Hello, How Are You? by Elizabeth Sims

Elizabeth Sims: Hello, How Are You? (2012)
A Limited Edition Letterpress Print and Public Intervention

Occtober - November, 2012

“Hello, How Are You?” is a limited edition letterpress print and public intervention by Oakland-based artist, educator and anarchist Elizabeth Sims. It is a beautifully designed Baroque invitation that invites the accidental viewer to join an invisible community. Following on the heels of the worldwide Occupy movement and in anticipation of the upcoming presidential election, there is a growing—yet often hidden—sense of solidarity among people invested in social change. “Hello, How Are You?” implicates everyone as a potential participant in a secret community that already exists and aims to radically re-envision society. This collective shares no positive program or concrete ideology, but rather is bound by a growing sense of disenfranchisement. The project purposefully addresses multiple audiences and is variously an art object and an accidental encounter. Unmarked prints will be anonymously distributed without ceremony in public spaces leading up to the presidential election. Documentation from "Hello, How Are You?" will be uploaded to Invisible Venue on a rolling basis leading up and beyond election day, November 6, 2012.

This project is produced in collaboration with Invisible Venue with support from Kala Art Institute, with special thanks to Jesse Houlding, Carrie Hott, and Archana Horsting. An extension of “Hello, How Are You?” included Print + Intervene, a public lecture by Christian L. Frock hosted by Kala Art Institute on September 12, 2012.

Elizabeth Sims is an Oakland-based artist, educator and anarchist. She has been a collective member of many radical projects and venues in the Bay Area. Her work has been exhibited at Royal Nonesuch Gallery and MacArthur B Arthur, among others. Sims recently worked as artist-in-residence at the Wassaic Project (New York). Her artwork includes The Magnificent Sunbeam, a 2010 project online that chronicles Sims’ reflections on social radicalism, art, and a sunbeam in the hallway of the high school where Sims is an art teacher, and The Authority Workshop, a workshop for the just deployment of authority. Sims’ instructions on how to organize an authority workshop are featured in Invisible Venue’s ongoing online project Open Source (2011). More details about her work can be found on http://www.elizabethsimsprojects.com.

DOCUMENTATION