UC Berkeley

This dissertation examines the aesthetic phenomenon of camp in the work of the East Los

Angeles-based art group, Asco. Founded by Harry Gamboa, Jr., Gronk, Willie Herrón,

III, and Patssi Valdez in the early 1970s, Asco produced a distinct blend of conceptual

and performance-based art, which they exhibited in alternative art spaces and distributed

as correspondence art. The group’s name, which means “nausea” in Spanish, speaks to

the sensation their often provocative and politically motivated art ostensibly produces.

The basis of this reaction lies in the stark contrast of Asco’s work to established Chicano

art that emerged during the Chicano Movement.

I organize my study through a consideration of each of Asco’s camp targets, or the

objects of their critiques. These include the exploitation and oppression of the Chicano

community, the limitations and liberation in Chicano muralism, and the glamour and

biases of Hollywood. Each of these denote cultures and movements with which the young

artists were enamored as well as alienated from in a complex insider/outsider relationship

that enables camp critique.

Through analysis of Gronk’s proto-Asco performance Caca-Roaches Have No Friends

(1969), I establish a clear foundation for camp that corresponds to Moe Meyer’s assertion

that camp is a specifically queer tactic of disidentification. I refer to the infamously

provocative scene in Gronk's play starring Cyclona (Robert Legorreta) as horror drag to

emphasize the intended camp target: homophobia within the Chicano community.

Through a investigation of Asco’s early street performances and No Movies I further

demonstrate that Asco uses Chicano rasquache and domesticana tactics, as described by

Tomas Ybarra Frausto and Amalia Mesa-Bains respectively, in order to critique Chicano

and Anglo-American cultures. Asco deploys these three aesthetic tactics to challenge

problematizing identifiers of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class.