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. The exhibitions shone a light on these exchanges, in which overviews of trends or individual artists provided an introduction to the innovations of international contemporary art.
Dick Higgins (1938–1998), the artist, composer, art theorist, poet, editor, printmaker, and cofounder of Fluxus, the international art movement, proposed the word “intermedia” in 1965 to describe the interdisciplinary art practice he pursued with Fluxus at the time. A year earlier he had founded a publishing house called Something Else Press (1964–74), which pioneered the publication of “artists’ books,” complex artworks designed to be published and distributed in book form, in the United States. The press also published concrete poetry and other avant-garde works.
In Buenos Aires, Higgins was part of Expo/Internacional de Novísima poesía/69 (1969), the exhibition organized by Edgardo Antonio Vigo and attended by experimental artists from all over the world; exhibits ranged from visual poetry to electronic media for sound poetry. Higgins was also among the international artists who showed their work at Hacia un perfil del arte latinoamericano (1972). A year later, Hexágono ´71 magazine (edited by Vigo, 1973) published “Aburrimiento y peligro” (Boredom and Danger), a text that was included in Foew&ombwhnw (1969), the artist’s book Higgins published, which looks like a Bible and was printed on Bible paper. It was clearly a game changing version of artistic experimentation with books. (M. J. Herrera., “Vigo en (con)texto,” in EV, Fundación Telefónica, 2004.)
The CAYC announced the opening of a one-man show in August 1974, which included part of 7-7-73, the series Higgins produced in 1973–74. In this vast collection of silkscreen prints—most of them single impressions on paper—the North American artist assembled photographs of people and nature, illustrating a complete cycle of the seasons, experimenting with his composition by using different printing techniques and being open to chance. The title of the series is the date when he originally came up with the idea for the project. All the works in the series have the same title, regardless of when they were completed. The CAYC had published “Visto, oído y comprendido” (Seen, Heard, and Understood), the text by Higgins, in The Something Else Newsletter [see GT-437 (doc. no. pending]). Taking the form of a manifesto, it associates the visual arts with literature, the latter being defined as “art of thinking.”