M36 Eduardo Costa

Useful Art Manifesto (1969)

After the Argentine revolution of 1966, artists began to explore how they could use their art to combat the repression and censorship of the new military dictatorship. The Argentinian artist Eduardo Costa (b. 1940), who was one of the founding members of the conceptual art group Arte de los Medios de Comunicación Masivos (M31), believed that art should not be elitist, but should serve society in some practical way. Between 1966 and 1971, Costa visited New York, where he belonged to the thriving ‘happening’ avant-garde art scene. As part of Street Works, an event organized by a group of poets and artists, he devised and performed a series of small acts of public usefulness together with the American artist Scott Burton on 15 March 1969. He recorded these performances in the ‘Useful Art Manifesto’, which he wrote in English. Costa’s manifesto directly inspired the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera’s Immigrant Movement International (M99), an activist art organization which agitates for the rights of migrants across the world.

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On March 15, 1969, Eduardo Costa introduced the initial two works in his series Useful Art Works, as part of Street Works performed in N.Y.C. by a group of artists and poets.

The first of these works consisted of buying at his own expense and placing in the right place the missing metal street signs at the North East corners of 42nd St. and Madison Ave., 51st St. and Fifth Ave., 49th St. and Fifth Ave., 45th St. and Fifth Ave., 44th St. and Fifth Ave., and 51st St. and Sixth Ave. These new ones replaced only some of the street signs missing in the area of midtown New York designated for the performance of Street Works. The signs read E 42 St, E 51 St, E 49 St, E 45 St, E 44 St, and W 51 St, and might be considered as a discontinuous literary work with six lines.

The second Useful Art Work consisted of painting the subway station at 42nd St. and Fifth Ave. on the Flushing line.

These art works were intended to attack the myth of the lack of utility of the arts, while being in themselves a modest contribution to the improvement of city living conditions.

Both Works were performed – with the help of Scott Burton – between 2:30 and 7:00 a.m., to avoid any problems involving the municipal laws. The second Work could not be finished.

E. C.