This article by the Uruguayan artist Clemente Padín was published in the first issue of the Venezuelan tabloid magazine Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón (January 1976). Managed and published by the artist Diego Barboza, the magazine was highly representative of the various forms of mail art. Padín’s article is itself a piece of mail art, and is also an invitation and a report. In the first place, he presents his project in a well-organized, classic format (with a hypothesis and objectives) that includes details about the basic aspects of his proposed “action language.” In the second place, it is a report on an event that Padín organized some years earlier at a museum (the MAC-USP, in São Paulo, in 1974). And, thirdly, it is also his invitation to other artists, and to the magazine’s readers in general, to participate in an exchange of opinions, documents, and projects by mail. This article shows the sense of social commitment that was one of the fundamental ideas that motivated the artists who were involved in the mail art movement, as can be clearly seen in the title: “El artista está al servicio de la comunidad” [The Artist’s Role is to Serve the Community]. Most mail-artists also created important works in other spheres of conceptual art, and often used mail art to share their visual art or their performances and/or activities at an international level, as in the case of this article.
