The show "In Numbers: Serial Publications by Artists" currently on view at X Initiative surveys a selection of artwork made in pre-digital tactical media, including magazine and mail art -- or in the case of "FILE," both: this serial spoof by General Idea (AA Bronson, Felix Partz, and Jorge Zontal) was allowed through standard distribution channels in the early 1970s because of its resemblance to Life. In turn, Anna Banana and William Gaglione published eight issues of a much more visually agressive Vile magazine from 1974 to 1983, with covers including the likes of "Dada" shaved into chest hair.   Other selections in the show include Wallace Berman's "Semina," Eleanor Antin's "100 Boots," and Buster Cleveland's "Art For Um" collage series.  Though Jorge Pardo's colorful floor is a mildly annoying distraction to material that would be better furnished by a neutral context, and though the exhibition's claim to "represent the first serious effort to define a neglected art form" seems at least mildly overstated, this is indeed a major exhibition of a "minor art" and in its totality, demonstrates  a much more strategically engaging recipe for institutional critque than the work of Hans Haacke, currently on view in a solo show at X; the jouissance  of mail art makes Haacke's strategies look remarkably didactic by comparison.