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 the CAYC had always taken, the Center promoted experimental practices, appropriating a variety of examples of Argentine art from the 1960s.
In 1969, with its first exhibition, Arte y Cibernética [Art and Cybernetics], the CAYC established its experimental credentials, which were in line with ideas that had already been presented on the international stage. The Center hoped that this exhibition at the Galería Bonino in Buenos Aires would show what the new technologies could do for creative activity.
The exhibition’s curatorial plan included electronic music composed by Dante Grela, Francisco Kröpfl, Carlos Rausch, Jorge Rotter, and Eduardo Tejeda. The Center’s intention to combine disciplines was on display again in Argentina-Intermedios (Teatro Ópera, Buenos Aires, 1969), a show that included electronic music, performing arts, experimental films, and kinetic sculptures.
Music had always been part of the CAYC’s interdisciplinary approach, ever since its early days. Most of the musicians who performed at the Center’s concerts and other events (GT-130; doc. no. 1478768, GT-137; doc. no. 1478778, GT-152; doc. no. 1478806) had a grant from the CLAEM (Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales), the Latin American Center for Advanced Music Studies that had been created at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. The CLAEM, under the direction of the famous Alberto Ginastera, was created to be the most avant-garde school of music in Latin America, where grant holders could take advanced classes in composition and electronic music with teachers such as Gerardo Gandini, Francisco Kröpfl, Fernando Von Reichenbach, and Luis de Pablo, among others.
This newsletter announces a brief seminar in August-September 1975 to be taught by Rodolfo Arizaga (1926-85), a composer, musicologist, and professor. After graduating from the Conservatorio Nacional, he traveled in Spain and France. He studied with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen. He experimented with the Ondes Martenot [Martenot Waves], an electronic instrument invented in 1928. It consists of a keyboard, a speaker, and a low-frequency generator that, together, produce a range of sound effects. When Arizaga returned to Buenos Aires in the 1960s, he was a key figure in the contemporary music scene.
Among the subjects covered in his seminar he highlighted the importance of creating new musical instruments and the commented and analyzed presentation of his work El ombligo de los limbos, la momia y una encuesta [The Navel of Limbo, the Mummy, and a Survey]. This piece, created by Arizaga (with texts by the radical, esoteric poet Antonin Artaud) was originally performed at the “Festival Internacional de Música Contemporánea” (Teatro General San Martín, Buenos Aires, 1970). It consists of a fusion with no hierarchy between words, images, and sounds. Voices blend with the sounds of the Ondes Martenot and the organ while slides of works by the artist Enrique Tudó are projected. The goal was to create a “visual music” experience.
