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, 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 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 began with Argentina-Intermedios (Teatro Ópera, Buenos Aires, 1969), a show that included electronic music, performing arts, experimental films, and Kinetic sculptures. The CAYC also organized an experimental music concert as part of the introduction to the exhibition Arte de sistemas II (GT-161, doc. no. 1478696, GT-162; doc. no. 1478697).
The center’s musical events usually consisted of electronic or electro-acoustic music since these styles were focused on experimenting at the intersection between art and technology, which was one of the CAYC’s main interests in its early years. This newsletter announces the musical numbers included in Expo Música. This exhibition, which was considered a pioneering event, featured musical works, scores, and videos of the most prominent Argentine composers of contemporary music.
Most of the musicians who performed at the center’s events had a grant from the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales (CLAEM, 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 leading avant-garde school of music in Latin America (GT-130; doc. no. 1478768, GT-137; doc. no. 1478778, GT-152; doc. no. 1478806).
A previous newsletter (GT- 686; doc. no. 1478982) listed the equipment used at the event (cassette players, individual headphones, closed-circuit TV videos), and the participating composers, engineers, and companies that supported the event. Most of the composers on the list studied at the Facultad de Artes y Ciencias Musicales at the Universidad Católica Argentina (UCA), or were part of the CLAEM or the institution that took over after it closed in 1971, the Grupo de Experimentación Musical del Centro de Investigación en Comunicación Masiva, Arte y Tecnología (CICMAT), that was based at the General José de San Martín theater complex in Buenos Aires.
