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 and made Argentine and Latin American artists better known on the global scene.
Going back to the CAYC’s very early years, showing films and videos was an important part of the center’s exhibition programs, in keeping with its goal of positioning itself as a space for experimental work, especially for projects that sought to combine art, technology, and communication. The CAYC thus continued doing the work that the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella had been doing in Argentina in the 1960s, motivating the avant-garde as it sought to explore the mass media, encouraging an examination of interdisciplinary approaches, and supporting visual artists who were trying their hands in the fields of radical theater, fashion, design, and film. In Glusberg’s view, collaborative works of that kind provided a way to promote a new social order.
Activities of this sort became a regular part of the CAYC’s programs in 1974, when Glusberg took part in Open Circuits: An International Conference on the Future of Television, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and later with the Encuentros Internacionales Abiertos de Video organized by the CAYC in Buenos Aires, London, Paris, Ferrara, Antwerp, Caracas, Barcelona, Lima, Mexico City, and Tokyo.
Florent Bex (b. 1937), the director of the Internationaal Cultureel Centrum in Antwerp from 1972 to 1981, was a regular participant in the various editions of the CAYC’s Encuentros, providing videos, taking part in roundtable discussions, and serving as a presenter on panels. He also advised Glusberg about which European artists, curators, and critics should be invited.
The ICC hosted the exhibition Kunstsystemen in Latijn-Amerika (Systems Art in Latin America) from April through May 1974 (GT-403; doc. no. 1476538). An event that was presented simultaneously with the opening of this exhibition—called the Latin American Week—was certainly one of the forerunners of the Encuentros Internacionales Abiertos de Video.
The press coverage of the Fifth Encuentro reflected the excellent reception it received among local media, which saw the event as an important step in the evolution of video art in Belgium. (Glenn Phillips and Sophia Serrano, Encounters in Video Art in Latin America, Getty Research Institute, 2023.) The CAYC and the ICC continued to work together, and collaborated on the exhibition Arte belga de hoy, presented in Argentina at the Museo Genaro Pérez in Córdoba from April through May 1976 (GT-614) and at the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Rosa Galisteo de Rodríguez in Santa Fe, in July 1976 (GT-625; 1477200).
