By the late 1960s, whatever fun The Art World had promised with pop art was settling back into something more serious and denim-clad. Glamour was once again a dirty word, and the less there was to see at an art show, the more profound the art was deemed. If one was lucky enough to encounter a publication called FILE Megazine, they might be transported to an alternate art world.

FILE’s publishers were the artist collective General Idea, which operated out of Toronto; and thanks to the Mail Art movement, their reach was global. The emphasis of their work was on glamour, pageants and pavilions—with an aesthetic tinged by post-WWII retrofuture and fetish subcultures. The “celebrities” that appeared in FILE Megazine were self-invented characters living as art, with names like Count Fanzini, Irene Dogmatic and Doctor and Lady Brut. The first issue’s cover featured an artist who lived in a Mister Peanut costume. Thanks to the magazine’s Image Bank Request List, one could instantly connect to the international mail art network. Without ever dipping a toe into The Art World, one could exhibit one’s artwork in art shows all over the world, which included prestigious venues.

As The Art World readied itself to swallow General Idea into the grand narrative, the former increasingly began to describe the latter’s activities as “critiques” of the larger culture—which unfortunately ignored the scope and complexity of the brief period in the early 1970s when General Idea operated The Art World’s parallel universe. Most of what is left to see of that world now takes the form of framed photos and ephemera in vitrines. Yet because their glory days pre-dated ubiquitous video cameras, it is something of a miracle that there exists actual film from that world’s most legendary event, the Deccadance. And it just appeared online!

Los Angeles artist Kerry Colonna was in his last year of film school in 1974, and he wanted to get a documentary under his belt. He spotted an announcement in Avalanche magazine for the upcoming Deccadance to be held at Elks Lodge near MacArthur Park in January 1974. Marcel Idea in Toronto put him in touch with Lowell Darling (a legendary LA figure worth Googling), who was a key organizer of the event. Happily, Colonna took a sympathetic approach to the specter of “Art’s one-million-and-eleventh birthday.”

The event incorporated over 800 people billed as from all over North America. The format parodied the Academy Awards; it included a wide variety of acts, from a man-and-wife orchestra to Bobby Bon Bon’s meat dance. In Colonna’s film, we see men in tuxedos and shark-fin hats perform a dance that could pass for a Masonic ritual. Anna Banana is presented with a breakable award, which she tosses to the ground while denouncing art competitions. As a glimpse at a lost world, this film is a treasure. It might be one of the last instances where that many artists were in one room and everybody looked as if they were having fun.

Watch Deccadance on Vimeo