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.
Edgardo Antonio Vigo (1928–1997) created objects, prints, signs, mail art, and visual poetry. He started the magazines Diagonal Cero (1961) and Hexágono (1971). In 1969 he organized the Expo/Internacional de Novísima poesía, which brought together experimental artists from all over the world to present works that ranged from visual poetry to electronic media used in the performance of sound poetry. This exhibition was a forerunner to the event announced in this newsletter, which took place at the CAYC in June 1971. Vigo was a regular participant in the CAYC’s activities from 1968 until 1973. He found the environment at the center to be compatible with his own discourse and actions, both in terms of his experimental work and his ideological position concerning the struggle for political and economic freedom in Latin American countries. In 1970 he was one of the three artists invited to take part in De la Figuración al Arte de Sistemas (doc. no. 761141), the exhibition that the CAYC presented at the Museo Emilio Caraffa in Córdoba, where the category of “arte de sistemas” was first mentioned. When the Grupo de los Trece was started in 1971, however, Vigo did not join the group. He maintained his independence but continued to be involved with the center in a relationship based on mutual collaboration. His magazine reported on the CAYC’s artists and activities, and the group invited him to take part in its exhibitions and discussion groups.
This newsletter is written in a didactic style and provides an overview of current trends in visual and sound poetry, noting the innovative nature of these “propositions” that were so different from other forms of poetry because of their reliance on the involvement of the audience. The article mentions established artists who had been invited—including “Julien Blaine,” the pseudonym used by Christian Poitevin (b. 1942) and Vigo’s main connection to Europe—and states that the call for submissions is open to anyone “who works in this field.” [See the Spanish version of this gacetilla: doc. no. 1476286].
