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 action it had always encouraged, the CAYC 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 the 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 blend disciplines was on display again in Argentina-Intermedios (Teatro Ópera, Buenos Aires, 1969), a show that included electronic music, onstage arts, experimental films, and kinetic sculptures.
This newsletter announces a performance of Trabajo n° 5, a play by the group Nosotros Laboratorio de Teatro, in 1973 at the CAYC. The group, which was started in 1970, had presented other pieces on previous occasions, including Ejercicios (1970), Nosotros and Caminos (both in 1971), and H.O.Y. (1972) at the Centro Cultural General San Martín in Buenos Aires.
In the text published in this newsletter, the group explained their aesthetic approach, which was based on the interaction between actors and audience and a minimum reliance on props, inspired by Jerzy Grotowski (1933–1999) and his “poor theater” concept—using only the actors’ bodies and voices on an “empty” stage with no scenery. It involved a direct link to performance art, an experimental movement that Glusberg promoted in the local art scene.
