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. In addition to the exhibitions, a program of different activities exposed attendees to the latest in art and 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 early 1973. The objectives described in the relevant newsletters (GT-201; doc. no. 1478752, GT-201- A; doc. no. 1478753, GT-224; doc. no. 1478771, GT-219; doc. no. 1478755) were apparent in the activities organized by the EAE (some of which were more technical than interdisciplinary), as well as in the art produced by artists associated with the center. This initiative was an expression of the mood of openness of the “Cultural Spring” that flowered during the brief democratic presidency of Héctor J. Cámpora, which lasted forty-nine days in 1973. It was seen as putting an end to a seven-year period of military dictatorships (first under Onganía, then Levingston, and then Lanusse), after Peronism had been outlawed for eighteen years.
The Jornadas Latinoamericanas de Discusión, a series of forums for discussion, were intended as an opportunity to reflect upon the political and cultural situation and to explore possible projects for other countries in the region. This initiative should be understood in terms of the rapid dissemination throughout Latin America of the Theory of Dependence, which explained that the poverty the region’s countries were experiencing was a result of the political and socioeconomic oppression of the great world powers. Hence the contradictory concepts of “dominance” and “liberation,” applied here to other social areas such as culture, education, and communication. That concept captured the idea of the emergence of a “new man,” an idea that the individual and society as a whole rise up and bring an end to the current oppression. These ideas were in synch with the political and artistic approaches adopted by the center the previous year, at the time when the Grupo de los Trece was making its first public appearances (GT-116; doc. no. 1476404, GT-125; doc. no. 1476409, GT-128; doc. no. 1476410">1476410, GT-128- II-III; doc. no. 1476410">1476410, GT-138; doc. no. 1476335).
This newsletter invites readers to the lecture to be delivered by Leopoldo Chiappo (1924-2010). In the late 1960s the philosopher and educator was a member of the Commission for Education Reform in Peru, together with other intellectuals who, as a group, committed to serve the interests of the people.
