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 exposed attendees to the latest in scientific thinking. According to Glusberg, the coordination between theoretical thinking and artistic practice was an essential part 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 university 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 that contributed to the circulation of ideas from different disciplines (analytical philosophy, mathematical logic, epistemological problems, psychology, semiotics, and linguistics), which had been excluded from official circles.
The Center’s interest led to the creation of the Escuela de Altos Estudios (EAE) in January 1973 (GT- 201; doc. no. 1478752). Though gatherings of this kind had happened before—some of them were associated with the Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Filosófico (SADAF)—the EAE created a formal space that included academics and intellectuals where ideas could be shared.
This newsletter includes an interview with the French linguist André Martinet (1908–1999), director of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris and a professor of General Linguistics at the Sorbonne. During the interview he was asked about the structuralist approach, an academic trend that was in vogue in Latin America during the dictatorship period.
The interview, which was organized with the help of the Cultural Minister at the French Embassy, Philippe Greffet, was published in newsletters and sought to inform readers about the possibilities offered by new theories and, specifically, for artistic activities. Especially those that supported the CAYC’s program of avant-garde and experimental activities.
