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. As part of the interdisciplinary action that the CAYC had always endorsed, the center promoted experimental practices and appropriated several ideas from Argentine art that had been explored in the 1960s.
This newsletter announces a performance of Trabajo n° 5, a play by the group Nosotros Laboratorio de Teatro, in 1973 at the CAYC. The group, which was started in 1970, had presented other pieces on previous occasions, including Ejercicios (1970), Nosotros and Caminos—both in 1971, and H.O.Y. (1972) at the Centro Cultural General San Martín in Buenos Aires.
In a subsequent newsletter (GT-251; doc. no. 1478797) the group explained their aesthetic approach, which was based on the interaction between actors and viewers and a minimum reliance on props, inspired by Jerzy Grotowski (1933–1999) and his “poor theater” concept—using only the actors’ bodies and voices on an “empty” stage with no scenery. It involved a direct link to performance art, an experimental movement that Glusberg promoted in the local art scene.
Grotowski’s ideas also contributed to the methods adopted by the Grupo de los Trece, a group of visual artists who were associated with the CAYC. The original members—Jacques Bedel, Luis (Fernando) Benedit, Gregorio Dujovny, Carlos Ginzburg, Víctor Grippo, Jorge González Mir, Vicente Marotta, Luis Pazos, Alberto Pellegrini, Alfredo Portillos, Juan Carlos Romero, Julio Teich, and Glusberg—met with the Polish theater director when he came to Buenos Aires in 1971 (GT-94; doc. no. 1478761).
