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. In addition to the exhibitions, a program of different activities provided viewers with a greater chance of seeing the latest innovations in scientific thought. According to Glusberg, the coordination between theoretical thinking and artistic practice was a key factor in the achievement of social change.
During the military dictatorship of General Juan Carlos Onganía, the CAYC became a cultural home for the Fundación de Investigación Interdisciplinaria (Foundation for Interdisciplinary Research), a space that welcomed a group of dissident professors from the Facultad de Arquitectura y Ciencias Exactas de la Universidad de Buenos Aires after the military takeover of the institution in what came to be known as “La Noche de los Bastones Largos” in June 1966.
In its early years the center organized a variety of activities with intellectuals whose support contributed to the circulation of ideas from different disciplines (analytical philosophy; mathematical logic; psychology; epistemological, semiotic, and linguistic problems), which had been excluded from official circles by the violence unleashed by the military government that took power in 1966.
This newsletter invites readers to take “Introducción a la investigación semiológica,” a course offered at the CAYC by Professor Armando Sercovich (b. 1911), a well-known specialist in the theories of signs and semiotic systems. The article provides details on the seminar’s program, which was designed to create a team that would research social communication. The center sought to explore the use of communication theories as applied to artistic activity, in particular, by establishing a program of activities and generating the institution’s own poetics.
