Ever since it was founded, the CAYC (Centro de Arte y Comunicación), helmed by the cultural promoter, artist, and businessman Jorge Glusberg, was intended as an interdisciplinary space where an experimental art movement could flourish. The establishment of collaborative networks connecting local and international artists and critics played a key role in this process. The exhibitions shone a light on these exchanges, in which overviews of trends or individual artists introduced the innovations of international contemporary art and made Argentine and Latin American artists better known on the global scene.
1972 was a pivotal year in the establishment of “arte de sistemas” as the CAYC’s institutional promotional strategy. After it opened in May at the III Bienal de Arte Coltejer, in Medellín, Colombia, the exhibition embarked on a tour that took it to several different cities in Latin America and Europe.
The exhibition Arte de Sistemas II (Buenos Aires, September 1972) was split into three events that were presented at three different locations: Arte de Sistemas Internacional (Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires), Arte de Sistemas Argentina (Centro de Arte y Comunicación), and CAYC al Aire Libre. Arte e Ideología (Plaza Roberto Arlt), as well as a performance of experimental music. Having three separate exhibitions meant that a greater variety of styles was presented; most notable among them was a plethora of gestural, participative, ephemeral works characterized by a distinctly current and political approach.
Following a curatorial strategy that had already been tried at other exhibitions, more than one hundred artists submitted their works to this event, representing the very best of contemporary art at the time. The list of participants included a greater number of European artists on this occasion. This newsletter includes a brief bio of Henri Chopin (1922–2008), the Parisian artist and publisher of OU, the magazine devoted to experimental poetry in Europe and the United States, with a particular focus on sound poetry and technological works.
In a sort of artist’s statement, Chopin expresses the need for an “objective poetry” that “becomes a body” when it is in a public space. In this type of poetry, he explains, the artist presents himself as an “agitator,” thus aligning himself with broader discussions about which sort of art might be best suited to promote social change.
