C.A.D.A.

‍C.A.D.A. (Colectivo Acciones de Arte) was an art action group whose members included the artists Lotty Rosenfeld and Juan Castillo, the writer Diamela Eltit, the sociologist Fernando Balcells, and the poet Raúl Zurita. The collective used the public space as a backdrop for their actions. Their first project was Para no morir de hambre en el arte/To Avoid Starving to Death in Art (1979), which involved several simultaneous components consisting of actions staged: in a working-class neighborhood in Santiago, outside of the United Nations building, at the Galería de Arte Centro Imagen, and in an insert that referenced the action in HOY magazine. Their interventions intended to interrupt normalized routines of daily urban life, with semiotic subversion, and decontextualize urban behaviors, locations, and signs. C.A.D.A.’s most celebrated project is a campaign they began in 1983, No +, which protested the 10th anniversary of Pinochet’s dictatorship by spreading in public spaces an open-ended slogan that citizens were invited to complete. “No + dictadura” (No more dictatorship), “No + hambre” (No more hunger) or “No + torturas” (No more torture) was written on public walls and displayed on political banners.