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 an important role in this process. The exhibitions shone a light on these exchanges, in which overviews of trends or individual artists provided an introduction to the innovations of international contemporary art and made Argentine and Latin American artists better known on the global scene.
Ken Friedman (b. 1949) was a member of Fluxus, the international laboratory devoted to experimental art, architecture, design, and music, created by the Lithuanian-American George Maciunas. Some years later, in 1966, in an attempt to spread the efforts of the group and its members to the west coast of the United States, Friedman started Fluxus West, which included Dick Higgins, Nam June Paik, John Cage, and Joseph Beuys, among others. In the early 1970s he joined Something Else Press (1964–74), the pioneering publishing house founded by Higgins that introduced the North American market to “artists’ books,” complex artworks designed for publication and distribution in book form.
After taking part in Arte de Sistemas (the 1971 and 1972 versions), and Hacia un perfil del arte latinoamericano (in the latter year), Friedman presented this exhibition in Buenos Aires with a historical focus on what he called “parables.” As it happens, John Baldessari, another participant in CAYC events, also used the term “parables” in his work at that time [see GT-377 (doc. no. 1476914)]. This newsletter publishes the scores for some of the events produced by the artist. The word “score” is used here in the musical sense, except that Friedman includes a number of notes that allow any viewer to interpret “the musicality” of the work.
