On March 2nd I attended the artist lecture given by the artist Sheryl Oring. In her lecture she focused on the question of 'what is the role of the artist in activating the public?' She considered most sorts of professions to be considered artistic, such as a musician, dancer, director, academic, actor, etc. She has been using the tools of a journalist, mainly the old fashion writing technique of a typewriter, to examine critical issues. During her lecture she mentions how art goes along with things such as the first amendment, memory, and time. She shows a memorial that is meant to represent the Nazi book burning and showed us a video called "Writer's Block" that contained images of her own memorial as a response to this first one created by an Israeli artist. Her memorial consists of cages for typewriters as a way to show the importance of free expression.
Today Oring continues to travel with her typewriters for her project called "I wish to Say," which began in 2004 and includes Oring finding a place to set up her typewriter in order to allow people to tell her what to type in a letter, usually to a specific person. When performing this work, she is often dressed in character depending on where she is who she will be essentially writing to. For example, when she began this project in 2004, she dressed as a secretary of the President (George Bush at the time) and asked people to tell her what they wish to say to him, whether it was concern from the people or a simple greeting. She continued this project i 2008 by sending birthday cards to the president with each state and city that she visited written on it. In 2010, she was in San Jose performing this work when even kids began to get involved, as well as her having friends helping her write these letters on other typewriters. The presidential campaign of 2016 has been her largest version of I wish to Say. She has students learn how to use a typewriter and help out when she was in Bryan Park, New York City.
This project still continues today, but in other forms and with a different purpose, such as her "Greetings from Tampa Bay," in which people shared their stories about this city, and is later integrated into a sculpture at the Tampa International Airport. For her project "Travel Desk," four typists dressed as flight attendants from the 1960s sat with their typewriters at the San Diego International Airport in order to type stories about travel or working in an airport from people coming and going. These stories would be later displayed with a photo of the person who told this story.
I believe that it is so great for this artist to have found something that she can do so many things with and have such a great impact on people wherever she goes, such as her "I Wish to Say" project. When she began "I Wish to Say" it was just her at a single table with her typewriter and a sign that asked people to dictate to her what they wished to say about what was going on in the world of politics. I also find it great that she, and those who helped her later on, would be specifically dressed for their location, such as the airport, or a presidential campaign. Everything about this project is very interactive and can become quite personal to those who also may have felt like their voice wasn't being heard in the world of politics, for these dictated letters were actually sent to the White House. This project continues to be a great of one's voice being heard, which I believe we need more than ever with everything that has been happening since our recent vote on the presidential level.
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