THE ZERO DOLLAR EFFECT

2009-05-21T00:12:00.000-07:00

This morning I stumbled upon an interesting article in a Dutch newspaper on the current Economic Crisis and how Keynes MasterPiece would be the key. The illustrations used with the article immedialty drew my attention and are an perfect example of how timeless and relevant and priceless contemporary & conceptual art can be. I say MasterCard anyone or is the creditcard crisis the next big thing?

Zero Dollar Zero Dollar (1979-84) by artist Cildo Meireles

The Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles is widely recognized as one of the leaders in the international development of Conceptual art. Meireles has made some of the most philosophically brilliant, politically telling and aesthetically seductive works in recent art. Since the late 1960s he has created sculptures and installations which involve an element of participation.

"LatinArt: With Zero Dollar did it function more as a public project, were you actually going out distributing the dollars?

Cildo Meireles: Well I did it in different ways, I even sold the dollars. But, most of the time I just gave them to people. But they could be sold. When I first did the Zero Dollar project I wanted to sell them on the streets. I went to a street vendor in Rio, but then I discovered that the street vendor was part of a huge operation and the police were involved. So then I had to deal with this guy who was a police man. But the idea [referring to Zero Dollar] was to produce an object and then try to put this object into circulation which causes the object to provoke a kind of shift in anthropological behavior. Which is different than Insertions..."

source: Latinart

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THE ZERO DOLLAR EFFECT