ASCO a Call to Response — Acts of Protest from L.A. to Chicago

“How do you get to do work and not get killed in a place where really Chicanos, the affirmation was that your life was worthless and that was not going to ever be worth anything. And so that would be sort of the running theme that was promoted by media. So how do you counter that, except maybe making you seem like you're cooler than they are and making you and then and then recognizing that really there are beautiful people and who are the beautiful people to begin with.” - Harry Gamboa Jr.

LAUREN PACHECO: Hello. Hello. Good afternoon. So happy to be here with all of you. My name is Lauren Pacheco and I'm a co-creative director with Chicago Humanities. So welcome again to today's program, Harry Gamboa Jr.: The Chicano Arts Movement. This is one of many programs included in our Fall Festival, which features over 60 compelling conversations, powerful performances and events across the city of Chicago, bringing such conversations to life for you, our curious and committed audiences, our passion and what we've been doing for 35 years. Before I introduce our speakers, I'd like to give special thanks to our presenting partners Good Chaos, Friedman Properties, and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. And our fall season sponsors Wintrust and Southwest Airlines. Finally, we'd like to thank the generosity of our members and our donors. If you love what we do, please do consider becoming a member. So I'm really excited about this conversation, which is a unique and privileged opportunity to gain insight into a significant period of art history. It is particularly relevant when protest is needed and artists of color seek visibility and equal treatment. This program is one of many curated today by Chicago Humanities' first ever artist in residence Alberto Aguilar. Let's give him a round of applause. I don't see him in the room. The Artist in Residence initiative is part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city's artistic heritage and creative communities. We are grateful for the support of the Terra Foundation and Art Design Chicago and thank them for being a part of this very important project. Now, please join me in welcoming Eva Silverman from the Terra Foundation for American Art, who will introduce the program. 

EVA SILVERMAN: Thanks, Lauren. And hello, everyone. Welcome again to today's program. Harry Gamboa Jr. and the Chicano Arts Movement. As Lauren said, I'm Eva Silverman. I am the project director for Art Design Chicago at the Terra Foundation. And we all at the Terra Foundation are really honored and excited to help support Chicago Humanities to bring their very first artist in residence, Alberto Aguilar, to the festival and to today's exciting day of experiences and art here in Pilsen. We are supporting today's activities as part of the Terra Foundation's first multi-year sorry, the Terra Foundation's multi year initiative, Art Design Chicago, as Lauren said. Art Design Chicago is a collaboration by more than 75 local cultural organizations to create a special series of exhibitions and events that highlight Chicago's artistic heritage and creative communities. There are currently 22 Art Design Chicago exhibitions on view and hundreds of talks, tours, screenings, performances and other special events like this one that are taking place in more than 30 Chicago neighborhoods and several suburban communities. All of these activities have in common that they offer Chicago residents and visitors opportunities to engage with and learn more about the city's past, present, and future through the lens of art and design. So please go to our website artdesignchicago.org or follow us on social media and you'll find a full calendar of events so you do not miss out. So with that, this afternoon's program includes a panel discussion on ASCO and East Los Angeles based Chicano Artist Collective that was active between 1972 and 1987. Harry Gamboa Jr., a founding member of ASCO and a pivotal figure in the Chicano protest art scene, joins us today. And the conversation will begin with Gamboa's image presentation of the groundbreaking, groundbreaking work made while in ASCO, and it will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by scholar, writer and educator Deanna Ledezma, with Harry Gamboa Jr., artist Diego Torres Casso, Gloria "Gloe" Talamantes, and María Gaspar. Following the program, please join the Artists Walking Parade by artist Nancy David Sánchez Tamayo in which is will be like a collective performance piece and Nancy will lead a short walk from the museum to the Pilsen Art and Community House, which is a beloved community gallery space. So now please welcome Harry Gamboa Jr. 

HARRY GAMBOA JR. Well, hello, everyone. Little bit about ASCO. ASCO began in 1972. I met the, it was an outgrowth of many of the events that took place in the late 60s in East L.A. I was one of the student leaders of the Chicano East L.A. walkouts in 1968. At the time, when I met Willie Herrón, a very well-known painter by now, who painted a very famous mural titled The Wall That Cracked Open. As a muralist he made great impact, and I invited him to work with me on a publication that I was the editor titled The Generacion, which was based on a previous publication from the Magon Brothers. East L.A. is kind of a very special place in that it's, it's a microcosm of a megalopolis. It was very segregated location. One of the things about Los Angeles is that it's it's a military headquarters. It's actually in the 1950s would be a transformative urban space. One of the key figures in that is the police departments that are there, which is LAPD, L.A. County Sheriff's. LAPD was really in its formulation in the 1950s as a way of testing various approaches to controlling populations. The Sheriff's was kind of a free ranging cowboy, like, shoot first, ask questions, later organization for many years. This would be something that would encounter the Chicano population in the 1960s. Of course, 1960s was also the Vietnam era. We had a president, Richard Nixon, that very much, was, has very great antipathy towards Mexican-Americans and ensured that every Chicano in East L.A. would get drafted. These were all my friends, of course, who would get killed by the time they were 17, 18 years of age. This, this led to great protest. One of the events was the Chicano Moratorium in East Los Angeles, of which I was present. Thousands and thousands of people came from all around the country would be the largest demonstration on the West Coast up at that moment. People that were present were veterans from World War I, World War II, the Korean War, various demographic groups, people that had been fighting for civil rights in the south, African Americans, white people, Japanese who had been interned in camps along the Pacific Coast during World War II. They were there with their children. Many families were there. All of this to promote peace and and harmony amongst people, the the the diverse population. This resulted in in an assault and sabotage by the police department and attacking people using new weapons. These were weapons that were going to be tested on a population and including poisonous gases, new forms of weaponry, in which you had a thousand police officers attacking families. This all resulted in a great catastrophe, of course, and the killing of Ruben Salazar. This is something experienced right in the heart of East L.A.. And so what was left behind after this disaster was, sort of this shadow that hung over East L.A.. But really, underneath the shadow was a very lively, creative population of people that had been there for many years, very solidified, people that had adapted very well to Los Angeles. In fact, many people had been there since before it had been called Los Angeles. There's this very long history. This, of course, had previously been Mexico and and everyone in East L.A. feels at home 24/7. And and of course, we welcome everyone with a clear calling of bienvenidos irregardless of who you are, because we will transform you at the next piñata party. Okay, so one of the things that that ASCO was about and our approach was closely working with Willie Herrón originally was to maybe transform the situation that had taken place in the late 60s and early and early 70s. This notion that the only way to succeed is through direct political confrontation. This, of course doesn't work if you have an army shooting at you. We felt that maybe it would be kind of interesting to create work that would insinuate itself in American culture and actually into an international culture. And of course, Los Angeles is also Hollywood. And what better way than to create imagery that contradicts Hollywood and the negative stereotypes of Mexican Americans? And that is to create sort of a very exciting set of imagery that would use urban space and to use ourselves as as the stars of these images, which which we called No Movies. And the idea was, the original members of ASCO would be Glugio Gronk Nicandro, Patssi Valdez, Willie Herrón, Humberto Sandoval, and myself. It would then grow to include maybe another 20 people towards the end of, of the 80s. But the idea was to create artwork of the other artists who other original artists at the start of ASCO were painters. They were some of them were still students. I know that Patssi Valdez and Gronk were still students at the time. And the idea was to maybe incorporate performance at some level. I was always working, of course, as a worker. I actually had been a city bus driver, kind of a very crazy. I was worked in factories and doing different things. So one of the things that I was always focused on was being able to sustain myself. But at the same time, I took a great interest in photography, which can be an expensive endeavor. And and so my my idea was to generate imagery, every once in a while. ASCO was not always creating these images because these other artists were very busy painting murals, making their paintings, making sculpture. And, and I would come around and maybe organize and direct these various projects. Sometimes we will all get together and get dressed up in costumes and do different kinds of things, daring the public to take a look and to participate at events where we would transform the environment by presenting ourselves as an alternative figure. The, many of the photographs that maybe some have already appeared here. One one project was called The Walking Mural, in which the mural decides to relieve itself of being a static medium and become one of performance. And of course, at that moment in time, Willie Herrón was probably the most famous muralist maybe in the world. He had attracted a lot of attention from Hollywood. He was often mentioned on TV. Johnny Carson would talk about him on the night The Tonight Show. Gronk and Willie also appeared in a publication on the Exxon Annual Investors publication. And so they were recognized by the billionaires. I often have to mention that the Exxon Valdez had nothing to do with ASCO when it caused such great disaster. But the ASCO members would often gather and create and change. And and the whole notion was a kind of a spin off also of the Pachuco influence, which Pachucos and and, of course, Pachucos emerged in the 1940s in Los Angeles. And if you were to take a look at that, it was actually a war that was declared against Mexican-Americans, the 1940s, by the president of the United States ordered the military to go and handle the Mexicans and basically to kill them, to rape them, to shoot them, to shame them, to shame them away from being their own divergent culture. This, of course, was transformed into a love story and a play or two. But the real story was one of oppression. What happened was, of course, they did fail to quell the Pachuco influence of intellectualism and artistry. Maybe they would have been the first set of Chicano artists in the first place. But what emerged out of that were many, many activists, people such as Bert Corona, Francisco Flores, Ralph Perón, other people that were engaged in various kinds of demonstrations against nuclear warfare. And of course, you're here in Chicago, but if you lived in Los Angeles in the 1950s, you would have been subjected to nuclear fallout from the 2000 nuclear bombs that were exploded in the Mojave Desert. And so that would have been me and my my cohorts of that era. Many children died of leukemia. And in the teen years died of renal failure. And so in Los Angeles, we breed something that you probably never have, which was irradiated smog, which in a way cleansed us all from being affected by Covid. Covid came and just couldn't get to any of us, so didn't need that shot. So L.A.'s kind of a I've referred to it as an urban desert where basically everything that takes place is a mirage. And Los Angeles itself is completely artificial. The city itself has only been existing as a city for about 100 years. It started getting built up about 100 years ago. So when I was very young, it was halfway built. And and of course, you have the media there to create dreams. But if you go to Los Angeles, every single tree that's planted and there's like thousands of species of trees, none of them are from there. And the animals that are from there are all imported and they get killed by cats every month. And so they have to keep bringing in these animals and people that are there. Half of them are actors and they're not real people to begin with either. And so. So you're living in a place it's kind of like a dream. And there is no the things are made to look old when as soon as they're built and there is no real sense of history. And Los Angeles is a place where amnesia is persistent. And so it's very difficult to know exactly where you are. It's a very congested city. It has the busiest traffic. There's extreme wealth and extreme poverty there. And of course, nowadays with fentanyl, it's also a scene out of a zombie film. And so in order to to do work, one has to be in touch with their own humanity. And and, of course, one of the things about Los Angeles is it's a very diverse you have a hundred languages spoken now. You have many people from all around the world that are there. And it's impossible to have a race riot now that it's so diverse to begin with and everyone falling in love with each other anyway. And so but during the time of ASCO, it was very segregated. And every freeway offramp would drop you off in a different country. And and there you would find the separated languages that were spoken, some that are very unique. Armenian, Persian, of course, Japanese, Spanish. And there's variations of Spanish, of course, and Mexican Spanish, of course, is quite unique. You also have many people that have been there forever. So you have people speak Zapotec. You have people that speak Nahuatl present in Los Angeles next to someone who's speaking Russian. And so one of the things about ASCO was that we would always try to create different types of imagery that would contradict the negative stereotypes presented by Hollywood. And so since ASCO, of course, I've formulated three different a total of three different performance groups, one titled Virtual Vérité, which was during the beginning of the 2000s. And now I have a troupe of about 100 people performing in a group called Troupe Non Grata. And so and here we are kind of dealing with things of kind of being shocked to our current present tense of the hyper normalization of of of mass murder and also to the threat that posed against democracy and and, of course, which we all will fight to maintain our our role in the world. And, of course, Chicanos have been a group of people that fight to be free, think free, act free and create free. And so hopefully and here we have an image of Humberto Sandoval, who I've been photographing for 50 years. So he's still working with me. And and so are maybe 1 or 2 others from ASCO. And so it's been a sort of a really great pleasure to be in Chicago here. And and here we have two people that are kind of post [unclear]. But this is the outcome of Pachucos, and they are in 2024. So thank you very much. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Thank you all. How's the audio? 

HARRY GAMBOA JR.: Well. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Thank you so much, Harry, for that presentation. A real scope of your practice over the years and really the continuity of photography and collaboration as part of your art practice. It's with great pleasure to moderate this conversation, but really all four of these artists are in conversation through the production of the exhibition ASCO: A Call to Response that Alberto Aguilar curated at the Pilsen Arts and Community House. This is the exhibition that you are all invited to go to with one of the participating artists, Nancy, who will be doing a performance and walking parade through from the museum to the gallery to get us started. I wanted to ask María, Gloe, and Diego about how they were invited to respond to the ongoing legacy of ASCO and the continued work that Harry is doing for the Pilsen Arts and Community House exhibition. So could you say what kind of call you felt or heard when asked to respond to the work of ASCO and how you did that specifically through the work you made? 

MARÍA GASPAR: Okay I'm happy to start. Hi, everybody. What an honor to be on stage with Harry and all these amazing artists here and Deanna. So I want Alberto reached out, he was specifically interested in a work that I did in 2010 called City as Site. And so I kind of just went back into the archive and was looking for an image that I felt really resonated with the work of ASCO, who I had learned about maybe around 2007, maybe even before graduate school. And I was really searching for I was really looking for, you know, experimental kind of Latinx works. And I felt like the piece that I offered to the show was kind of in line with the work and also with the Decoy Gang War Victim piece, different context, but also lots of similar threads. And so kind of resurrected that piece out of the archives for the exhibition.

GLORIA "GLOE" TALAMANTES: Well. So, the way that Alberto invited me was through, message, an instant message on Instagram, to respond. And he wanted to kind of just know my take on some of the, LACMA graffiti that was done by ASCO, and kind of see where I was, what I was thinking. More so of the action and just, the content itself. And so for me, what I immediately thought of was I need to create something new. Because I do, while I have different types of work, that, that, that, that does talk about erasure or, just in general graffiti as an action or graffiti as a contemporary art form, I wanted to create something new because I thought of it as not just erasure, but also as a rebellious act to show that we were there, right? And so I think, my response to that to that graffiti on the actual building kind of reverted me back to I want to say it was 2004, 2005. My dates are really bad, but, something similar happened here in Chicago, but it wasn't in response to, then, you know, not, not belonging in the museum. It was more so just there was this huge museum, the Art Institute of Chicago. Right. And, and graffiti artists here in Chicago did these, like, elaborate graffiti pieces, that were multicolored, probably 11, 11 colors. I don't know. I can't really remember. But it immediately brought me back to that and just all the, the conversation around it. And so when I visited the, the articles and ah, the image that ASCO had done, I just wanted to make something that was more, I guess, the foundation of it was a graffiti piece, but then on top of it, I like sprinkled glitter, to make it look fake. Like how Harry was talking about. And so I created these two pieces that when you separate them, they have two different words and two different meanings. The pieces, borra me, but it's "borra," it's like one one piece, and then, "me," is the the act of like, trying to use that Spanglish. Like, is it mi or is it me, you know? So I yeah, I, I think that that work really resonated with me and my own practice, my own, I guess my own rebellious spirit when I'm told no or, you know, if there's something that's happening to in my community that I feel like is erasing us or, in some way, further oppressing us. And that was, that was the pieces that I created. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: And Diego, you have both a video that is on display, but you also did a performance the night of the exhibition opening. 

DIEGO TORRES CASSO: Yeah. Yeah. So I actually was invited through Isabella, Alberto's daughter. Her and I worked closely when she was living in Los Angeles, and she approached me about this show and, yeah, just Alberto's interest and me working a part of it. So yeah, shout out Isa for that, which is [unclear]. I was responding to the Stations of the Cross piece. I'm from Los Angeles, so the work and the Stations of the Cross actually took place, you know, not far from where I have been living and where I currently work in East Los Angeles. So I was really thinking a lot about like place, specifically East Los Angeles, which Harry spoke a lot about. I think as I was creating the work too, I was trying to think of what I wanted to bring attention to, what issues I'm seeing in Los Angeles right now, what frustrations I have with our systems, with our government, with our local city officials, and really just wanted to create pieces that directly allowed me to kind of excuse me, express, express myself, and also with the context of thinking that I was going to be showing this work in Chicago and that this community in this city may not know what East Los Angeles goes through, what East Los Angeles looks like. So, yeah, I was thinking a lot about just like the visual elements of it. But then also additionally what I have been thinking about in sitting with discomfort that I've been feeling. So yeah, I was able to perform the night of the exhibition opening, which was really special to kind of just stand there, stand in resistance, stand in solidarity. And. Yeah, just excited. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: And would you like to, so you had a kind of veil, right? Could you say a little bit more about the kind of attire or accessories or props? 

DIEGO TORRES CASSO: Yeah. So I came in a all white outfit with a white veil that had the [?] on top of it. It was like a laced veil on a a hat that was covering and I was carrying a watermelon with me and in the two video pieces that I also created I am carrying a watermelon through East Los Angeles, specifically at the intersections of CesarChavez and Soto, which is in Boyle Heights. Boyle Heights is a predominantly working class immigrant Latine neighborhood just right outside of downtown Los Angeles. And I was walking around for just under 20 minutes carrying this watermelon. And then I also was carrying the watermelon in front of the Hollenbeck police station, created a video titled LAPD's Budget for the Fiscal year of 2023 to 2024 Was 3.24 Billion Dollars. Again, expressing my frustration with our governments and with our systems, invest instead of investing into local youth or communities of color that need actual support, that need food, that need housing, we're focusing our budget into other things. That really just frustrates me. So the night of the show, I also wanted to bring the watermelon with me in person and kind of uphold that sign of resistance. I stood there for the entire three hours of the opening, not really engaging with anyone, although Nancy did come up to him, was like, Are you sure you don't need water? Are you sure you don't need food? And I was like, I'm good. Thank you, thank you. But yeah, it was there was a really just like, interesting opportunity to use a visual element, like the watermelon in kind of in conjunction with what we're seeing right now, the genocide in Palestine. I really wanted to bring a symbol of almost like hope, I guess, to to of this exhibition. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Yes. And I mean, so the other key word of this exhibition is protest. And Harry, I would love to hear more about how protest has been a key theme in your work. You referenced the Chicano Moratorium and the kind of, you know, what what can one do? How can one protest when the army will literally be up against you? And when peaceful protests like the Chicano Moratorium can clearly become these moments of police brutality, violence and even assassination? If we think about Ruben Salazar's death. 

HARRY GAMBOA JR.: So I think, again, because I was in the midst of all this kind of violent confrontations, there were many, many actual events of such confrontation where many people were killed. And it affected me greatly being sort of a young person at the time. And but then the obvious question was, you know, how do you get to do work and not get killed in a place where really Chicanos, the affirmation was that your life was worthless and that was not going to ever be worth anything. And so that would be sort of the running theme that was promoted by media. So how do you counter that, except maybe making you seem like you're cooler than they are and making you and then and then recognizing that really there are beautiful people and who are the beautiful people to begin with. And of course, beautiful people are people that are nice and friendly and make things happen. And and of course, we have a room full of beautiful people here. How do we then focus on them as opposed to, maybe, kind of in a way making the, demonic evil people the stars in a way. So I felt that through media generating imagery and by inserting these images into, recognized publications and on television, for instance, the story of, of course, of Decoy Gang War Victim was that it was in response to negative stereotypes by the two major newspapers in Los Angeles run by two of the richest families, the Chandlers, and of course, you know, the, the other one. But, that image was created at a site where many people were killed. And of course, there I had an artist laying on the ground, photographed him, and then I delivered the images to various television stations, and it was actually aired on television. And it was announced that this would be the last gang member to be killed. And so then that kind of created sort of this, thematic response to the fact that, the, the mainstream newspapers saying the Chicanos are always killing each other. I said, No, no, it's the last one to be killed. And then that image went on to take a life of its own, started appearing in publications in Europe and Asia, Africa, Mexico particularly, and then returned to America and wound up on the cover of Artforum. And so it's this kind of thing, and then it gets distributed once again around the world. And then here it is, flashing on the screen right now. And it's kind of has this reverberation effect, although it existed for only maybe one tenthousandth of a second. It lives on. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: María, could you say a little bit about whether your students sort of interpreted the the work that you did as protest or was this something that you discussed? And what ways was their participation a form of protest against of forms of oppression and brutality? 

MARÍA GASPAR: Yeah. So. So I did a project called City as Site in 2010. In fact, one of the collaborators is here, Paulina Camacho. And the project brought together Black and Brown youth from the Lawndale communities, which is also where I grew up, where I've done lots of murals and community based projects for a number of years. And I had been I had I had a pretty steady mural career for a while. That was my first art education was through the mural movement and the sort of generosity of artists in Pilsen like Hector Duarte or Montserrat Alsina and others. And but at the time I had I was also involved in some organizing work. I was working with the local community organization. We were creating the Quality of Life Plan for the for Arts and Culture of La Villita. So I was, you know, I had sort of my, my, my hands in different worlds. And I was really kind of thinking about how to bring these practices together, which I think is a real challenge for artists, especially artists of color, who are often navigating, you know, a studio practice, a collaborative practice, doing organizing work, and often having this pressure that you have to sort of categorize everything and, you know, and split everything. And so when I when I created City as Site, it was really based on thinking of performative art practices, experimental approaches to public art making and making a really, you know, a point to work with Black and Latino youth in a part of Chicago that is often segregated by viaducts, railroads, cross streets. And so, you know, I worked with a local community organization, a local high school, and we were able to pay the young people for a summer. And it was just sort of, you know, bringing them into the mix of thinking about performance practice, which is, you know, very unique for like a 14 year old, like, you know, like maybe they haven't had a class yet. And, you know, and so and then bringing in lots of people who have great expertise in these different practices. And and really it was a sort of collaborative effort of bringing these resources in and and talking to the young [unclear] about like, what does it mean to have presence in public space with our bodies, politicized bodies, but also to make space for being audacious, which is like when I look at the work of ASCO and I think about what also ASCO means, which is – 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Nausea. 

MARÍA GASPAR: Nausea, like, you know, I think about like, what does it mean to be audacious as a sort of political protest and to sort of bring in experimentation that almost destabilizes what we think of as protests, like we have an idea of what it is. But but, you know, when artists enter the room or when we think about like creative acts of protest, how can we destabilize that and and kind of like create these like new new forms or new spaces to, to produce these, these acts. So I think that's sort of what we just tried to do is through our own bodies. And sometimes it was subtle, you know, sometimes it was really subtle and and and soft and sometimes it was hard and really direct. But but I think the aim was to sort of think about what is the range, what could the range feel like and be like. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: And this topic of collaboration brings us to our next question. I also was thinking about the previous event and today's programing and its key words of Gather Together thanks to Jesse Malmed's sermon as well as the the prefix co. So to start with you, Harry, could you tell us more about your experiences collaborating both with ASCO, but really as a major component of your practice and practices, plural practices across the years, particularly intergenerationally, with your latest projects? 

HARRY GAMBOA JR.: So, of course, ASCO happened half a century ago. And. You know, ASCO was a group. It was not a collective, by the way. It was a group. And we remained, cohesive basically from 1972 to 1985. And then the group broke up. So I haven't been in touch with two of the members for basically 40 years. And we don't we don't communicate at all. But it's almost like a rock and roll band that, you know, we were pre punk and, and that happened. But I then picked up and started working with other people. And I'm currently working with a troupe of about 100 people that are kind of representational of the, the, the kind of, the ethnic mix of Los Angeles where it's still predominantly Chicano, but we incorporate many different people. And we, we deal primarily with the brutalist architecture of Los Angeles, which is, designed to eliminate any sense of purpose or belonging. And again, many of the places that I photograph people with, those places are immediately cleared and destroyed and nothing is permanent in L.A. And so, and so one of the things about working with a troupe that I have now is that I kind of curate the performers in a way. I, I have to know them beforehand and make sure they're going to get along with everybody and, and, and kind of pair them up for various imagery and put them in situations like currently the work that I'm working on right now is called Present Tense. And the thing is, is that we're beyond 20th century angst and 20th century angst was that we might wind up where we are now and then we are here now. And it's it's it causes great tension to know that any of our devices could blow up right now from somewhere afar or that we are under constant surveillance and we have facial recognition and at the same time that we are removed from ownership of anything and at the same time, you're still free to walk the streets. But how can you gather and capture the moment and the imagery when everything is really so, you know belongs to private hands. And so my thing is to take people into various locations where we do transgress private property, or we will utilize the background, as one would use in a Hollywood film still, and focus on the individuals existing at that moment, looking really cool at that moment for a fraction of a second. And and that's all we need to create a persistent image that will maybe something I take a picture of today will show in a gathering 50 years from now. And so and so that kind of we don't claim permanence, but just kind of this reverberation of effect. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Yes. And photography, at least maybe temporarily or maybe long term as being a way of collaborating potentially. Would the three of you like to elaborate or discuss your relationships to collaboration and maybe what kind of forms they take, because we may have kind of a general idea of what they may be, but in practice it can get quite specific, right? And and what that actually looks like. Well, I was thinking about your relationship to graffiti and that potentially being a way of of collaborating with others. 

GLORIA "GLOE" TALAMANTES: Yeah so I think, for me, collaboration looks like a lot of different things in graffiti in general. It looks like painting alongside other people, sometimes painting by yourself. But also I feel like the collaboration itself is sometimes environmental because you're, you're kind of like responding to some of the things that might be going on around you at the time. And I'm just kind of speaking on, graffiti. I kind of want to make the difference. When I think of graffiti, I automatically think of creating, either words or images in spaces where you're not supposed to be putting them. That's how I how I am defining it right now. And so I think for me that that portion of creating alongside each other is very powerful. I grew up, doing graffiti and in La Villita with the, so a lot of it was, you know, just painting alongside other other folks who were also painting. But collaboration also looks like for me, you know, asking my neighbor if, you know, they can take a walk to the corner and like, disrupt, you know, some sort of, like, gentrification or things that might be happening in the neighborhood that we're aware of, but a lot of people might not be right? It looks like just having, you know, support systems that that might help you create some the next piece that you're, you know, working on. When I'm in the classroom, collaborating with my students, it's like one of the things that I really enjoy. Because they kind of show me perspectives that I normally wouldn't really think of. So yeah, I think it takes a lot of different, ways to collaborate. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Yeah, I think you and I really, you what you said about, like, graffiti next to somebody, it also makes you think about, like, the different, like, chronologies that collaboration can take. It's not always like, okay, we have the space and this is how we're going to fill it, but it can be a kind of like un named or unidentified collaborator or maybe unrecorded collaborator or perhaps even maybe specifically named in the way that graffiti can sometimes work. 

GLORIA "GLOE" TALAMANTES: Yeah, I think a lot of times, especially when it's graffiti done at night, right? It's silent graffiti. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Yeah. 

GLORIA "GLOE" TALAMANTES: We don't really talk to each other. We just go up there and we just do it. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Get it done. Yeah.

GLORIA "GLOE" TALAMANTES: Yeah. Just try to finish. And that's a really interesting dynamic. And I just thought about it right now because I'm like, Yeah, we don't really talk to each other. We just kinda go and do it.

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Yeah. Diego? 

DIEGO TORRES CASSO: Yeah, I think for me, collaboration, I'm a photographer / performer. And I, I typically create alone, but I think that my collaboration comes from conversations with people I love to, like, talk about ideas or hear what other people are interested in or talk to fellow artists and understand how they're visualizing or how they're creating. That helps influence my practice, is like learning and listening to others and then taking it and doing it myself. But I work a lot with self portrait. I work a lot with identity. I think a lot about culture and I think a lot about gender. And I just I love to create from using my own body and my body as a material, but I don't always feel comfortable doing that with someone else present. Which is funny though, because I love to show it. Like I love to like, showcase it. But collaboration, I think, is a very, like individual process for me. A creation is very individual for me personally. I also am an educator and I think talking to young people and listening to them, collaborating with them like I love to work alongside people, I love supporting others and their processes. But yeah, I think collaboration, there's a lot to learn from other people. Sometimes though, while I'm creating with others, it feels a little noisy and it kind of detracts from like where my head is at. Or they'll say something that then takes me away from like where I was wanting to go. And sometimes that's a good thing as well. I don't think that that's always bad, but I do like creating by myself typically. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Yeah. Harry, when you were describing Los Angeles, it was, it both became more specific in some ways, but it also emphasized how difficult it is to really describe any one place. And so I wanted to hear from you, you all, how the places you've lived or maybe you've lived in the same place for most of your life, like how that has shaped your relationship to artmaking as well as the way that you may self-identify in different contexts. So maybe it's like within neighborhoods or within within the art world or something like that. So. Yeah. What? Yeah. What? I mean, it seems like L.A. has been in its own right. A kind of key character in your work over the years. Maybe antagonist, maybe protagonist. 

“Human beings are designed to be graffitists. And so we are all we all make a mark. And I always encourage people to give you a three year olds a big box of crayons and let them fuck up your house.” – HARRY GAMBOA JR.

HARRY GAMBOA JR.: Well, I I have sort of an ongoing theme, and that is to have fun in dystopia. So it's it's kind of the ultimate city where things don't match. Things are built to collapse where nobody can actually communicate with each other. And it's a very filthy city. It's, it's it's dirty. It's. It's not kept up. It's, as you mentioned, all the money goes elsewhere, and none of it is to support people. And in fact, the school systems have been destroyed to to to extract all the wealth from what was once the largest school system. And now the public school system is primarily Latino, which gets the least services. And so, again, going back to the beginning of protesting for, for, higher education of Mexican-Americans, the scores are still the same as they were 50 years ago. And so and so this place, Los Angeles, is also destabilized. It's forever shaky and it's quaking, it's toxic. And at the same time resulting from that is the ability to adapt to such harsh environment. And so you will have people that are extremely successful in adversity and and then that in itself becomes a training ground on how to get through things that are really tough and gets you to see that this is a very tough country and one needs to be very firm, assertive, strong, smart and believe in yourself and to count on your friends and to make sure that you are trustworthy to to really defend what you believe in and and along the way to create and leave markers of your entire life doing something that represents your humanity in which other people will be able to understand that. And again, graffitists, human beings are designed to be graffitists. And so we are all we all make a mark. And I always encourage people to give you a three year olds a big box of crayons and let them fuck up your house. So there you go. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Do you have anything to add, especially about letting a child? 

MARÍA GASPAR: That last part. We are currently letting him do that. He's five. I'll report back. No, I love the way your you think about L.A.. I really like L.A. for all those reasons, too. And I think I'm thinking about you're making me think about Chicago and the sort of textures of the city, the the sort of, you know, the politics of the city, the sort of history of of of activism, which is, you know, really deep and long and beautiful and resilient. But I also think about like, what it meant to grow up on the West Side of Chicago and to grow up in an area where there are lots of vacant lots, you know, you know, where would we have to travel as young people to get programs or to get, you know, really great arts programs. And and, you know, we did so much traveling. I remember being a kid and my friends and I, we were just, you know, we had get on the train for an hour to to get to something that we felt was, you know, the art program, let's say. But but I'm also thinking a lot about atmosphere and the way we think about an environment or a neighborhood as an atmosphere. When I think about it as an atmosphere, I'm thinking about the way a place makes you feel, the built environment, the sort of the political struggles of that moment. And a lot of my my own work is sort of focused on the built environment and the way it feels. And and even going as far as thinking about how it feels through touch. So I've been working, you know, inside of prisons and making work about prisons for, you know, a little over 12 years. And a lot of what I've been thinking about is the ways that these spaces that are involved in are that are part of our built environment. For example, Cook County Jail in Little Village, which is the largest single-site jail in the country, and how that place sort of resonates, you know, the kind of resonances that this place has within an environment and the way that artists or organizers might push back against it or might sort of intervene it in some creative way. So I'm really interested in in, you know, like a neighborhood or city, you know, in the broadest sense, in that it's through all these sort of sensations that we're involved in that make us feel like we belong or we don't belong, or that we have something to say, you know? You know. And I think that I try to have it show up in my work. 

GLORIA "GLOE" TALAMANTES: That really resonates with with me. Everything you just talked about. Because, you know, I grew up in in Little Village. And even then, like, I feel some type of way calling it Little Village, right? Like because of the, the, the name changes throughout the history of it. Like we are in South Lawndale, we're part of North Lawndale. We're just Lawndale, right. And so I understand like through, through time the changes and I realize like what those changes meant. In, in, in a sense of like, keeping culture, keeping the community culturally rich, but also like what it meant on the other end, right? Like the ongoing segregation of what that, what that did. And you know, one of one of the things that really had me, as a as a young person, had me really, questioning a lot of things was the way that the brown paint was just plastered all over our walls, like all the corner stores, all the, all the houses, all the garages that were facing like the, the main avenues or the streets. And the Graffiti Blaster program. And it just makes me think about a lot of different policies that came up in the 90s to deter us from hanging out together, from cruising the streets in cars, from, you know, creating artwork together in spaces that normally, you know, people wouldn't even care to, to look at or to protect or whatnot. The disinvestment right? In especially on the West Side after the MLK assassination and, you know, just different things that have brought us to fast forward now. And it's just like, well, you know, we have new buildings coming up. We have all these new things that are absolutely amazing, right? Like, we deserve beautiful things, but also we do deserve, like, a more thoughtful process, right? A type of process that includes the people that have been there for, for a long time, who have had to endure some of the things that disinvestment created, right? Like poverty and all kinds of different things. So, yeah, I think, I don't know where I was going with this, but as I'm listening to you speak on these things, it just, it makes me think of my own interaction with space and public space in general and, what it means to have it or not have it or be on the verge of losing public space right? And even textures. Like I, I caught myself so many different times peeling off like the brown paint from walls and like, using those paintings to just kind of like, you know, look at them and kind of see the, the, the abstractness of what that looks like on the other end. But yeah. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Diego, I mean, for you, I'm thinking about the occupation of a highly public and politicized space of being in front of the LAPD officers. But perhaps there's more you'd like to say about what it means to you yeah to inhabit the city, but also specific sights of that city. 

DIEGO TORRES CASSO: Yeah. So, my mom's parents had grew up in East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights. My grandfather was born in Miami, Arizona, but came to Boyle Heights when he was like 3 or 4 years old. My nana, my grandmother was born in Boyle Heights. So I think for me, I have a sense of pride being from Los Angeles when people, you know, I'm Mexican, I'm originally family's from Mexico, but I tell people often when they ask, where are you from? I'm from Boyle Heights. That is where my roots are from. That is where my family is from. So, you know, I work there now every day, I get to drive to to work, take the bus sometimes into work. And just being in that neighborhood brings me so much like comfort and joy, even though it is probably one of the more lower maintained neighborhoods in Los Angeles, there is trash everywhere. There are police that are constantly driving down the streets. There is just so much wrong with Los Angeles. And I love Los Angeles, so I'm not afraid to critique it. And I'm not afraid to be frustrated with what Los Angeles isn't. But I think that there's a part of me that's able to look past that because I see the roots of my family that are on the streets that I walk down, I see, and I taste the culture that is in Boyle Heights. I get to live in a place that just is so bright and warm and I get a hug every time I'm in L.A. and there's just something so special about the being in that city. And I have a lot of friends that are from Mexico or a lot of friends that were born there and now are living in L.A. And when they talk about going home or when they talk about being with their families, like my family doesn't have a lot of property in Los Angeles. We don't own a lot of those spaces in L.A. So when I see these new buildings coming up or when I see that houses are for sale, and then I'm like, Whoa, girl, who's driving that Tesla? Like, how? Like this neighborhood is, like, really changing quickly and, like, I'm not seeing my family, like, pull up into these houses and, you know, so it's really interesting to see our neighborhoods are changing and to see this city that has historically been, you know, very Hollywood and very glitz and glam. But then that is Hollywood like you come into East L.A. and it's a completely different city. It's a suburb. It's it's working class families. It's immigrants. And I think that there's just something really beautiful about that. And I think that I don't look at Los Angeles hoping to have the Hollywood Hills, to have the mansions and stuff like that. I just want a backyard to have a carne asada and invite my family over like I and I see that for for me and my friends and my family, like there's such a beauty to what L.A. does have and there's such a rich culture that we we continue to carry. And I think like a lot of my love for it is built off of legacy in L.A. and a lot of just I don't know. Yeah. Like I said, they're just like a hug that I feel when I'm in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, there's, like, someone screaming down the street and there's all this other, like, crazy cluster of things happening. But for some reason, that's comforting for me. And I think it's just because that's that's all I know. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Yeah. It's this feeling of a dystopian hug resonates with me as well. Coming from Texas and having very mixed feelings about what it means to have grown up there and to have the closest proximity to home there. I want to leave some room for our panelists and our lecturer Harry, to maybe pose some questions or have a discussion with each other. So we still have a few minutes before we turn over to the audience. So I want to make space for you all. 

HARRY GAMBOA JR.: So maybe this just one question I have. So this idea of Chicano art that began long ago and that was very community based, but soon after, became sort of an interest for scholarly discussion and and study, but also as a way of internationalizing Chicano culture. But there's very few things that are representations of, of international, commentary or vision that's expressed internationally. And so in a way, there's great power through the art. And, you know, you might be in a very localized specific place, but it does resonate with the rest of the world. And so it's the idea of like, how do we get other young artists to recognize that they have great power and of course have got new technology to do this. But at the same time, you're competing with mainstream media, which is very powerful and wealthy. And so how do you then contradict their messaging and and make sure that your message maintains its integrity? Maybe that goes to the audience. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: To the audience as well. Yeah. Could I ask maybe the three of you. How did, like, growing up post Chicano movement, but also during, like, the continuation of this movement, how did that shape your understanding of, like, what art can do in the world or why you wanted to be an artist? 

GLORIA "GLOE" TALAMANTES: I think for me, the only, the only real education, at least the art education that I had growing up was the streets of Chicago. And so being able to and in as unpopular as it may seem, it was it was the gangs of Chicago that really showed me that there was graffiti that, you know, that was being put on the walls. And that was my first initial like, interaction with graffiti. But then as I got older and I was able to navigate the neighborhood just by walking, I discovered this super vibrant other art form that was graffiti as well. But it was it was more so like, a very planned out graffiti theme, right? I saw more, it was more like mural mural work. And that's really what that's really what got my attention. But that's not to say that I didn't notice that the graffiti that the gangs were using to kind of cross the streets. I live on a border, a gang border, so I saw those interactions back and forth. And unfortunately, also a lot of violence. So, you know, I think, to go back to what Harry was saying, like a lot of times, I think it's not just, showing young people right, that they can create these pieces or, take their art form to another level. I think a lot of times we're being challenged by our counterparts like our peers and people who are a little bit older than us, right, too, because we, we have been conformed to think a certain way through institutions and through education in general. And so a lot of the times you know, you have, teaching artists, educators, arts educators who are, you know, directing certain workshops and things like that, and youth are going back home to a space where they're not being supported right? And so we're really being challenged in a lot of different ways. In order to get them to self self-actualize with their art. And so we're really, I feel like the artist is always contending with all these different things, aside from our own personal, things, right. And so, just, kind of hearing out some of the things that have been talked about, today I'm just, I'm just kind of piecing all these things together. I'm just like, you know, having these, these moments of, of realizations like, okay, I am doing what I'm supposed to be doing. I am, I am, following, you know, some of the, some of the things that I should be doing that, you know, sometimes I question, I'm like, do I want to continue doing this work, do do I want to continue putting myself out there? Right. Because a lot of times, even if you're a visual artist, if you're if you're working in public, you're, you're performing too, it's definitely a performance, especially when you're painting murals, when you're doing graffiti, whatever it is that you're doing. If it's in public, you're definitely performing. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: So anything, María, Diego that you'd like to add?

MARÍA GASPAR: Yeah maybe I can just add kind of I'm going off what Gloe just said. You know, I teach, I'm an in an academic teaching in an academic institution. And, you know, as we're sort of thinking about the suppression of political speech and political thought within academic institutions, you know, I'm thinking a lot about the fear that that that that this this has created. I mean, also beyond the academic institution and and the sort of fear that I that I and anxiety that I'm also feeling for my students in wanting to talk about issues like genocide but being fearful of of legal threats and and etc.. And so I love what you said because it goes back to something really fundamental, which I think is about, you know, moving moving through in the dignified way that you you need to be, you know, like moving through in the way you want to be and also feeling affirmed, you know. And I think sometimes and this goes, you know, not just students, faculty too, but like how do you create a space where we can also affirm for each other that, you know, this is this is not right, you know, like this is actually wrong and that and that we can support each other in that space within all the sort of oppressive forces that we're experiencing with within institutions that are supposed to be there to support us right? There's I mean, that's what we that's what we think. And so so there's there's so much to unpack there. But I just want to lift that up because it felt like it was a a good way to sort of tie in the sort of teaching roles that I think a lot of artists have too. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: And all I think all five of us have a great deal of experience as educators too. So I think we could have easily also had a conversation about our work as educators alongside our respective practices. Harry or Diego, is there any final thoughts before we turn to the audience? 

HARRY GAMBOA JR.: Yeah, I, I think, it's very hopeful to know that people pursue art and find that there's value in that and that, I, I wrote to someone today that, you know, the past was very nice, but the present is most important. So that's it. 

“I think that when folks like us and folks like the people in the audience are in positions of being educators and just that it makes the world of a difference to learn from someone who looks like you, from someone who has a similar background from you. Someone who can hear you and listen to you and support you. And I think that it's so many institutions, they're not people like us. They're there, not people like us that reflect the student body. And I think that once that changes, that is going to make a world of a difference of how young people are supported in the arts and how young people are able to pursue their passions. And it's changing. It is absolutely changing. And I see it. But it is something that I agree the I'm looking forward to the present and the future.” – Diego Torres Casso

DIEGO TORRES CASSO: Same. I, I mean, I have nothing more to add, but just I think that when folks like us and folks like the people in the audience are in positions of being educators and just that it makes the world of a difference to learn from someone who looks like you, from someone who has a similar background from you. Someone who can hear you and listen to you and support you. And I think that it's so many institutions, they're not people like us. They're there, not people like us that reflect the student body. And I think that once that changes, that is going to make a world of a difference of how young people are supported in the arts and how young people are able to pursue their passions. And it's changing. It is absolutely changing. And I see it. But it is something that I agree the I'm looking forward to the present and the future. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Same as a historian, I will say this, believe it or not. Yeah, same here. Okay. Let's open it up for Q&A. 

HOUSE MANAGER: Big round of applause to our presenters. If you have a question you'd like to ask, please raise your hand. We ask that you limit it to questions only. Otherwise, we can get started. Anybody on this side? 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Thank you so much for the lovely conversation I was wondering if you can talk anymore about, have you experienced your priority changing over the years and what to make that happen? 

DIEGO TORRES CASSO: I'm really young in my career. I –

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Call it "emerging."

DIEGO TORRES CASSO: Yes, yes, yes. And I think that I'm kind of still learning what those priorities are exactly. I work with young people who I look at them and I'm like, Wow, y'all are so old and they are so young. But it's interesting because they look at me and they're like, Well, what are you doing? How did you do that? And I'm like, I don't even know. So I think priorities is a really interesting concept to think about because I feel like I'm still learning what those priorities are. But also, again, just kind of with my last answer, I'm still learning like who do I look to to ask these kind of questions and get support from and like seek that like mentorship and that support knowing no one in my family has pursued been an artist. The friends of mine that have or are not much older than me. So we're also I think kind of all still learning from one another. And I think priorities right now are paying my bills and living a life that I enjoy, and I feel like I'm doing that pretty well. 

MARÍA GASPAR: Such an open ended question. All right, let's see. But I think the way I'm thinking about it in two ways, which are interconnected, but my some of my priorities have changed quite a bit in the last few years just because my caretaking role has expanded. And so and, you know, I think the pandemic that, you know, the loss of some family members in my life and all those kinds of things have really kind of made me focus on what is most important. And right now for me, it's I've I've had a shift in my work over the past few years of thinking a little bit less about sort of large scale, which I spend a lot of time, you know, growing in that space and being challenged in that space, to thinking about intimacy a little bit more and still working with lots of different people, but in more intimate settings. And that has really given me a lot of life right now and I really enjoyed it. And I think there's a lot of there's a lot of potential in that. And I think that for me, that has sort of come across the board through my own life and through my my work in my community. 

GLORIA "GLOE" TALAMANTES: I think for me collaboration is one of the things that I'm really rethinking. Not to say that I'm not open to it, but I think currently at this moment, kind of teetering back and forth between collaboration and doing, yeah, more, more intimate work, or even just collaboration, I guess, more intimately. I'm trying to prioritize more time to myself to kind of, have, have time to really fully think through long term projects rather than just one-ofs or yeah like pop-up style type of things. I'm trying to work more on on having larger bodies of work. Not large scale either. Because I'm constantly moving out of spaces. And so, I'm thinking more, more, between what does collaboration look like in a, in a more intimate setting rather than like outdoor space or in public settings. 

HOUSE MANAGER: Excellent. We can take another question. 

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Yes. It's a little abstract. I would like to revisit that idea of oppression in relation to the built environment. And specifically materials and oppression in the built environment. Is there an underlying philosophical sort of influence that you can point to in terms of that conceptual landscape of oppression in the in the built environment to try to address through art? 

HARRY GAMBOA JR.: In Los Angeles in the 1950s, there was a very expressed form of a philosophical idea, and that was to break up communities, and that would be to create this massive freeway system that would be built and and divide up Boyle Heights in such a way that it cut it up like a pie. And then the various segments of that pie would then evolve separately into quite literally break up the community. And so you'll see that even, the approach of the slang that was used amongst the people, the way they would eat, the way they would communicate, you would have this vast, you know, billion ton concrete structures that you would have to traverse in order to say hello to your neighbor. Acted almost like natural barriers and thus created sort of differences and and then at the same time would create chaos. And so to counteract that, one has to create something that's more psychological to weave everyone back together again. And so that's what the art did. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: I thought I saw Isabella. Did you have your hand raised? 

ISABELLA AGUILAR: Yes. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: And I want to make sure that we take Isabella Aguilar's question because she introduced her father, Alberto Aguilar, to the work of ASCO and thus has a great credit in the making of this exhibition. So please, let's hear your question. 

ISABELLA AGUILAR: Thank you for that. I did have a question for Harry. Because you talked about, you were growing up in a time where nuclear warfare was being really created and also the Vietnam War or genocide that happened. But now we're living through a time where there's genocide in Gaza and Lebanon and Sudan and Congo. And I'm wondering if you can impart any something that you learned from the time that you grew up and how we can, like mobilize or use our voices or our platforms to create change or just somehow push the government to like stop our support in this. 

HARRY GAMBOA JR.: It's really unfortunate who we have to choose from in the first place at this moment in time. But one of the things that's happened quite recently, of course, is that all young males are automatically incorporated into the draft and the draft doesn't exist yet. And yet there's all these pointers to possibly war. And so it's almost like a revisiting the time of the Vietnam War. And at the same time, many young people are unaware of the fact that their name is already on the list. And and it's a life or death matter, actually, that we're all engaged in when you have corporations and you have certain elements of the government subsuming all the wealth and leaving us extracted of any you know, we don't have health plans, we don't have food. We don't have higher education afforded to everyone. And, you know, automatically people are deprived. And so how do you demand what should be basic necessities? In other words, basic human rights? And again, I think one of the things is for people simply to reject the normalization of violence and poverty. And so how do you do that? You have to be very strong, but you also have to be very committed to learning and participating. And it's a really it's a really bad idea to stand in front of the police. One has to, in a way, be able to enter into the mindset of everyone else around you. So I would that what I learned was that if they're wearing gloves and a helmet, you need to stand away from them and talk to other people so that can you can outsmart them. 

DEANNA LEDEZMA: Excellent. That is all the time that we have. Can we get another round of applause for our presenters today? Thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Harry, María, Gloe and Diego, really appreciate it. And Alberto. And Isa. Thank you. 

HOUSE MANAGER: Thank you so much for joining us today. You can exit either through our restroom door or through this door. Do not forget, we do have our walking parade. If you want to join the group, you can meet them outside the bookstore, which is directly out this door if you go all the way straight to the lobby. Thank you again for joining us.