The story of a group of extraordinary artists embarking on revolutionary creative experiments in the brief period between the start of the gay liberation movement and the onset of HIV / AIDS. In this time, in this city, queers fought for political, economic, racial, and gender justice; expectations of sexual behavior changed rapidly under pressure; and a strain of leftist political radicalism merged with a regionally distinctive artistic radicalism to create thrilling new possibilities in queer life.

 

The cultural magnetism that San Francisco offered to queer peoples in the 1960s and 1970s created a distinct ecosystem in which artistic traditions could grow, one formally dissimilar from those developed by the more studied avant-gardes of New York and Europe. Performance in the Bay Area was less professionalized than it was elsewhere, and, in the days of gay liberation, this provided a populist environment for performance and art to develop. Free from the constraints of prestige and financing seen in New York performance work, art in the Bay Area moved between the studio and the street more easily; this license created an artistic form that was more lifestyle than product.

 

Through contextualization and recreation of the artistic work of these marginalized artists, this book argues that a coherent, complete artistic movement, propelled by the twinned forces of queer liberation and leftism of a brand particular to the region, created artistic possibilities unique in performance history. In situating this development alongside the more familiar artists of the New York performance tradition, the book demonstrates the importance of this moment and argues for its place in the narrative of avant-garde art.