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 art and 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, 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 (analytic 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, 201 A, 224, 219). Though several events of this kind had been held on previous occasions, some of which were closely involved with the Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Filosófico (SADAF), the creation of the school provided a space where ideas could be discussed with academics and intellectuals. This initiative was an expression of the spirit of openness fostered by the “Cultural Spring” that flowered during the brief democratic presidency of Héctor J. Cámpora, which lasted forty-nine days in 1973. It was seen as putting an end to a seven-year period of military dictatorships (Onganía, Levingston, Lanusse), after Perón had been exiled for nearly two decades.
Sergio Bagú (1911–2002), an Argentine historian and sociologist, was a distinguished figure among Latin American thinkers in the twentieth century, especially in Marxist circles in the region. The military takeover of universities stripped him of his teaching position. While living in exile he worked in Venezuela, Chile, and Mexico, where he settled permanently in 1974, employed as a professor and researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). In Mexico City he and other intellectuals founded the Casa Argentina de Solidaridad en México, an organization that played a vital role in supporting exiles from the Argentine military regime (1976–83) and appealing to an international audience to condemn the widespread violation of human rights.
This newsletter invites readers to the seminar hosted by the Escuela de Altos Estudios (EAE) at the CAYC in May through June 1974. Bagú relied on statistics to study the population in the region. Many years ahead of regional and global studies, his work addressed historical Latin American processes by means of original approaches and analytical methods. The center used this seminar to draw attention to what new theoretical approaches might contribute to artistic activities, especially those that supported the CAYC’s program of events.
