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 art and scientific thought. According to Glusberg, the coordination between theoretical thinking and artistic practice was a key factor in the achievement of social change.
This newsletter invites readers to attend the seminar Arte y comunicación, to be presented by the French theorist Abraham Moles (1920–1992), a pioneer in the application of information theory to social studies. The CAYC’s first phase—appropriately involving the Grupo de los Trece—was founded on works inspired by Moles’s ideas, which offered artists scientific support for their works and defined the initial version of what the center would call “arte de sistemas."
The seminar was presented a few months after Arte de Sistemas I opened at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (GT-54), the exhibition at which Glusberg sought to identify local production with international works. The connection between these and the various expressions of Conceptual art emphasized the need to provide local artists with a theoretical framework that would stimulate discussion and creativity along those lines.
The influence of Moles’s proposals can be seen in later works by some of the artists in the Grupo de los Trece: see both the concept of “interstitial freedom” in the sketches of prisons by Horacio Zabala (GT-226; doc no. 1476432, GT-227; doc. no. 1476433) and the use of analogies as a way to grasp reality in the works of Víctor Grippo (GT-695; doc. no. 1477339, GT-699; doc. no. 1477343, GT-757-9; doc. no. 1477397, GT-761) and Luis (Fernando) Benedit (GT-181; doc. no. 1476353, GT-255; doc. no. 1476447, GT-694; doc. no. 1477338, GT-745; doc. no. 1477395, GT-746; doc. no. 1477396, GT-773; doc. no. 1477436, GT-800; doc. no. 1477463 y S/N; doc. no. 1476928). (As regards Zabala, see Mariana Marchesi, “El CAYC y el arte de sistemas como estrategia institucional” [The CAYC and systems art as an institutional strategy], exh. cat. Fundación OSDE, Buenos Aires, 2013, 70–72).
