As part of the media coverage of Arte de Sistemas II, the exhibition presented at the CAYC, this newsletter includes an announcement from the dancer and choreographer Ana Kamien, inviting readers to attend the performance she will give during the event’s opening celebrations. A distinguished figure in the field of contemporary dance, Kamien cofounded with Marilú Marini Danza Actual (1963), a group that was actively involved in cultural events organized by the Instituto Di Tella and in the CAYC’s earliest activities.

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 a key role in this process. The exhibitions shone a light on these exchanges, in which overviews of trends or individual artists introduced the innovations of international contemporary art and made Argentine and Latin American artists better known on the global scene.

1972 was a pivotal year in the establishment of “arte de sistemas” as the CAYC’s institutional promotional strategy. The exhibition Arte de Sistemas II (Buenos Aires, September 1972) was split into three events that were presented at three different locations: Arte de Sistemas Internacional (Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires), Arte de Sistemas Argentina (Centro de Arte y Comunicación), and CAYC al Aire Libre. Arte e Ideología (Plaza Roberto Arlt), as well as a performance of experimental music. Having three separate exhibitions meant that Arte de Sistemas II included a greater number of styles; most notable among them was a plethora of gestural, participative, ephemeral works characterized by a distinctly current and political approach.

This newsletter announces that the dancer Ana Kamien (b. 1935) will perform during the opening celebrations for Arte de sistemas II, at the CAYC. During the opening ceremony for Arte de Sistemas Argentina at the CAYC, Kamien presented a one-time-only version of a dance inspired by Marcha de San Lorenzo o Marcha de la Victoria, a military song that commemorates the victory of the Independent Rioplatense troops led by General San Martín (1813). Kamien danced to a contemporary version of the song recorded by Billy Bond y La Pesada del Rock, a pioneering hard rock group in Argentina in the late 1960s. The irreverent dance, which used a chair to represent a horse, ended with Kamien waving a red flag, a reference to the original march, whose lyrics had been tweaked to allude to the contemporary political situation with a reference to the victory of communism.