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, the School of Advanced Studies) in early 1973. The objectives described in the newsletters that announced the founding of the school (GT-201; doc. no. 1478752, GT-201-A; doc. no. 1478753, GT-224; doc. no. 1478771, GT-219; doc. no. 1478755) were apparent in the activities organized by the EAE (some of which were more technical, while others were of a more interdisciplinary nature), as well as in the art produced by artists associated with the center.
The mid-1970s were marked by escalating sociopolitical conflict. Against this backdrop, discussions about the role of art and the artist became increasingly heated. At the event announced in this newsletter, which was coordinated by Adolfo Dondo and attended by the writers Enrique Martí, Alberto Auné, and Otto Carlos Miller, it was suggested that discussion groups might come up with artistic practices that could contribute to societal change. The inclusion of the quote from the French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre—who refused the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964—identifies this initiative with the image of the committed artist.
