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 approach 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 (Art and Cybernetics), 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 how new technologies could contribute to 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 focus on combining disciplines was on display again in Argentina-Intermedios (Teatro Ópera, Buenos Aires, 1969), a show that included electronic music, performing arts, experimental films, and Kinetic sculptures.
This newsletter announces a performance of Ceremonia del segundo nacimiento (Ceremony of the Second Birth), a production created by the group Teatro del Encuentro in October 1973 at the CAYC. After being part of the experimental theater scene at the Instituto Di Tella in the 1960s, Alejo Piovano coordinated this project for the Ciclo de Investigaciones Teatrales organized by the center in October through November 1973 (GT-297; doc. no. 1478830, GT-301; doc. no. 1478985, GT-308; doc. no. 1478837, GT-317; doc. no. 1478987, GT-321; doc. no. 1478841). Other groups also took part in the Ciclo, approaching theater as a political practice through which to promote social change.
In the text published in this newsletter, the group explained their aesthetic-anthropological approach, which was based on “rites” or “rituals” performed as expressions of the myths of mankind. Performing them provides an opportunity to distance oneself from everyday routines and attain a sense of freedom. These rites are performed with a minimal reliance on props, inspired by Jerzy Grotowski (1933–1999) and his “poor theatre” concept. His “Teatro Pobre”—using only the actors’ bodies and voices on an “empty” stage with no scenery—was a direct reference to performance art, an experimental movement that the CAYC promoted in the local art scene.
