As dusk fell over the AIDS Monument in West Hollywood on Friday night, a rapid-fire sequence of five-minute performances unfolded under the open sky. ACTION = LIFE was co-presented by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) and the Performance Art Museum (PAM) as part of Circa: Queer Histories Festival, presented by One Institute. Within that charged site, the evening linked generations of practice with the urgencies of the present.
Lineage, site, and the body
Performance art’s roots reach back to early twentieth-century Dada and Futurism, the late 1950s Happenings named by Allan Kaprow, and the 1960s experiments of Fluxus—from Alison Knowles making a salad in a gallery to George Maciunas declaring that art could arise from anything. In Los Angeles, the 1970s feminist movement reframed the field with projects at CalArts by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, the transformation of Womanhouse in 1972, public actions by Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz, and Barbara T. Smith’s Feed Me in 1973, demanding recognition of specific needs.
The AIDS Monument itself carries histories of loss and mobilization. The AIDS crisis took tens of thousands of lives and gutted creative communities amid government indifference and silence. The queer community answered through action and art—ACT UP, Gran Fury, and works like Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s candy piles measured to a lover’s weight—insisting on visibility. Performing in that place felt less like looking back than continuing the work.
Five minutes to speak a truth
The roster included Jerri Allyn, an activist artist and educator whose socially engaged practice addresses social justice, gender norms, and queer rights; Gabrielle Civil, a Black feminist performance artist and poet who has premiered over fifty original works worldwide and seeks, in her words, 2to open up space.2 Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, a founding artist of 18th Street Arts Center and Highways Performance Space, brought research-driven explorations of grief, anger, and loss. Sheree Rose—performing since 1981 and known for collaborations with Bob Flanagan—and Ben Cuevas—whose knit skeletal fragments are currently exhibited at the Brand Library in Artifacts from an Unborn Empire—added further depth. The strict five-minute frame sharpened each statement.
Among the night’s standout moments was Dacity, who moved through the space in costume and dance, casting off the limits of a former life toward freedom. An LA-based drag performer, writer, and LGBTQIA+ advocate, Dacity has, since debuting in 2023, received two California College Media Awards, released original music, launched the queer podcast Dyzz Bytch, and founded TRANSFORM. With a background in journalism and political education, their work centers unheard queer voices and explores identity through performance and media.
Past touchstones echoed too: in 2010 Micha C e1rdenas and Elle Mehrmand’s Technesexual at GLAMFA, handmade electronic stethoscopes carried heartbeats across physical and virtual rooms; in 2008 C e1rdenas’s Becoming Dragon, 365 hours in Second Life challenged a one-year Real Life Experience requirement for gender confirmation surgery.
Circa: Queer Histories Festival is presented by One Institute, the oldest active LGBTQ+ organization in the country, and is the first and only queer histories festival in the United States, taking place each October during LGBTQ+ History Month. The Performance Art Museum supports the visibility, legacy, and scholarship of performance artists, while LACE champions boundary-pushing, socially engaged work—an infrastructure that makes nights like this possible. The body, in public, still speaks volumes—and refuses to disappear.
Vía artandcakela.com
