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 approach it had always encouraged, the CAYC promoted experimental practices, appropriating a variety of examples of Argentine art from the 1960s.
The early 1970s were marked by escalating conflict. Discussions about the role of art and the artist became increasingly heated at a time when the social and political situation demanded urgent attention. This newsletter announces a performance of Agujas de coser, by Oralia Gronner, at the CAYC in July 1974 as part of the Ciclo de Investigaciones Teatrales 73–74. The center had been organizing this event since 1973 (GT-297; doc. no. 1478830, GT-301; doc. no. 1478985, GT-302; doc. no. 1478986, GT-308; doc. no. 1478837, GT-317; doc. no. 1478987, GT-321; doc. no. 1478841, GT-326; doc. no. 1478843, GT-410; doc. no. 1478893, GT-416; doc. no. 1478894] participating groups approached theatrical performance as a political practice with which to promote social change.
Gronner started her career at the Teatro Municipal de Merlo, in the province of Buenos Aires, in the early 1970s. Her aesthetic ideas were inspired by the writings of the Andalusian poet and playwright Federico García Lorca and based on a minimalist approach to staging that was, in turn, inspired by Jerzy Grotowski (1933–1999) and his “poor theatre” concept. His “Poor Theatre”—using only the actors’ bodies and voices on an “empty” stage with no scenery—was a direct reference to performance art, an experimental movement that Glusberg promoted in the local art scene.
