Milena Muzquiz and Martiniano Lopez-Crozet met in 1992 at Oakland’s California College of Arts and Crafts. One day, Marti brought along a guitar, they sang together, and they had their first song and their first anecdote. A bit later, Mark Eitzel, then still front man of American Music Club, was looking for an opening act for a concert, and the two just lied their way in: "We have a band". "What’s it called?" Marti said, "Los Super", and Milena, "Elegantes". That was in 1995; Lopez-Crozet was earning his money in a restaurant, and some of his coworkers were punks. They were hired for the gig, and in ten days the two leaders of the band wrote eight songs and learned a few covers. Milena invented a few dance moves, changed outfits twice during the concert, the punk drummer banged away, Marti was confused with Barbie’s Ken, and the bass player wanted to be a salsa man. Nothing fit, it all reeked of disaster, but after the concert half of San Francisco wanted to book Los Super Elegantes. 
Milena Muzquiz (born in 1974) grew up between the Mexican city of Tijuana and San Diego. "My first year in high school I came across a book on ‘degenerate art’ and decided right then and there to become an artist". Martiniano Lopez-Crozet (*1968) lived in Buenos Aires, where he designed men’s underwear. "I think the middle ground between Milena’s background and mine were the sexy television comedies from Latin America". In San Francisco, they got to know Michael Clegg und Martin Guttmann, with whom they founded the collective CCSIS (Creative Community Seriously I Swear). In 2000, Los Super Elegantes moved to Los Angeles. Many new stories emerged: like the following. In the summer of 2002, there was a VIP opening held at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art for the Warhol exhibition. Muzquiz and Lopez-Crozet pretended to be hairdressers at the entrance, and crashed the party. After the food, Warhol’s friends went up to the microphone, Dennis Hopper, Angelica Houston etc.  After star art dealer Irving Blum finished his speech, Muzquiz und Lopez-Crozet took the microphone: "Hi everybody, we’re so happy to be here tonight. It’s been such an extravagant and fabulous evening. Thanks for all your support! Let’s raise our cups to toast Andy! Andy, thanks for everything. We love you." ³
Los Super Elegantes are a TV series, have the form of a TV series, follow the production logic of a TV series. The individual chapters are simultaneously written, taped, modified, interwoven, adapted to audience reactions and the latest developments, and play in different venues. As a pop group, they hold concerts at clubs and open air festivals, they are part of the art world, do art, exhibitions performances, or installative works, like Slow Dance Club at the 2004 Frieze Art Fair. During the whole duration of the art fair, passersby were invited to dance to melodic music, just as the English like it. The videoclip to the song "Sixteen"⁴ was filmed by the Mexican artist Miguel Calderón. The song, recorded in 2002 for the album Channelizing Paradise, made it into the charts in Mexico and got played in supermarkets. BMG und Chrysalis wanted contracts with the new sexy Latino band, but turned away when they heard the first demo songs. 
In Los Angeles LSE moves in the art scene, which understands their work best, especially their unique performances⁵. The performances of these theatre-like pieces develop along the lines of embarrassment, disaster, and dilettantism. Actors wander across a scene, words are thrown in, recorded, or dropped, people walk around the room and play themselves, which for professionals and Hollywood actors like Frances McDormand (Fargo), Alessandro Nivola (Jurassic Park III, Laurel Canyon) und Emily Mortimer (»Match Point) can’t be otherwise. The pieces throw together in the smallest space current expectations, desires, and disappointments, life hopes in terms of lifestyle, icon, and guru. Masochistic amazement of the artist meets nostalgic vintage haute-couture meets a longing for a counter culture meets spirituality meets snobbism, eroticism, sadism of the cool leader meets the art market. The whole thing, and that’s the great attraction, takes place beyond any of that sense of professionalism with which we’ve constantly been bothered in recent years. Fassbinder in California. A lot find it scandalous, others like Stephen Prina und Mike Kelley, see a significance in it. 
Stephen Prina: “A few days later I’d see them at Vaginal Davis’s club, and it was obvious that they weren’t interested in any kind of professionalism. They lip-synched to recorded music. . . . They’re locating the extremities of possible performances. I’m interested in that range.”
Mike Kelley: “I am left wondering if it is only crumminess that makes it art, that separates it from pop culture—and what, then, crumminess means. Is it a kind of populism? A sign that everybody can make pop culture at home?”  Sha lalalala.
 

Translated by Brian Currid


DANIEL BAUMANN is curator and critic and lives in Basel.