Please join the Theater and Performance Studies Workshop for:
Brandon Sward
PhD Candidate, Sociology, University of Chicago
Who will Present:
How to make site-specific art when sites themselves have histories: Whittier Boulevard as Asco’s ‘El Camino Surreal’
Respondent: Colin Gunckel, Associate Professor, Department of American Culture, Department of Film, Television, and Media, University of Michigan.
Wednesday, October 21st,
12:00 – 1:30 PM
Please register HERE to receive a copy of the paper and a zoom link for the workshop.
We are committed to making our workshop fully accessible to persons with disabilities. Please direct any questions or concerns to the workshop coordinators, Arianna Gass (ariannagass@uchicago.edu) and Catrin Dowd (catrindowd@uchicago.edu).
Abstract: This paper focuses on four performances by Chicano/a art collective Asco along Whittier Boulevard in Los Angeles during the 1970s. Two of these performances, Stations of the Cross (1971) and First Supper (After a Major Riot) (1974), parody Catholic liturgy and the other two, Walking Mural (1972) and Instant Mural (1974), parody Mexican muralism. Together, these four performances show us a group struggling to speak against stereotypes around artistic production that would seek to domesticate and folklorize them. Although preexisting scholarship on Asco explains these gestures as first and foremost “protest art” against the Vietnam War, situating these performances against the backdrop of Whittier Boulevard allows us to appreciate the radicality of Asco. A major commercial artery through the solidly Chicano/a East LA, Whittier Boulevard is overlaid over parts of El Camino Real, the “royal road” that linked the 21 missions of Alta California. By engaging with Catholic and muralist imagery, Asco draws parallels between their experience as racial minorities in the US and the history of Latin American colonialism, which helps us to appreciate the composite nature of Chicano/a identity and how artists might make site-specific work when sites themselves have histories.