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: Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation at the University of California (USC) Fisher Museum of Art, organized with ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, begins by identifying the show’s three areas of focus — science fiction fandom, occult societies, and queer organizing — as seemingly distinct. But all three center on core themes of community, kinship, and creativity — the creativity to imagine social spheres, be they earthly or ethereal, that transcend normalized social roles. Los Angeles, a city that always has one foot in the world of unreality, or, from another perspective, bespoke realities, is particularly fertile ground for a show that treads into extraterrestrial and supernatural territory.
Visually, the show is enthralling. Across the Fisher’s multiple rooms, with walls painted colors to match the mood of the works on view, are paintings, films, books and magazines, records with psychedelic cover art, costumes, and ephemera that collapse the boundaries between art and theater, and theater and life. The latter is what makes the show so conceptually compelling, and so rooted in the s.
