Selected Writings

Abstract

This selection of texts by the Argentinean artist Roberto Jacoby includes seven that are here published in English for the first time, and two others rendered in new translations. The majority of the texts (all but three) were written in the 1960s. Some, such as “Scale Model of an Artwork” (1966), “Automatic Circuit (work no. 1 for Telephone Circuit)” (1967), and “Message at the Di Tella Institute” (1968), are short descriptions of artworks. Another, “An Art of Communications Media (Manifesto)” (1967), takes the form of a manifesto, co-written by Jacoby and two other artists. “Demonstration: A Mass Media Artwork” (1967) touches on various issues topical in the mid-1960s art world in Argentina and beyond, including the relationship between art and life, society, and politics, and “Against the Happening” (1967) considers an art that harnesses the mass media for its production. The section also includes translations of song lyrics written by Jacoby that link intimate themes of love with international politics. The songs were put to music and recorded by the Argentinian rock group Virus for its fifth record, “Surfaces of Pleasure” (1987). The section concludes with “Strategy of Joy” (2000), an article that theorizes a biopolitical form of resistance to the civil-military dictatorship that brutalized the Argentinian population in the 1970s and early 1980s, and “Report on the Venus Project” (2002), which focuses on an experimental community formed in the midst of the social, economic and political crisis that befell Argentina in the summer of 2001, and, according to some, is ongoing.