This document is an article by Argentinean communication theorist Edgardo Antonio Vigo, published in the second issue of the magazine Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón (Venezuela, 1976). After offering some thoughts on the art market in relation to capitalistic exchange and consumption, Vigo analyzes the role of Mail art as a way to elude the system (above all subject to authoritarian regimes). He emphasizes that Mail art is part of the revolutionary process of art, and not of the (temporal) path of subversion. Relying on Jean Baudrillard’s theory of “marginal communication,” Vigo analyzes the difference between passive media (without response) and those that act as “agents that spark dialogue.” The text concludes by offering ideas, hypotheses, and the principal guidelines of “this very new trend in marginal and creative communication.”

The essay by Argentinean poet, artist, and theoretician Edgardo Antonio Vigo (1928–97) was written for the second and final issue of Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón (Caracas, March 1976). Vigo states definitively that his essay will not speak to the development of Mail art itself, but instead to how to locate it within the revolutionary process of art. Although this is an essay (and not a manifesto), the author expresses himself in name of a group of “engaged creators,” and as he finishes his reflections on theory, he puts forth the central ideas that connect the group as if it were a declaration of principles: “We do not believe in subversion, but in revolution (…). We wholeheartedly believe in the revolutionary process of art…”

The inclusion of Vigo’s essay in Buzón de Arte reinforces the importance and international scope of this publication, led and published by Venezuelan artist Diego Barboza. Vigo was among the most important contemporary artists of Argentina and he was the chief representative and exponent of Mail art in his country. Before he died, Vigo donated his works and records to the Fundación Centro de Artes Visuales de La Plata (province of Buenos Aires), which went on to create the Centro de Arte Experimental Edgardo Antonio Vigo. The second issue of Buzón de Arte appeared in Venezuela in March 1976 and Vigo’s essay is dated in La Plata, in resistance to and denunciation of the dictatorship’s crimes.

For the essay by Edgardo Antonio Vigo and Horacio Zabala, published in the first issue of the magazine Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón (Caracas, January 1976), see in the ICAA digital archive “Arte-correo una nueva forma de expresión” (doc. no. 1154763).