Padin Performances
- Artist/Author/Producer: Clemente Padin
- Confronting Bodies: Supremo Tribunal Militar - Montevideo, Uruguay
- Dates of action: 1975-1984
- Location: Montevideo, Uruguay
- Description of the Art Work
- Padin's body of work consists of anti-Fascist, political performances,
often performed in city streets. The purpose of his performane For Life
and For Peace, 1987, for example, was to denounce "compulsory
disappearance" of citizens as a method of resolving social antagonism.
During the performance, the abduction, torture and "disappearance" of a
political prisoner was simulated. Each of the 170 blows taken to the
prisoner stood for a missing person. The work ended with the
presentation of a cardboard sign reading: "No More Fascism!"
- Description of incident
- In 1973, after forty years of constitutional rule, governmental control
in Uruguay was handed over to the military. Resulting from the fear
inflicted by the terrorist group Tupamaros, a rigid censorship was
imposed and all political activities banned. Civil rights and fair
trials "disappeared" along with thousands of political prisoners. In
August 1975, Padin was imprisoned in Montevideo, for the crime of
"vilification and mocking of the armed forces". His articl"El lenguaje
de la accion" (The Language of Action) published in the Brazilian
periodical Abertura Cultural in 1975, was used as evidence against him.
- Results of incident
- Released from prison October 1977. He was forbidden to leave Montevideo,
compelled to check-in weekly with government officials, and forbidden
correspondence until February 1984. His two year prison sentence was
thereby extended into a "ten year silence".
Source:Clemente Padin