Mensaje en el Di Tella (Message in the Di Tella)

Roberto Jacoby

Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1944
  • Date: 
    1968/2011
  • Descriptive technique: 
    Installation that documents the action taking place in May 1968 at the "Instituto Di Tella" in Buenos Aires (Manifesto on blackboard, teleprinter and poster)
  • Dimensions: 
    Part 01: 240 x 150,5 cm / Part 02: 170 x 65,5 cm / Part 03: 89,7 x 59,9 cm / Part 04: 45 x 53 x 65 cm
  • Category: 
    Installation, Action
  • Entry date: 
    2011
  • Register number: 
    AD06490

In the 1960s, Argentine Roberto Jacoby’s work pre-empted the social and political upheavals in Latin American art. At the collective exhibition Experiencias 68 at the Di Tella Institute in Buenos Aires, Jacoby presented Mensaje en el Di Tella (Message in the Di Tella), a work consisting of a poster-manifesto and teleprinter connected to the France-Presse news agency, which typed out real-time news about the events of May 1968. By referencing the present alongside mentions of racist violence and the Vietnam War, the work was arguing for art’s dissolution into social life and the necessary transformation of the conditions of human existence and of those of the artwork’s existence. The destruction by the artists themselves of all the works in Experiencias 68 reflects one of Jacoby’s statements relating to art’s function as a projection of the future: “The future of art is not connected to the creation of works, but to the definition of new concepts of life, and the artist becomes the presenter of those concepts. ‘Art’ no longer has any importance. Life is what matters. It is the history of the coming years.” The installation Mensaje en el Di Tella documents the emergence of a political art based more on action than the materiality of the artwork.

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