SXSW '25: Travis Gutiérrez Senger memorializes Chicano artistic vanguards in ASCO: Without Permission

Asco: noun, meaning disgust, revulsion, or nausea. 

The Los Angeles-based art collective ASCO (1972-87) served as an outlet for angst and overflowing creativity for Harry Gamboa Jr., Gronk, Willie Herrón, and Patssi Valdez, who were high schoolers when they started making boldly radical art pieces. Together, they set out to challenge the status quo of the LA art scene and the ingrained socio-political issues around them. Now, the impact of their work has been memorialized in Travis Gutiérrez Senger’s documentary feature ASCO: Without Permission, which made its world premiere at SXSW this year. 

Without Permission breaks down the distinct phases of the collective’s art output, starting with the print magazine Regeneración, moving into the live mural installations, then their No Movies and beyond, charting the growth of the group and the changes in their artistic focus. 

Asco, Willie Herrón, Humberto Sandoval, Patssi Valdez and Gronk in Gores | Credit: Harry Gamboa Jr.)

ASCO’s work is contextualized quickly in Without Permission, starting with the Chicano Moratorium of 1970, an anti-war protest which was targeted by the Los Angeles Police Department. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and LAPD set up barricades around the community demonstration before tear gassing and indiscriminately beating peaceful participants, resulting in the deaths of three people. This community-shaking incident became a catalyst for ASCO’s creation. The political necessity of the group's work is illustrated well, as seen with First Supper After a Major Riot, a live art installation created to reclaim their neighborhood streets as their own after the events of 1970 forced their community into retreat. This combination of protest and art remains a throughline in ASCO’s oeuvre, giving their work a potency that Without Permission distills.  

As an art collective, ASCO showcased a true multidisciplinary talent. They turned to their environment, making art out of anything and everything that surrounded them, even their own bodies, as seen in The Walking Mural. ASCO directly opposed the institutional racism which presided over their lives through guerilla tactics, making urgent and revolutionary work, which the documentary showcases well. The archival footage is gorgeous, and interlaced together to create a vibrant tapestry of the group’s artistic body.  

Some of their most complex and paradigm-shifting work came with the “No Movies,” which sought to give the Chicano experience the same glamour and intrigue as any classic Hollywood film. Seeing themselves barred from representation in film pushed ASCO to create the models for themselves. The still images evoke the sense of a full narrative, but without the technology or budget, the short films and photos were all there was to any single story. This forces the viewer to conjure their own narrative beyond the images, and represents the peak of the group’s output in its emotional potency, creativity, and subversive conception. Despite living a stone’s throw away from Hollywood, ASCO never saw themselves positively represented in film, which instead relied heavily on racialized stereotypes. The collective rallies against this as they do with other forms of racial exclusion, and Without Permission expresses the truly vanguard nature of their creativity. 

At the time, ASCO served as a communal effort for Gronk, Valdez, Herrón, and Gamboa Jr., who all make solo appearances in the documentary. The talking head interviews with these four often hint at deeper, more complex relational issues between them, but the documentary strays away from these rifts, only giving a surface level look at the group’s dynamics. They are each able to speak on the meaning of ASCO’s work, but a lot feels unsaid, especially when it comes to the collective’s dissolution in 1987. 

Without Permission challenges the documentary norms by blending fiction and nonfiction, incorporating short art pieces created by Latino artists Maria Maea, San Cha, and Ruben Ulises, who take direct inspiration from ASCO. The interweaving of the contemporary artists’ work sometimes stalls the momentum of the documentary, however it’s compelling to not only share ASCO’s historically undervalued work, but to show its direct influence on the next generation of artists. Examining a pocket of art history and its long term impact is often engaging enough, but it's moving to see how precious the art can be to those who it represents, and how ASCO’s art feeds into the inspiration of younger artists. 

The most touching full-circle moment of Without Permission comes decades after their late night tagging of LACMA in defiance of their rejection from the museum. In 2011, ASCO was invited back to the institution with a curated retrospective, titledAsco: Elite of the Obscure, A Retrospective, 1972–1987. The group’s tenacity truly did cause shifts in the evaluation of art—and who gets to define what that means—pushing the artistic institutions around them to change as well. Their work is given a deserving pedestal in Without Permission, which rightfully refuses to let ASCO’s work vanish into obscurity.

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