> contents / Clemente Padin - Uruguay / interview by Sztuka Fabryka (2000) /

1. How and when did you become involved in Mail-Art?

I became involved in Mail-Art near 1967 when, with my Latin-American friends Edgardo Antonio Vigo, Guillermo Deisler and Damaso Ogaz, we started to exchange our reviews and our mail-art works. The Uruguayan review OVUM 10 published 6 postcards with my visual poems in 1969. Later, in 1974, during the Uruguayan military dictatorship, I organized the First Latin-American Mail-Art Exposition documented at the Gallery U, in Montevideo.

Also, I participated in the first Mail-Art Shows realized in the U.S.A. in the fall 60s. and beginnings 70s. To the current moment (December 2001) I have participated in near 1300 expositions of Mail-Art.

2. Can you give us a short C.V. of your Mail-Art activities from the beginning till now?

After the first Mail-Art Show in Latin-American, I was imprisoned for the Uruguayan dictatorship in 1977 for my opposition to the military government. An edition of artistamps and false mail-stamps denouncing the suppression of human rights and the death, torture and disappearance of many people opposite to the regime led my incarceration and the sentence by four years for "transgression that hurt the moral and reputation of the army". But an intense and supported mobilization of hundred and hundred of artists in the whole world freed me after only two years and three months!

After, I organized many Mail-Art Exposition on Latino American themes like the Blockade to Cuba, The Civil war in Nicaragua, The Bombing in Panama, For Chile Free, Centennial of Marti, Stop Torture and many others. Also a great exposition for Mandela's Freedom. My last Mail-Art Show was in the 7th Biennale of Cuba, in November 2000: THE MAIL ART HIT PARADE 2000, in the streets of Havana.

3. What are your specific activities within Mail-Art?

I like very much to make artistamps and decorated envelopes. Also, organize expositions and publish magazines of Mail-Art. Now I am editing SOUTHERN POST, a fanzine on artistamps. In the last months I am occupying, through notes and rehearsals, of diffusing the proposals of the Mail-Art because Mail-Art is falling in the market of the art and the networkers are forgetting the basic principles of Mail-Art, above all, "money and Mail-Art don´t mix". So, Mail-Art is quitting being an instrument of communication in order to be a merchandise more in the market.

4. Can you tell us something more about the first Mail-Art exhibition you have organized in Latin-America?

In 1974, during the Uruguayan military dictatorship I organized the first documented Latin-American Mail-Art Exposition, at U Gallery, in Montevideo, Uruguay, called Creative Postcard Festival. A facsimil of the cataloge and the English´s translation of the prologue are in CORRESPONDENCE ART by Michael Crane and Mary Stofflet, Contemporary Arts Press, San Francisci, USA, 1984.

5. How did you feel that hundreds of people who you do not know from person even you haven't written with, were able to set you free? Thanks to that one single activity you had in common with them: Mail-Art.

It was increible...!!! In 1977, I was jailed by the dictatorship for "hurt the morale and reputation of the army" during two years and three months. I was condemned for four years but the international solidarity liberated me before. The real cause of my detention was my artistic activities against the brutality of the dictatorship and also for to organise the Counter-Biennial in front the Latin-American Section of the X Biennial of Paris,France, curated by the Director of the Fine arts Museum of Uruguay. After, I had a period of "watched over liberty": I could not receive neither send mail, the Uruguay could not leave from neither of Montevideo, etc., etc. But, starting from 1984, when the Uruguay returned to the democracy I was re-born to art and life, I organized the "May 1st., Workers-Day" in Montevideo and many other shows about freedom to Chile, Panama, Paraguay, Nicaragua, against Apartheid and United States Interventions, etc. All these exhibitions were donated to the social institutes that had sponsored them, like the "Uruguayan Association for Mandela's Freedom", etc. par example, the Jose Marti: 100th Anniversary" that I curated was donated to the "Americans' House" of Cuba, because Jose Marti was the Cuban National Hero. And so.....

6. Did you get another look on Mail-Art, after your imprisonment and the solidarity from Mail-Art followed by your freedom?

Yes..! Don´t forget that from August 1977 to April 1984, I practically could not practice Mail-Art nor any other form of art. Seven years out of network... but, thanks to that liberty, I could attend my family: my wife and my small daughter was suffering, not only for my absence, but for the lacking in means of life. Really, I am and I will be in debt with all the artists that they were added to the campaign for my liberty. The only form that I have is to return that solidarity with more solidarity.

7. What happens with the Mail-Art you receive? Do you have a Mail-Art archive?

Yes, I have a proto-Mail Art archive, id est, yet it is not a file. I go hardly ordering all material that I receive in boxes of carton-plast of the same size. The criterion of order is not the better but it is the most functional. I established some functional divisions: countries, catalogs (per year), creative envelopes and postals. On the other hand I try to separate Mail Art of experimental Poetry.

My current file began in 1984, year in which the Uruguay recuperated the liberty. Uruguay remained 13 fateful years under a murderess military dictatorship. When I fell prisoner, in 1977, the army carried off everything my file (that I gathered from 1964) and never returned it to me. Also, from 1979 to 1984, I was under the regimen of "provisional liberty" and I could not exercise my profession of artist. Only in 1984 began to participate again in the network.

Nowadays I confront the topic of the lacking in space in my house. No longer I know where keep the shipments. The ideal for me would be could compose a Foundation that becomes expense of my legacy and of my file like the Foundation that was erected with the work of Edgardo Antonio Vigo in La Plata, Argentine, after his death. But, in the Uruguay, this is very hard... See you: some years ago I donated some books of mine (of those that I possessed an only copy so that they are not lost) to the National Library. Some days ago I was going to see them but the employees inform me that they be robbed. What could I wait for?

8. Could you tell us something more about the magazine OVUM? When did it start, when was the last edition, what was it, ...?

OVUM 10 was the second magazine that edited, only dedicated to the visual poetry and alternating arts. It is the continuation of my literature review LOS HUEVOS DEL PLATA, 1965-1969 (The Balls of River Plate). OVUM 10 was edited only ten numbers from 1969 to 1971. After, in 1973, at the beginning of the Uruguayan dictatorship I edited a second time, only called OVUM, until 1975. I don't resist to transcribe the justification: "OVUM begin a second era. It is obvious the necessity of a magazine to spread the resuklts of our experiences and to forbide the communicative barrier. All those experiences, agreeding with the inherent postulates of every vanguard activity, it doesn´t matter the artistic field chosen: poems, painting, music, theatre, audio-visual technics, propositions, theoric texts, etc., in all their concurrents an derivations, will have a place in OVUM. These postulates belong to every creactions or proposiotions that modifies or upset the ancient and stereotype ways of expression in any sense (1973).

OVUM 10 published 6 postcards with my visual poems in 1969. It was my official baptism in mail art. Previously, I had begun to interchange my works, via mail art, from 1967. Also, with OVUM, I organized in 1974 the First Latin American Mail Art Exposition documented (also called FESTIVAL DE LA POSTAL CREATIVA) at the Gallery U in Montevideo. About OVUM, the artist and critic of art, Géza Perneczky said:

"The periodical and private publications that had midwifed in the birth of the network (File of Canada, the American Weekly Breeder and Mail Order Art, Poland´s net, Padín´s OVUM, etc.) displayed, to different degrees, motives that emphasizes the need for social contacts or were based on more commercial interests". (A Halo, 1991, p. 232)