1. GAY MARRIAGE
San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom’s recent decision to marry same-sex couples may be one of the most successful acts of political theater in recent times. Suddenly the abstract debate carried on by politicos and pundits alike was transformed into a real civil-rights struggle with real people carrying real flowers and real rings and whose lives could really be hurt by right-wing political grandstanding.

2.

Alex Soth, Charles, Vasa, MN. Courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery.

SLEEPING BY THE MISSISSIPPI
“I’m drawn to dreamer types — people who dream big,” says Alec Soth, who thinks of his latest photographic series, taken along the banks of the Mississippi River, as “akin to filmmaking. The [large-format] camera, the slowness of the process, the shooting, then the post-production. A lot of effort goes into one picture. At $15 an exposure, you can’t just do it willy nilly.” The results can be viewed at www.alecsoth.com/.

3. DIANE ARBUS
The traveling exhibition of photographer Diane Arbus brings a bracing tonic to America’s fatuous infatuation with reality. Her flat B&W photographs of circus freaks, debutantes and madhouse inmates don’t really speak of the real or surreal, but rather look back and demand in a tone at once aggressive and seductive, “Why are you looking at me?”

4. SPALDING GRAY
The discovery of Spalding Gray’s body on March 8 brought to a close the mystery surrounding his disappearance weeks earlier. But his death hardly mutes his legacy as a performance artist, filmmaker and social commentator. From co-founding New York’s Wooster Group to his infamous film monologues, Gray found a way to synthesize the essence of drama — all drama — into the figure of one man talking.

5.

Photo: Michal Daniel.

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE
An instant classic, Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s brilliant new musical, which moves to Broadway this spring following a sold-out run at New York’s Public Theater, transforms a deceptively simple premise — a black maid working for a Jewish family in Louisiana in 1963 is encouraged to pocket loose change found in the clothes she launders — into a mutifaceted examination of race, politics, and the cost of dreams deferred.

6. EIJA-LIISA AHTILA
Acclaimed Finnish director Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s films and videos depict the fantasies, memories and “ordinary suffering” of her young female protagonists in innovatively edited single-screen works and multi-screen installations. The recently published Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Cinematic Works (Crystal Eye Ltd.: Helsinki, 256 pages, $47.50), available from D.A.P. (www.artbook.com), includes a two-hour PAL DVD of her collected work to date.

7. LOS SUPER ELEGANTES
Punk-mariachi band Los Super Elegantes are perhaps the closest equivalent L.A. has to New York art-world music darlings Fischerspooner. Led by hot Latin duo Milena Muzquiz and Martiniano Lopez Crozet, the group cribs as much from Mexican soap operas as they do from cabaret standards in their performance-heavy shows. One of the few musical acts to appear at the 2004 Whitney Biennial.

8.

Pierre Huyghe, Streamside Day Follies, 2003. Photo: Guilherme Young. Courtesy Dia Art Foundation.

PIERRE HUYGHE
Pierre Huyghe’s recent installation Streamside Day Follies at New York City’s DIA Art Foundation takes “four walling” to a new level. In an empty gallery space, four walls slide in to create a temporary screening room on which is projected a fairy-tale-like documentary about the founding day for a housing development. Is this town real? Like the Midsummer’s Night it evokes, the dream disappears when the walls slide back out of the room.