Written in August 1978, this text is the artist’s testimony regarding what he calls his Cadernoslivros [notebook-books], which he started making as early as 1966. What Barrio emphasizes about these is the process that stimulates his poetics [poíesin, “to make” in Greek]. In bringing up the plural nature of their content (texts, books, images, projects, etc.), Artur Barrio has no hesitation in proposing them as “a new medium.”

As the artist tells us, his Cadernoslivros recorded his work at the same time they brought together the projects, meditations, documents, and ideas of an artistic universe that often came to him in his absolute marginality. Even if some proposals were being developed in public spaces, the backdrop for this artwork was the early years of a military coup that lasted two decades (1964–85), depriving Brazilians of all their civil rights.

Born in Portugal and living in Brazil starting in 1955, Artur Barrio (b. 1945) began writing his “notebook-books”—with notes in his own private language—starting in the late 1960s. His various writings clearly identify certain topics around which his art approach revolves, even assuming material form in his radical conceptual artwork.

[For other texts by Artur Barrio, see in the ICAA digital archive “Se o corpo é o suporte” (doc. no. 1110694); “Fantasias; Fragmentos” (doc. no. 1110600); “DOM,...O,,DE...P...PEL” (doc. no. 1110595); “Depoimento I” (doc. no. 1110598); “Barrio” (doc. no. 1110491); with the artists Dinah Guimaraens and Lauro Cavalcanti “Mitos Vadios” (doc. no. 1110494); and a publication about the artist published by FUNARTE ? Coleção ABC, Barrio (doc. no. 1111068)].