The Chicano Moratorium and—the French New Wave? Asco, Agnès Varda, y Después

Set against the backdrop of multiple significant historical events—including the passing of legendary filmmaker Agnès Varda in March 2019, as well as the fiftieth anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War in August 2020 and the Moratorium’s fifty-fifth anniversary in 2025—this article examines the seldom-discussed collaboration between Asco, one of the most important experimental Chicano art groups to have emerged from the crucible of the Moratorium, and Varda. It focuses on the crucial role that aesthetic judgment-experience plays in Asco’s and Varda’s work, particularly in Varda’s documentary film Mur murs and in her filmic portrayal of Asco’s Death of Fashion (1980). Through a form-focused treatment of some of Asco’s most iconic performances—including Walking Mural, Spray Paint LACMA, and First Supper (After a Major Riot)—this article highlights the conceptual overlap between their work and that of the Pinochet dictatorship-era Chilean art collective Colectivo Acciones de Arte (CADA). Situating their work within broader histories of state violence, police brutality, and politicized conceptualism, this article argues for the still-unrealized significance of the Asco-Varda collaboration, contending that their work challenges, through autonomous artistic expression, the crisis of commodity culture.