Asco's Rasquachismo In her companion piece to Ybarra-Frausto's Rasquachismo: A Chicano Sensibility, Holly Barnet-Sanchez identifies traces of the rasquache in more contemporary Chicano/a art works, applying the concept to updated works and thus multiplying the "future lives" of Ybarra-Frausto's text.[i] She cites Asco, the Chicano and Chicana multimedia artists Patssi Valdez, Harry Gamboa, Jr., Gronk, and Willie F. Herrón. The four artists met "in and around Garfield High School in East Los Angeles"[ii] in the late 1960's and by the 70's formed a group dedicated to guerilla performance art tactics that questioned what they believed to be an institutionalized Chicano art. Unlike the "prevailing cultural nationalism"[iii] of the Chicano/a art movement at large, Asco looked not
to the mythic past as the source for an authentic identity,[but] negotiated the general project of the mural and street theater movements through the vocabularies of contemporary popular culture and autonomously generated versions of contemporary art's strategies.[iv] Chicano Cinema/ASCO In particular, Barnet-Sanchez identifies Asco's NO-MOVIES as reflective of a rasquache sensibility that comes first from "having no money for a camera or film production" and second from the desire to create art and "material culture" in spite of that lack.[v] Chavoya calls No-Movies "Asco's signature invented medium - conceptual performances that invoked cinematic codes but were created for a still camera." In the No-Movie, Patssi, Harry, Willie, Gronk and other "performance artists played the parts of film stars in photographs that were distributed as film stills from 'authentic' Chicano motion pictures."[vi] Harry Gamboa and Gronk explained the genesis of No-Movies in an interview with Chicano arts magazine Chismearte in 1976.[i]
CHISMEARTE: How did the idea of the No-Movie develop? GAMBOA: It started with 5 cents in my pocket and 5 cents in Gronk's pocket. With a dime between the two of us, we used it to call a mutual friend but he wasn't home. Gronk and I were broke but we still wanted to make a movie so we made one about two artists who only had a nickel each and who spend it foolishly but then get the idea of how they can make a movie. GRONK: With the idea that everyone (not just filmmakers, artists) can make movies, also a rebuff to celluloidic capitalism of contemporary cinema. |
Chicano vs. Cinema/Asco's No-Movies As a solution to the problem of lacking the money to make 'real' movies, Asco's No Movies provided a physical space for the artists of Asco to enact the rasquache sensibility of "resourcefulness and adaptability" while remaining "mindful of stance and style."[x] In Ybarra-Frausto's words, Harry and Gronk were "fregado pero no jodido."[xi] Through the deployment of "a new cultural vocabulary composed of sustaining elements of Mexican tradition" and lived encounters in a hostile environment" of the United States[xii], Asco's No-Movies posed and asked questions about their own experiences as Chicano and Chicana artists living and making art in Los Angeles, the city that is home to Hollywood as well as large Chicano populations. The insertion of Chicano and Chicana actors and imagined characters into this structure results in a multilateral critique about Chicano visibility and authenticity. With their cinematic styling, the No-Movies temporarily and ephemerally create a distinctly Chicano Hollywood. In the same way that Project Pie in De/Face interrogated the lack of Chicano and Chicana visibility in the art museum, No-Movies note and simultaneously solve the problem of Chicano invisibility in Hollywood. Insofar as Asco's No Movies resemble cinematic stills from 'authentic Chicano motion pictures,' they interrogate notions of authenticity produced by and for both Chicano/as and mainstream white audiences. What happens if the same popular imaginations and media that govern Hollywood and picture Chicano/a lives as scandalous, violent, or over-sexualized are responsible for positing 'authentic' Chicano cinema? In the same way that Miss Chief Eagle Testickle's performances parody the notion of an Indian womanhood, Asco's No-Movies often parody cinematic codes and tropes. Meanwhile, as Chicano and Chicana creators of their own authentically Chicano movies, the members of Asco raise doubts about any individual or group of Chicano/a individuals defining Chicano authenticity. In doing so, No-Movies also question the ability of the older generation of Chicano/a artists to have accurately and broadly defined the so-called Chicano/a tradition for both Chicanos/as and more mainstream white audiences. Thirty years later, Asco's No-Movies can be read in light of Jose Esteban Muñoz's work as disidentifications not only with a primarily white Hollywood, but also with a Chicano/a art movement that did not account for the particular experiences of Patssi, Harry, Willie, and Gronk, who were quickly becoming the new generation of Chicano/a artists.
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