Di Tella Research Articles

Iannis Xenakis in Argentina: Reception, Dialogues, and Exchanges

Abstract Iannis Xenakis visited Argentina as a professor of the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales (CLAEM) of the Torcuato Di Tella Institute in 1966 where he discussed his interdisciplinary interests – mathematics, architecture, and computer-aided composition. Using archival resources and oral history, this article explores three aspects of Xenakis's trip to Argentina. First, the way the media framed the visit of the European composer and the reception of the events organized around it under a modernist discourse. Second, the direct impact that this visit had on some of the composers at CLAEM, particularly Graciela Paraskevaídis. Finally, the exchanges that Xenakis had with engineer Fernando von Reichenbach, who had been working on transforming graphic material into sound, something that crystallized with the development of Reichenbach's Convertidor Gráfico Analógico (1969), and Xenakis's Unité Polyagogique Informatique CEMAMu (UPIC 1977).

Navigating Internationalism from Buenos Aires: The Centro de Arte y Comunicación

Abstract This article maps the complex socio-political terrain negotiated by the Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAYC) during the early 1970s from Buenos Aires. It shows how the CAYC attempted to continue the internationalising aims which the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella had pursued in the 1960s, while also providing a space for the exhibition and development of Conceptualism that engaged with political conditions in Argentina and in other countries including Brazil, Uruguay, Chile and Columbia, developing the framework of “systems art” in order to do so. The compromises necessitated by CAYC's balancing act opened the organisation, and in particular its director Jorge Glusberg, to accusations of cultural imperialism and complicity: from almost the very beginning, the CAYC project was characterised by dissensus and disagreement. The controversy generated by CAYC – documented in archives, publications and exhibition catalogues – now offers a rich historiographical resource for Latin American art, revealing how competing models of internationalism and Conceptualism were closely intertwined rather than diametrically opposed.

Will You Marry Me, Later?

Cristina Bellés-Obrero⇑ and María Lombardi Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Economics at the University of Mannheim María Lombardi is an Assistant Professor in the School of Government at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. (email: cbelleso{at}mail.uni-mannheim.de).

Life satisfaction of employees, labour market tightness and matching efficiency

PurposeDi Tella et al. (2001) show that temporary fluctuations in life satisfaction (LS) are correlated with macroeconomic circumstances such as gross domestic product, unemployment and inflation. In this paper, we bring attention to labour market measures from search and matching models (Pissarides 2000).Design/methodology/approachOur analysis follows the two-stage estimation strategy used in Di Tella et al. (2001) to explore sectoral unemployment levels, labour market tightness and matching efficiency as LS determinants. In the first stage, we use a large sample of individual data collected from a continuous web survey during the 2007–2014 period in the Netherlands to obtain regression-adjusted measures of LS by quarter and economic sector. In the second-stage, we regress LS measures against the unemployment level, labour market tightness and matching efficiency.FindingsOur results are threefold. First, the negative link between unemployment and an employee's LS is confirmed at the sectoral level. Second, labour market tightness, measured as the number of vacancies per job-seeker rather than the number of vacancies per unemployed, is shown to be relevant to the LS of workers. Third, labour market matching efficiency affects the LS of workers differently when they are less satisfied with their job and in temporary employment.Originality/valueNo evidence of this relationship has been documented before. Our results give support to government interventions aimed at activating demand for labour, improving the matching of job-seekers to vacant jobs and reducing information frictions by supporting match-making technologies.

The Politics of the Family: Psychoanalysis and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Argentine Documentary Cinema

The subjective documentary genre emerged in the context of the “subjective turn” in Argentina (Sarlo 2005), when testimony became the main instrument to mobilise memory. In these films, the narrative of truth is driven by a subjective identity rather than an objective observer, focussing on introspective and private narratives rather than social and political realities. These documentaries have largely been regarded as less politically relevant than their predecessors. This paper seeks to challenge this dominant perspective by theorising the links between the political and the affective in four recent works: La TV y yo (2002) and Fotografías (2006), by Andrés Di Tella, Familia tipo (2009) by Cecilia Priego, and Madres con ruedas (2006) by Mónica Chirife and Mario Piazza. These films explore the identity of the director in relation to the family through narratives that are clearly influenced by psychoanalytic discourses. Pursuing the implications of the link between psychoanalysis and neoliberalism, this paper seeks to theorise the exploration of the self in relation to the family. The aim is to reconceptualise the intimate as political, ultimately understanding the production of subjectivity in these films as closely intertwined with the experience of neoliberalism.

Cover Image, Volume 30, Issue 2

AbstractThe cover image is based on the Original Article Semistatic and Sparse Variance‐Optimal Hedging by Di Tella et al., https://doi.org/10.1111/mafi.12235. image

Life Satisfaction of Employees, Labour Market Tightness and Matching Efficiency

Di Tella et al. (2001) show that temporary fluctuations in life satisfaction (LS) are correlated with macroeconomic circumstances such as gross domestic product, unemployment, and inflation. In this paper, we bring attention to labour market measures from search and matching models (Pissarides 2000). Our analysis follows the two-stage estimation strategy used in Di Tella et al. (2001) to explore sectoral unemployment levels, labour market tightness, and matching efficiency as LS determinants. In the first stage, we use a large sample of individual data collected from a continuous web survey during the 2007-2014 period in the Netherlands to obtain regression-adjusted measures of LS by quarter and economic sector. In the second-stage, we regress LS measures against the unemployment level, labour market tightness, and matching efficiency. Our results are threefold. First, the negative link between unemployment and an employee's LS is confirmed at the sectoral level. Second, labour market tightness, measured as the number of vacancies per job-seeker rather than the number of vacancies per unemployed, is shown to be relevant to the LS of workers. Third, labour market matching efficiency affects the LS of workers differently when they are less satisfied with their job and in temporary employment. No evidence of this relationship has been documented before Our results give support to government interventions aimed at activating demand for labour, improving the matching of job-seekers to vacant jobs, and reducing information frictions by supporting match-making technologies.

Life Satisfaction of Employees, Labour Market Tightness and Matching Efficiency

Di Tella et al. (2001) show that temporary fluctuations in life satisfaction (LS) are correlated with macroeconomic circumstances such as gross domestic product, unemployment, and inflation. In this paper, we bring attention to labour market measures from search and matching models (Pissarides 2000). Our analysis follows the two-stage estimation strategy used in Di Tella et al. (2001) to explore sectoral unemployment levels, labour market tightness, and matching efficiency as LS determinants. In the first stage, we use a large sample of individual data collected from a continuous web survey during the 2007-2014 period in the Netherlands to obtain regression-adjusted measures of LS by quarter and economic sector. In the second-stage, we regress LS measures against the unemployment level, labour market tightness, and matching efficiency. Our results are threefold. First, the negative link between unemployment and an employee’s LS is confirmed at the sectoral level. Second, labour market tightness, measured as the number of vacancies per job-seeker rather than the number of vacancies per unemployed, is shown to be relevant to the LS of workers. Third, labour market matching efficiency affects the LS of workers differently when they are less satisfied with their job and in temporary employment. Our results give support to government interventions aimed at activating demand for labour, improving the matching of job-seekers to vacant jobs, and reducing information frictions by supporting match-making technologies.

On Self-Serving Strategic Beliefs

We experimentally study settings where an individual may have an incentive to adopt negative beliefs about another’s intentions in order to justify egoistic behavior. Our first study uses a game in which a player can take money from an opponent in order to prevent the opponent from subsequently causing harm. We hypothesize that players will justify taking by engaging in “strategic cynicism,” convincing themselves of the opponent’s ill intentions. We elicit incentivized beliefs both from players with such an incentive and from neutral third parties with no incentive to bias their beliefs. We find no difference between the two sets of beliefs, suggesting that people do not negatively bias their beliefs about a strategic opponent even when they have an incentive to do so. This result contrasts with Di Tella, et al. (2015), who argue that they provide evidence of strategic cynicism. We reconcile the discrepancy by using Di Tella, et al.’s, data, a simple model of strategic belief manipulation and a novel experiment in which we replicate Di Tella, et al.’s, experiment and also elicit the beliefs of neutral third parties. Across three experimental datasets, the results provide no evidence of negatively biased beliefs about others’ intentions. However, Di Tella, et al.’s, results and our novel data indicate that those with a greater incentive to view others’ intentions negatively exhibit relatively less positive beliefs than those without such incentives.

Electroacoustic Music At CLAEM: A Pioneer Studio in Latin America

AbstractDuring the 1950s and ’60s, many composers began exploring the possibilities provided by commercially available magnetic tape recording and electronically produced sound. In Latin America, the most successful early electroacoustic studio was hosted at the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales (CLAEM), part of the Torcuato Di Tella Institute in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This article chronicles the eight years of existence of CLAEM's Laboratorio de música electrónica (1964–1971), and its role in the training of composers hailing from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, and the United States. This historical account of pioneering Latin American electroacoustic music provides insight into the aesthetic and technical developments that earned the laboratory at CLAEM a place in the regional and transnational world of contemporary music making and demonstrates the crucial role of locality in the adoption, consumption, and rearticulation of international musical models.

La visita de Obama y el giro de las relaciones entre Argentina y Estados Unidos

Dos décadas después de la visita de Bill Clinton a Carlos Menem, durante la época del alineamiento de Argentina con Estados Unidos (las llamadas “relaciones carnales”, según la metáfora del entonces canciller argentino Guido Di Tella), Barack Obama volvió al confín del continente. George W. Bush había estado en el país en noviembre de 2005, pero en el marco de la IV Cumbre de las Américas, cuando se rechazó el proyecto del Área de Libre Comercio de las Américas (alca). ¿Por qué Obama viajó hasta la Argentina en este momento? ¿Qué cambios se avizoran en la relación bilateral, luego de una década de tensos vínculos? ¿Qué acuerdos se alcanzaron en esta visita? ¿Cómo impacta el acercamiento entre Washington y Buenos Aires en las relaciones interamericanas?

Trust and macroeconomic performance: A two-step approach

We reexamine the role of trust in macroeconomic performance using a new econometric method, a two-step approach adopted by Di Tella et al. (AER, 2001). In the first step, the measure of trust is constructed from the micro-regression of trust. This method allows us to extract the component of trust that is not influenced by individual-level socio-economic factors. In the second step, measures of macroeconomic performances are regressed on this improved measure of country-level trust. We find a strong positive relationship between the level of trust and real GDP per person stipulated by an increase in investment. Our results also indicate that the impact of trust on macroeconomic variables estimated by previous studies is biased upwards.

Oscar Bony's La Familia Obrera: The Labor and the Work

This article analyzes Oscar Bony's work La Familia Obrera (1968), in which a working class family sat on view in the gallery of the Instituto Di Tella in Buenos Aires. What might be read from the transformation of a working class family into a work of art? How was Bony's own artistic labor reconfigured in the process? How did Bony's display of a working class family engage with both the context of the Instituto Di Tella—an extension of Argentina's most prominent industrial company—and the demands for productivity made by the developmentalist dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía? In other words, how was this work entangled in the contradictions of modernization and, more specifically, the transnational corporations with which the Di Tella family's operations were collaborating? By May of 1968, the Instituto Di Tella had become notorious not purely for its often outrageous experiments with media and performance art but also for its funding sources, namely the Ford and Rockefeller foundations. Amidst the mobilization of the Left, many artists in Argentina that year would reject cultural institutions in favor of quasi-activist projects in the public realm, so as to imagine themselves as cultural workers. With La Familia Obrera, Bony, by contrast, produced an institutionally- reflexive gesture, negotiated from within. But much as artists and intellectuals began to understand the Di Tella as a Trojan Horse of transnational capital, so too was Bony's work not exactly what it appeared, manipulating its public through processes of surrogation.

EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MILITARY ENDEAVOR, ECONOMIC GROWTH AND HAPPINESS

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)1.INTRODUCTIONEconomic literature is replete with references to the relationship between growth and happiness (Clark and Oswald, 1996;Frey and Stutzer, 2002; Blanchflower and Oswald, 2004). Likewise, there is an extent research about the relationship between military effort and economic growth (Birdi and Dunne, 2001;Dunne, 2010). However, there is almost no study that addresses the possible interactions between happiness, military effort and growth. Although the merits of the contributions proposed within these separate lines of studies are remarkable, we argue that they don't get grip on all the aspects of military endeavor. This lack of connection in research leaves many empty spaces between these different aspects, yet closely interacted. This article intends to contribute to fill this gap.The purpose of this paper is to provide a rigorous examination of the links between military endeavor, growth and happiness. From this perspective, we argue that there are two mechanisms through which military endeavor may impact happiness.The first is a direct mechanism through which the military effort directly impacts the happiness. The second is the mechanism by which it affects per capita income which in turn impacts happiness. We assert that the total effect of military effort on happiness is the result of these two effects. As far as we know, prior contributions have neglected this indirect effect, which might significantly affect happiness. To empirically investigate these direct and indirect effects of military efforts on happiness, we use a sample of 45 countries covering the period 2000 to 2013.We assert that military endeavour is likely to influence average happiness in countries in several ways. It is generally presented as a mean to achieve readiness of the country against any attack. In that sense, it is the way to provide national security which is conventionally considered as a typical public good in that it is non-rivalrous and non-excludable in consumption. Frank (1997) argues that consuming public good increases happiness to a certain point. Public good and happiness are so closely related that happiness approach has recently been used to assess the value of public goods (Di Tella et al., 2001; Welsch, 2007).Protecting the security of citizens implies not only protecting their lives but also their general living conditions. It consists in protecting facilities and insuring a continued supply of materials, i.e food, equipment, steel, water ect. From this perspective, military endeavour seems to be a mean at the service of human wellbeing. It grants to individuals a sense of protection and feelings of security. As such, individuals living in countries with well-equipped armies are expected to be happier. Moreover, countries approach national security as the national first priority considering it as an embodiment of their national sovereignty. It is natural to assume that nationals belonging to countries with high military readiness have deep feelings of national pride which make them happy. From this perspective, it seems reasonable to assume that the more important is the military effort in a Nation, the higher will be the average happiness in that Nation.In contrast with this positive view, several scholars stress some negative aspects of military effort (Welsch, 2008; Collier and Hoeffler, 2003). Indeed the impressive waste of resources that military endeavour causes and the potential distortion of the occupational structure that entails may prompt anger and fear from the population.Moreover, if military effort aims to protect the population against any counter attack, the demarcation point between defence and invasion is very fuzzy and not immovable.Besides, the increase of the military effort may refer to an imminent war which is the worst fate that put individuals in the farthest point from happiness (Welsch, 2008; Frey et al. …

ALGUNOS DETERMINANTES ECONÓMICOS Y POLÍTICOS DE LA CORRUPCIÓN A NIVEL MUNDIAL

Este ensayo se enfoca en el estudio de las causas de la corrupción mediante un modelo teórico propuesto por Alberto Ades y Rafael Di Tella (1999). De este modelo se derivaron tres hipótesis: a) las ganancias naturales (principalmente derivadas del petróleo) incentivan la corrupción; b) los aumentos en los salarios de los burócratas disminuyen la corrupción; y c) el grado en el que una sociedad es capaz de monitorear a sus funcionarios públicos reduce el nivel de corrupción. Por cuestiones de endogeneidad, las estimaciones se realizaron por Mínimos Cuadrados en Dos Etapas (MC2E). Los resultados mostraron que, dejando como única variable que midiera el grado de monitoreo de la sociedad al PIB per capita, la totalidad de los parámetros son muy significativos. Con este modelo el empleo de la variable de exportaciones de petróleo confirma la hipótesis de que las ganancias naturales incentivan la corrupción, pero los salarios de los burócratas no tienen los signos esperados, es decir que, mayores salarios de los burócratas no reducen la corrupción en la muestra a nivel mundial. En lo que respecta al papel de las exportaciones de petróleo, su efecto sólo resultó significativo en el grupo de países de ingreso medio, observándose que tales exportaciones incrementan la corrupción de este grupo de países.

The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin American Music in the 1960s: The Creation of Indiana University’s LAMC and Di Tella Institute’s CLAEM

Research Article| April 01 2017 The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin American Music in the 1960s: The Creation of Indiana University’s LAMC and Di Tella Institute’s CLAEM Eduardo Herrera Eduardo Herrera Eduardo Herrera is assistant professor in ethnomusicology and music history at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He specializes in contemporary musical practices from Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Latin America. He has done historical and ethnographic research in topics including Argentinean and Uruguayan avant-garde music, soccer chants as participatory music making, and music and postcoloniality in Latin America. Herrera is currently working on a book titled “Elite Art Worlds: Philanthropy, Latin Americanism, and Avant-Garde Music” and an edited collection, in collaboration with Alejandro Madrid and Ana Alonso-Minutti, titled “Experimentalisms in Practice: Music Perspectives from Latin America” (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Music (2017) 35 (1): 51–74. https://doi.org/10.5406/americanmusic.35.1.0051 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Eduardo Herrera; The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin American Music in the 1960s: The Creation of Indiana University’s LAMC and Di Tella Institute’s CLAEM. American Music 1 January 2017; 35 (1): 51–74. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/americanmusic.35.1.0051 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressAmerican Music Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Remembering objects in the essay film: Andrés di Tella as heir, archaeologist and collector

Abstract Although Andrés di Tella is among the leading documentary filmmakers in South America, his work has received scant attention in the Anglophone world. Di Tella’s essayistic films mix personal and intimate perspectives with public and historical concerns, crafting a tentative filmic voice that is articulated on the borders between the public and the private. In his subjective explorations of personal and collective pasts, di Tella calls on material objects to play a vital role. Subjective recollections are accompanied by the constitution of collections of objects, material items that are the remainders from and the keys to the past. Remembering is remembering with and through things and senses of self and identity are forged and questioned in dialogue with constellations of objects. This article examines the interaction between subjects and objects in di Tella’s work with special attention to Fotografías (Photographs, 2007) and Hachazos (Ax Blows, 2011).

Media, Art, and Politics in the Work of Roberto Jacoby

Roberto Jacoby is part of a generation of artists who, in a series of important exhibitions at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires in the 1960s, began to combine structuralism and semiology with Marxism. His art projects have been predominantly collaborative, and their very status as “art” has been troubled by their pervasive ephemerality, context specificity, and topicality. To this day, Jacoby's art, research, and writings continue to confound the boundaries of the art institution.

Selected Writings

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.

Crossed Paths between France and Argentina

« Colchones : “Revuelquese y viva” : Nueva formula de arte », Todo, 1rst october 1964 (Clement Greenberg, Jorge Romero Brest and Pierre Restany at the Premio Di Tella) The art critic Pierre Restany’s travels describe a trajectory that can be followed in the articles he published internationally, in his correspondence, and also in the original documents held in archives in France and abroad. Pierre Restany first arrived in Buenos Aires in 1964, where he established professional and friendly r...