‘Creative Fix’ Invites Artists to Play an Active Role in Politics

Inga Kiderra | April 13, 2009

What would artists do to fix the country, if they could do anything at all? In her upcoming project, “Creative Fix,” UC San Diego MFA student and former journalist Sheryl Oring will be asking this very question to California artists, videotaping their one-minute answers and posting them to YouTube. By doing so, Oring hopes to bring artists into the contemporary political debate.

“I Wish to Say,” MFA student Sheryl Oring gathered public opinion during the 2008 presidential election by setting up an “office” in public places and inviting passersby to dictate postcards to the next president. In “Creative Fix,” she is asking artists to come up with solutions to the nation’s problems that she’ll then post to YouTube.

In April and May, Oring is calling artists to three galleries – at UCSD, in the North Park neighborhood of San Diego and in Los Angeles – to discuss their creative solutions. Artists of all types, from architects and dancers to painters and writers, are invited to participate. Artists, she said, can offer a fresh perspective on many of the most pressing issues of the day.

Oring is a former journalist (The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Die Welt), whose provocative work explores the intersection of language, politics and memory. The idea for “Creative Fix” grew out of her most recent past work, a public art project called “I Wish to Say.” For this, Oring set out to gather public opinion during the 2008 presidential election by setting up an “office,” complete with a manual typewriter, in public places and inviting passers-by to dictate postcards to the next president. Many people spoke out for change, and Oring feels the challenges facing this nation demand attention from more than just the usual suspects.

“In other parts of the world, artists play a legitimate role in politics and political debate,” she said, citing examples such as Václav Havel, the playwright who became president of Czechoslovakia, and the German political system, in which the arts play a significant role in local and national political institutions. “In the U.S., however, artists are seen as suspect. I’d like to do one small thing to change this and bring more creativity to American politics.”
 
“Creative Fix” is currently California-based, but may travel nationally and has the potential to expand to an international scale as viewers respond to the videos posted on Oring’sYouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/iwishtosay.  The final shape of the participatory project depends on the creativity of respondents.

Oring, 43, is a first-year MFA student in the visual arts department focused on public culture. Led by architect Teddy Cruz, public culture is a new emphasis at UCSD’s department of visual arts. Cruz is Oring’s mentor.

"At a time when everyone is searching for solutions to the current crisis, hopefully, these solutions are not just understood as an excuse to maintain a 'lifestyle', the models of urban growth that has become unsustainable,” Cruz said. “So, more than solutions, we should be searching for new types of 'arrangements' to alter the way we have been selfishly consuming our economic and natural resources."

More About the Artist:

Sheryl Oring is the author of “I Wish to Say: The Birthday Project,” a book published in 2008 that features a collection of birthday cards for former President George W. Bush, which were dictated at public events Oring held in eight cities across the country. Named ABC News’ Person of the Week by Peter Jennings for her performance piece “I Wish to Say” during the 2004 Republican Convention in New York City, Oring is a former journalist (The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Die Welt), whose provocative work explores the intersection of language, politics and memory. Her past work includes “Writing Home,” a performance in which she invited people to dictate letters to their ancestors; and “Writer’s Block,” a sculptural installation made out of hundreds of antique typewriters. She has received fellowships from the Creative Capital Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts and the Robert Bosch Foundation; held a residency as part of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Swing Space program; and exhibited in museums, cultural centers, galleries and public spaces in the United States, Europe and India. Oring has a degree in journalism from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and has studied art history and theory at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She is working on an MFA in Visual Arts with an emphasis in public culture at UC San Diego.