In this text, artist and essayist Francisco Tomsich interviews Clemente Padín about his artistic career and the performance he did at the Boxing Club de Barrio Sur in Montevideo in 1987 in which he condemned the forced disappearance of individuals during the military dictatorship in Uruguay, in power from 1973 to 1985. In the performance, Padín punched a fake human torso (a mannequin of the sort used in clothing stores) about 185 times. He then said “one hundred and eighty-five people disappeared for political reasons in Uruguay.” Meanwhile, the torso had been torn to bits. While the action was performed many times after the return to democracy in Uruguay, it had considerable impact because the crimes of state terrorism had not been revealed or publicly debated.

During the military-civilian dictatorship in Uruguay, the government banned political parties and trade unions, censored the media, and persecuted, imprisoned, and murdered its opponents. Certain niches in the cultural sphere persisted and remained active despite that extremely adverse situation. Experimental poet, graphic designer, mail artist, performer, and networker Clemente Padín describes how many artists and groups produced work in spaces of transit—instead of in mainstream venues—which in turn led to analysis of the processes by which artwork was received. Production of this sort was particularly prevalent after 1980, the year when a referendum was put forth by the reigning dictatorship to reform the constitution and perpetuate its own power, but [the referendum] was widely rejected by a large margin. In the late seventies and early eighties, Padín participated in networks of artists that produced a flow of images, data, and information condemning human rights violations around the planet. In this document, Padín explains that his work was part of a strategy devised by Uruguayan and foreign artists who shared a single goal: not to work for museums or galleries, but to take to the street and turn the “viewer” into a “creative builder.”