In 2004, artist Sheryl Oring donned a red, white, and blue outfit of a 1960s-era secretary and first performed her ongoing social practice project I Wish to Say. She asked participants, “If I were the president, what would you wish to say to me?” She typed their responses verbatim with a typewriter onto four-by-six-inch postcards. This began her ongoing attempts to listen to and record people’s messages to the president.

The artist uses carbon paper to make a second postcard. She sends the original to the White House and archives and exhibits the copy. To date, she has typed more than five thousand postcards in her attempts to “activate democracy.”