This newsletter published an essay by Eduardo Lipovetzky as part of a strategy designed to promote the activities of the Escuela de Altos Estudios (EAE), an entity that was affiliated with the CAYC. In this text Lipovetzky discusses the importance of considering scientific models in the development of a theory of action to be applied to a variety of social practices. This approach, focused on the coordination between theory and practice, was reflected in the activities organized by the EAE as well as in the thinking that influenced the work produced by artists associated with the center.            

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. In addition to the exhibitions, a program of different activities exposed attendees to the latest in scientific thinking. According to Glusberg, the coordination between theoretical thinking and artistic practice was an essential part of social change.

During the military dictatorship of General Juan Carlos Onganía, the CAYC became a cultural home for the Fundación de Investigación Interdisciplinaria, a space that welcomed a group of dissident professors from the Facultad de Arquitectura y Ciencias Exactas de la Universidad de Buenos Aires after the military takeover of the university in what came to be known as “La Noche de los Bastones Largos” in June 1966. In its early years the center organized a variety of activities with intellectuals that contributed to the circulation of ideas from different disciplines (analytical philosophy, mathematical logic, epistemological problems, psychology, semiotics, and linguistics), which had been excluded from official circles. 

The center’s interest led to the creation of the Escuela de Altos Estudios (EAE) in January 1973 (GT- 201; doc. no. 1478752). Though several events of this kind had been held on previous occasions, some of which were closely involved with the Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Filosófico (SADAF), the creation of the school provided a space where ideas could be discussed with academics and intellectuals. 

This newsletter published an essay in which the Argentine thinker Eduardo Lipovetzky called for taking an interdisciplinary approach (including relying on tactics used in warfare) to thinking about ways to program how humans act in different social contexts. This proposal showed that the CAYC was already considering the possibilities offered by new theories for artistic activity, especially those that supported the center’s program of activities designed to create an institutional poetics of its own that projected a Latin American identity.