Artist Statement

“One after another, the voices of New York sat on a small stool across from her, cleared their throats and thoughts, and dictated. And on postcard after postcard, Ms. Oring typed their words, click:-click:-click, clickety:-click:-click, her fingers tap dancing joyously across glinting keys, her face a mask of stenographic neutrality.” _The New York Times

During each of the past three Presidential election years in the U.S., I have been traveling across the country with a typewriter in hand, setting up a portable office in parks, flea markets and town squares and inviting passersby to dictate letters to the U.S. President. I type the cards verbatim, send the original to the White House and keep a carbon copy for the project archive.
In 2016, UK:-based publisher Intellect Books will release a book that will feature a selection of postcards to the President dictated at “I Wish to Say” performances over the years, photographs of the performances and critical essays from art historians and creative writers about various aspects of the work.
Beyond that, I am planning a series of campus:-based events in which students perform the work and engage with the materials collected on their own campuses to create zines, artist books, videos, installations, sculptures, prints, and their own performance works. I see these student:-run events as an entirely new phase of the project, one that will allow it to grow in new ways and one that allows students to take an active role in shaping it.
Cedar Nordbye, Associate Professor of Art at the University of Memphis, described the impact of my performance: “When Sheryl Oring’s brought her project “I Wish to Say” to the University of Memphis, she modeled for our students a kind of civic engagement that we so desperately need on our campus,” he said. “Two years later, students still recall the project vividly.”
Here are a few project highlights:
_ In 2012, Oring created a five:-person typing pool that took dictation of hundreds of postcards during the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC.
_ In 2008, Oring visited dozens of university campuses across the country, from the State University of New York at Fredonia to Pitzer College in Claremont, CA. At each stop, she listened to students – often first:-time voters – and recorded their thoughts on national priorities. The cards were featured in a solo exhibition at the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum in Chicago.
_ In 2004, Oring staged her performance in various locations in New York City during the Republican National Convention. Peter Jennings named her “Person of the Week” and profiled her on ABC’s “World News Tonight,” while papers ranging from the Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal reported on Oring and “I Wish to Say.”
ISEA2015 offers an ideal opportunity for discussing this work in progress with artists and academics from around the world and I am thankful for the opportunity.

• Sheryl Oring is Professor and Chair of the James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University in Detroit, USA. Sheryl Oring examines critical social issues through projects that incorporate old and new media to tell stories, examine public opinion and foster open exchange. Using tools typically employed by journalists (the camera, the typewriter, the pen, the interview and the archive) she builds on experience in her former profession to create installations, performances, artist books and internet-based works that address themes of citizenship, free expression, first amendment rights, story-telling and activism through art. sheryloring.org

Examples of letters [PDF]