In this text, Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles recalls the late sixties when he and other artists “first came into contact with what was truly of interest,” mainly acting directly on real “situations” rather than creating representations of them. Meireles describes how artistic projects cast aside “worship of the object” in order to “exist” and take shape in relation to what they “provoked in the social fabric.” Artists were interested in reaching a larger number of people and in interrogating notions of “audience” and “consumer.” Meireles describes the conception of projects known as Coca-Cola and Cédula (both from 1970), and of the series Inserções em circuitos ideológicos, which addresses how information circulates in existing systems of (inter)change by means of operating at the margins of the official control of those circuits. The idea was to introduce “counter-information” by restocking industrial merchandise and currency circulation in order to neutralize “their original ideological propaganda.” In this project, art would then have a “social function” insofar as it would be responsive to the society in which it operates while also awakening the awareness of that society.

This text by Eudoro Macieira was published in the book Cildo Meireles which forms part of the series Arte Brasileira Contemporânea published by Funarte (Brazilian National Foundation for the Arts) from 1978 to 1983. The text is a summary of an extensive statement by Meireles originally recorded as part of research carried out by Antonio Manuel, who, along with Artur Barrio, is one of the artists close to Meireles that best exemplifies works that propose “situações.” Cildo Meireles (b. 1948) is a pioneer of Conceptual art from Brazil, with production in the media of installation and sculpture. His work not only encourages viewer participation, but also addresses the problems of contradiction and the absurd while formulating a basic criticism of repressive, dominant, and alienated systems. The idea of “inserção,” or critical meddling in vicious circles, is the structural series that earned the artist notoriety at one of the harshest moments of the military dictatorship. In this text, Meireles explains his ideas about the Brazilian art system of the early seventies, when he worked on two series: Inserções em circuitos ideológicos and Inserções em circuitos antropológicos. The artist explores the ideas of merchandise, consumer, and anonymity to counter the ideas of “art object,” “audience,” and “property.” In order to avoid the neutralization that museums and galleries inflict on art, Meireles chose to leave institutional art organizations behind. For the Coca-Cola project (1970), the artist put stickers with phrases like “Yankees, go home” on empty soft drink bottles that were then put back into circulation with the suggestion that other messages be added. In Cédula (1970), the artist stamped on one cruzeiro bills the question “Quem matou Herzog?” in reference to Vladimir Herzog, a journalist close to the Communist Party who was reportedly found dead in an office of the political police after undergoing an interrogation. The political police, the organ of repression for the military dictatorship in power from 1964 to 1985, never clarified the cause of death, denied torture, and claimed that it was a suicide by hanging.