Argentinean electronic arts in the hallway of the international scene: modernisation imaginaries and oscillating institutional developments

The crossroads between art, science and technology are extended extend into a vast and relatively undefined world, modulated by a series of qualities inherent to their practices in permanent tension: to the revisited frictions between dissimilar disciplines, media and
methodologies entailed by these kinds of works, which inevitably make their classification difficult, one adds the frequent labour of artists who tend to incorporate scientific and technical knowhow, or even to work in conjunction with specialists from other fields of discipline, thereby dissolving the dividing lines between the notion of the traditional artwork and the concepts of machine, device, apparatus, artefact and experiment. These attributes not only hinder
the categorization of artistic productions, but also challenge the conception of physical and conceptual works, strictly individual or collective, two categories that still dominate the history,
theory and aesthetics of contemporary art.
This article argues that, in Argentina, this complexity is radicalised by two strands of analysis designated as “identity” and “institutional”. The former is associated with the imaginaries of modernisation that run through the history of Argentinean art, science and technology; the latter refers to the particular logics of growth and expansion of the institutions that have been promoting the confluence of art and technology from the seventies to the present day. In order to show the ways in which both aspects converged in certain initiatives,
a 2014 exhibition at the San Martín Cultural Centre, a well-known institution managed by the Government of the City of Buenos Aires, is analysed. After reviewing the imaginings of the future and of innovation that have marked the local circuit, as well as the oscillating institutional developments, the article puts forward possible strategies for exploring imaginaries with a degree of autonomy with respect to the international scene, related to their own research and creation contexts.