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.
In late September 1972, as Argentineans were learning that there was to be an election after living under military governments for six years, the CAYC presented its second outdoor exhibition. Arte e ideología, at the Plaza Roberto Arlt, was one of the three editions of Arte de Sistemas II. The event featured works by more than fifty Argentinean artists, including the Grupo de los Trece, as well as performances by musical groups and experimental theater. As on previous occasions, the main objective was to move away from museums and galleries into the street and engage with the general public. The title clarified the political intentions of the exhibition, in which several works alluded directly to the widespread violence and social repression that existed in Argentina. The event’s illusion of democracy was marred by censorship. Two days after it opened, the police shut it down, claiming that the works on display did not meet the criteria of an art exhibition.
The film announced in this newsletter is not just a record of the works and performances presented at the plaza on that occasion; it also documents interactions with members of the public and the expectations of participants and organizers alike. It does so by means of a series of interviews in which Glusberg (as leader of the CAYC) and some of the participants answer questions about the main idea behind the exhibition, its presentation, and its results. In these interviews the filmmakers reveal a certain measure of contradiction, which was very much part of that tumultuous transitional period in Argentina’s history. (Arte de Ssistemas II. Archivo Familia Perel.)
