Cildo Meireles, Insertions into Ideological Circuits 2: Banknote Project, 1970
From the Tate Collection:
For the Banknote Project Meireles stamped subversive messages onto banknotes before returning them to normal circulation. The twenty-seven banknotes presented to Tate by the artist include varying denominations of cruzeiro notes – the Brazilian currency of the time – as well as US dollar bills. The messages, appearing in both English and Portuguese, include such anti-American slogans as ‘Yankees Go Home’ as well as calls for democracy and political freedom – ‘Straight Elections’ – and the words ‘Quem Matou Herzog?’ or ‘Who Killed Herzog?’, referring to a journalist who died in police custody under suspicious circumstances. Meireles stamped the banknotes on both sides – his message appearing on one side and the work’s title and the artist’s statement of purpose: ‘To register informations and critical opinions on bottles and return them to circulation’ – appearing on the other. The Coca-Cola Project follows a similar format: Meireles attached transparent labels with his slogans and the work’s title and purpose to the sides of Coca-Cola bottles which, once emptied of Coca-Cola, would be returned to the factory to be reused. Thus the artist’s messages circulated invisibly within Brazilian society.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Waking Up (from the series Elles), 1896.
Excerpts of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness with a backwards map of the world at night burned into it - Luke Nedza
