very sharp point of view and do something original but it can still be very collaborative.”
Although its members worked together, they also worked independently, and Gamboa was quick to point out that they were a “group”, not a “collective”. The contemporary artists similarly spotlighted each have their own unique practices, but are linked by meaningful creative networks.
On Friday night, Gabriela Ruiz staged her performance, climbing aboard a shiny metal pallet mounted on a forklift and dancing with the construction machine. The idea for the performance dates back to her teenage years when a family member made fun of her weight as she was getting ready for her quinceañera, suggesting that she chamberlains would need a forklift to lift it. “I imagined myself dancing with this forklift every time people brought in a quinceañera,” she said. Dressed in a black dress with fierce makeup, she held her own quinceañera for a select family of friends. “I remember listening to Patssi [Valdez] talking about how growing up she felt different…I resonated the most with her, her theatrics, her fashion, her makeup. I was doing similar things before I found her.
ASCO’s legacy has grown since the group’s disbandment nearly 40 years ago, first through stories, rumors and the limited visual evidence of their practice, then through more institutional intervention. . Two art museums in Los Angles County exhibitions, Ghost sightings (2008) and a retrospective ASCO: Dark Elite (2013), were instrumental in introducing ASCO to a wider audience.
“It has been re-imagined many times, first by academia, then by the art canon, critics, writers, curators and museums,” Gamboa said. Considering the years since their disbandment and the varied perspectives and memories of the band members, Gamboa wonders if the film will “read like a Chicano Rashomon, or tell a straightforward narrative…ASCO continues to evolve.” It is not something fixed. »
