UC San Diego

This thesis gives scholarly and production context for Rita Gonzalez's The Assumption of Lupe Velez (1999), an experimental video produced for completion of Gonzalez's Masters of Fine Arts degree in Visual Arts. Gonzalez conjoins two essays, the first that build upon research on Mario Montez, the queer Latino performer involved with various facets of the New York underground theater and film worlds of the 1960s, and the latter on the strands of writing and relationships that constitute the making of The Assumption of Lupe Velez. One of the focal points of the video is the real life performer Mario Montez. The thesis examines how Montez's performances in various productions by Jack Smith, Ron Rice and Andy Warhol vex the published accounts of the avant-garde in New York in the 1960s. This thesis charts the expressive interests of Queer underground filmmakers in translating the bad performances of Maria and Mario Montez into their own modernism, one informed by ethnic signifiers of tropicalism and camp. The thesis also gives insight into the structure of the video The Assumption of Lupe Velez, in particular how the video uses the contemporary context of a Latina/o art and literary scene in Los Angeles as a "stand-in" for the East coast avant-garde. The Assumption moves rapidly across cultural references, culling from the "legitimized" queer avant-garde of the East coast. In situating the video in present Los Angeles with a cast of Latinos, the video attempts to situate the underexposed contributions of Latinos to the avant-garde