§ 01 / Overview / Project / 2004 / Conceptual Art · Internet Art · Participation
Help Wanted
An Exhibition on Craigslist.org (2004)
“Help Wanted was a plea for assistance written in the voice of someone powerful enough to offer it.”
— LG Williams / Estate of LG Williams, retrospective project formulationA homeless artist unable to find work impersonated an employer and turned the global response into an artwork.
Craigslist was not simply where the project was advertised. Its city categories, job seekers, moderation system, deletions, replies, and misunderstandings became the exhibition's venue, audience, censorship mechanism, and medium.
Help Wanted began as a last act of reversal. Homeless, unemployed, and working from public computers at UC San Diego's Geisel Library, LG Williams transformed the language that had excluded him into the medium of an international exhibition. Instead of answering job advertisements, he became the fictional employer and created five Craigslist artworks in the form of impossible art-world positions. He distributed them across Craigslist and turned thousands of applicants, critics, admirers, antagonists, and would-be lovers into the unwitting audience and participants of the work.
Help Wanted consisted of five distinct Craigslist artworks, each written and circulated as a fictional employment advertisement: Artist / Fix-It-Man; Painter (Fine Artist) / Gambler; Commercial Artist / Artist / Director; Artist / Art Consultant / Art Historian; and Designer / Artist / Printmaker. Williams posted and reposted these works across sixteen metropolitan markets, where they were encountered not as announced artworks but as apparently genuine opportunities for employment.
The Five Artworks
Each title names a fictional art-world position presented to Craigslist users as a genuine employment opportunity.
- Artist / Fix-It-Man
- Painter (Fine Artist) / Gambler
- Commercial Artist / Artist / Director
- Artist / Art Consultant / Art Historian
- Designer / Artist / Printmaker
The project was also an act of mourning. Created after the death of Williams's friend and mentor Wally Hedrick, Help Wanted carried Hedrick's anti-institutional spirit into the emerging commercial internet. Hedrick directly inspired the Artist / Fix-It-Man persona, making the work not only a dedication to him, but a performance of his presence inside the project.
Help Wanted established a contradiction that governs the entire archive: visibility is not security, engagement is not income, and audience does not guarantee care. The work generated thousands of replies while its author remained without stable housing, employment, gallery representation, or institutional support.
From Job Seeker to Employer
2004 · ORIGIN
Help Wanted originated during a period of genuine economic and personal collapse. Williams was unemployed, without stable housing, and spending his days at UC San Diego's Geisel Library, where public desks, electricity, and internet access supplied the only practical infrastructure available to him. The classified advertisements he read were not source material gathered at a distance; they belonged to his own unsuccessful search for employment.
The project began when Williams reversed that position. Instead of continuing to appear as the applicant—the figure required to persuade, submit, and wait—he assumed the administrative voice of the employer. He invented job titles, qualifications, duties, standards, and implied wages. The man with no institutional authority reproduced its language so convincingly that thousands of people accepted the fiction long enough to apply, argue, praise, threaten, flirt, or offer him work.
This reversal exposed how much professional authority depends upon syntax and convention. On the screen, Williams appeared to command a distributed artistic enterprise. Away from the screen, he remained an unemployed and unhoused artist working from public resources. Help Wanted exists inside that contradiction: virtual authority against material dispossession.
The Title
“Help Wanted” points in two directions. On its surface, an employer announces a need for labor. Beneath the fiction, the phrase names Williams's own condition: economic need, homelessness, grief, and the need for recognition after the death of Wally Hedrick. The artist asks for help by pretending to offer it.
Craigslist as Exhibition
2004 · PLATFORM
In early 2004, Craigslist was a text-dominant classifieds network serving more than thirty cities, attracting more than four million visitors a month, and presenting itself as a community service rather than a conventional media business. Its design rejected banner advertising, graphics, and the commercial polish of the wider web; most listings were free, and moderation depended heavily on users flagging posts rather than on a conventional editorial gatekeeper. Williams built a fictional art institution inside the era's most conspicuously anti-commercial commercial platform. That contradiction mattered: Craigslist's plainness and community rhetoric made the advertisements believable, while its flagging system supplied the work with an involuntary censor and deinstallation mechanism.
Craigslist was not simply a distribution platform but the primary exhibition space. Its categories, its flag-based moderation system, its self-selecting audience of active job seekers, and its metropolitan-by-metropolitan geographic reach formed the structure of the work — determining where a posting could appear, how long it could survive, and who would read it as sincere.
Posting, reposting, deletion, correspondence, and public misunderstanding were integral artistic operations, not incidental byproducts. Reposting in particular was a deliberate strategy: once a listing was flagged and removed, Williams treated the platform's own deletion mechanism as a collaborator.
The Artwork Begins Where the Art World Ends
PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTUREHelp Wanted was produced without a studio, commission, gallery, curator, grant, or collector. Its working infrastructure consisted of a public library, free internet access, and Craigslist's commercial classified system. Williams therefore constructed an alternative art institution from the resources available to him: Craigslist became the gallery; city categories became exhibition rooms; the five fictional employment advertisements became the artworks; applicants became participants; user flagging became censorship; deletion became deinstallation; reposting became restaging; and the book became the surviving retrospective form.
The project did not simply distribute art through the internet. It rebuilt the missing functions of the art world inside a public employment platform.
A Multi-City Exhibition
DOCUMENTED
The surviving exhibition record documents 41 location/date entries associated with the circulation of the five Help Wanted artworks across 16 metropolitan markets. New York accounts for 12 of the 41 surviving entries (29.3 percent), and Los Angeles accounts for nine (22.0 percent); together they represent just over half of the visible posting record. These figures describe documented geographic distribution only. They do not establish 41 unique advertisements, city traffic, readers, replies, or unique viewers.
These counts describe surviving location/date records of the five artworks' circulation, not verified traffic, reply totals, unique advertisements, unique deletion events, or unique viewers. Repostings, repeated URLs, missing URLs, deletion-only notations, unequal exposure periods, and uneven city traffic prevent the page from converting posting-record share directly into audience share. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place and therefore may not total 100 percent when added.
| Metropolitan Market | Ledger Entries | Share of 41 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | 12 | 29.3% | |
| Los Angeles | 9 | 22.0% | |
| Boston | 4 | 9.8% | |
| Seattle/Tacoma | 3 | 7.3% | |
| Portland | 2 | 4.9% | |
| San Diego | 1 | 2.4% | |
| London | 1 | 2.4% | |
| Washington, DC | 1 | 2.4% | |
| Pittsburgh | 1 | 2.4% | |
| Vancouver | 1 | 2.4% | |
| Sacramento | 1 | 2.4% | |
| Dallas | 1 | 2.4% | |
| Chicago | 1 | 2.4% | |
| Phoenix | 1 | 2.4% | |
| Miami | 1 | 2.4% | |
| Minneapolis/St. Paul | 1 | 2.4% | |
| Total | 41 | Five artworks | 100% |
Two Hundred Fifty Thousand Estimated Viewers / Five Thousand Replies
REPORTED FIGURESThe archive records more than 5,000 reported replies. Craigslist impression analytics from the 2004 postings do not survive. Using a conservative assumed response rate of approximately 2 percent produces a possible audience of about 250,000 viewers. This figure is an interpretive estimate, not a platform measurement.
The archive reports more than 5,000 active replies to the Craigslist postings. Approximately 500 exchanges were selected for preservation in the publication, meaning that the book retains roughly one-tenth of the reported response field. The publication describes a range extending from genuine applications, résumés, and job offers to philosophical rants, hostile threats, compliments, romantic approaches, and declarations of love.
'Reply' and 'exchange' are not necessarily identical units. Some exchanges contain multiple messages, and the surviving publication is a curated archive rather than a complete server export.
The Five Craigslist Artworks and Their Complete Posting Record
5 ARTWORKS · 41 RECORDSThe surviving Exhibition Dates and Location Summary documents five Craigslist artworks and their circulation across multiple cities: Artist / Fix-It-Man; Painter (Fine Artist) / Gambler; Commercial Artist / Artist / Director; Artist / Art Consultant / Art Historian; and Designer / Artist / Printmaker. Together, the surviving records preserve 41 location/date entries, 35 URL-bearing records representing 34 distinct primary Craigslist URLs, 18 additional craigslist.org/cgi-bin/rjp administrative URLs, and 18 "POST CENSORED AND DELETED" notations. Artist / Fix-It-Man retains the page's most developed interpretive treatment because its Wally Hedrick source, surviving facsimile, later publication, and memorial function make it the most fully interpretable artwork. The complete surviving posting record for all five artworks is published below.
Artist / Fix-It-Man
Craigslist artwork · fictional employment advertisement
9 entries · 8 URL-bearing · 3 rjp URLs · 4 deletion notations
| Entry ID | Location | Date / Event as Recorded | Primary Craigslist URL | Record Type / Archival Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AF-01 | New York, NY | TUES 9 Mar 19:17:35 | http://newyork.craigslist.org/med/26056812.html | Posting / URL record |
| AF-02 | Los Angeles, CA | Wed, 10 Mar 12:06 PST | http://losangeles.craigslist.org/med/26144742.html | Posting / URL record |
| AF-03 | Los Angeles, CA | 2004-03-11, 2:53PM EST | http://losangeles.craigslist.org/med/26224379.html | Posting / URL record |
| AF-04 | New York, NY | 12 Mar 2004 19:07:54 | http://newyork.craigslist.org/med/26305106.html | Posting / URL record; source prints .htm |
| AF-05 | New York, NY | 12 Mar 2004 23:54:07 | http://newyork.craigslist.org/med/26332349.html | Posting / URL record |
| AF-06 | Boston, MA | 15 Mar 2004 19:44:19 | http://boston.craigslist.org/med/26515678.html | Posting / URL record |
| AF-07 | Seattle / Tacoma, WA | 17 Mar 2004 22:54:30 | http://seattle.craigslist.org/med/26706207.html | Posting / URL record; source location reads "Seattle / Tacoma MA" |
| AF-08 | San Diego, CA | 19 Mar 2004 21:34:26 | http://sandiego.craigslist.org/med/26864227.html | Posting / URL record |
| AF-09 | Portland, OR | 23 Mar 2004 – 29 Mar 2004 | — URL NOT PRESERVED | Date-range record; URL not preserved in summary |
Painter (Fine Artist) / Gambler
Craigslist artwork · fictional employment advertisement
9 entries · 7 URL-bearing · 4 rjp URLs · 3 deletion notations, including 2 timestamped
| Entry ID | Location | Date / Event as Recorded | Primary Craigslist URL | Record Type / Archival Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PG-01 | New York, NY | 2004-03-11, 2:41PM EST | http://newyork.craigslist.org/med/26226145.html | Posting / URL record |
| PG-02 | Los Angeles, CA | POST CENSORED AND DELETED: 12 Mar 2004 14:15:14 | — | Location-aligned deletion record; no primary URL on this row TIMESTAMPED DELETION |
| PG-03 | Los Angeles, CA | 12 Mar 2004 19:07 | http://losangeles.craigslist.org/med/26304534.html | Posting / URL record |
| PG-04 | Los Angeles, CA | — DATE NOT PRESERVED | http://losangeles.craigslist.org/med/26332677.html | URL-only record; posting time not preserved |
| PG-05 | London, UK | 15 Mar 2004 | http://london.craigslist.org/med/26515114.html | Posting / URL record |
| PG-06 | Washington, DC | 17 Mar 2004 22:54:30 | http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/med/26706479.html | Posting / URL record |
| PG-07 | Boston, MA | 19 Mar 2004 21:34:26 | http://boston.craigslist.org/med/26863721.html | Posting / URL record |
| PG-08 | Boston, MA | 22 Mar 2004 00:50:04 | http://boston.craigslist.org/med/26993291.html | Posting / URL record |
| PG-09 | Seattle, WA | 23 Mar 2004 – 29 Mar 2004 | — URL NOT PRESERVED | Date-range record; URL not preserved in summary |
Commercial Artist / Artist / Director
Craigslist artwork · fictional employment advertisement
9 entries · 8 URL-bearing · 5 rjp URLs · 5 deletion notations, including 1 timestamped
| Entry ID | Location | Date / Event as Recorded | Primary Craigslist URL | Record Type / Archival Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAD-01 | New York, NY | TUES-03-09, 8:38PM EST | http://newyork.craigslist.org/med/26091219.html | Posting / URL record |
| CAD-02 | Pittsburgh, PA | TUES-03-09, 9:46PM EST | http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/med/26094951.html | Posting / URL record; source explicitly labels second URL "To self-delete" |
| CAD-03 | New York, NY | Wed, 10 Mar 18:08 EST | http://newyork.craigslist.org/med/26162741.html | Posting / URL record |
| CAD-04 | New York, NY | 2004-03-11, 2:36PM EST | http://newyork.craigslist.org/med/26225648.html | Posting / URL record |
| CAD-05 | Los Angeles, CA | 13 Mar 2004 17:35:49 | http://losangeles.craigslist.org/med/26337467. SOURCE URL REQUIRES VERIFICATION | Source primary URL ends with a period; verify before normalizing or linking |
| CAD-06 | Vancouver, BC | 15 Mar 2004 18:34:27 | http://vancouver.craigslist.org/med/26512521.html | Posting / URL record |
| CAD-07 | Sacramento, CA | 17 Mar 2004 22:54:30 | http://sacramento.craigslist.org/med/26707194. SOURCE URL REQUIRES VERIFICATION | Source primary URL ends with a period; verify before normalizing or linking |
| CAD-08 | Dallas, TX | 19 Mar 2004 21:34:26 | http://dallas.craigslist.org/med/26865235.html | Posting / URL record |
| CAD-09 | Boston, MA | 23 Mar 2004 – 29 Mar 2004 | — URL NOT PRESERVED | Date-range record; URL not preserved in summary |
Artist / Art Consultant / Art Historian
Craigslist artwork · fictional employment advertisement
7 entries · 6 URL-bearing · 3 rjp URLs · 3 deletion notations
| Entry ID | Location | Date / Event as Recorded | Primary Craigslist URL | Record Type / Archival Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ACH-01 | Los Angeles, CA | Wed, 10 Mar 13:13 EST | http://losangeles.craigslist.org/med/26138034.html | Posting / URL record |
| ACH-02 | Los Angeles, CA | 2004-03-11, 11:28AM PST | http://losangeles.craigslist.org/med/26224953.html | Posting / URL record |
| ACH-03 | New York, NY | 12 Mar 2004 23:16:30 | http://newyork.craigslist.org/med/26328691.html | Posting / URL record |
| ACH-04 | Chicago, IL | 15 Mar 2004 18:34:27 | http://chicago.craigslist.org/med/26511636.html | Posting / URL record |
| ACH-05 | Phoenix, AZ | — DATE NOT PRESERVED | http://phoenix.craigslist.org/med/26707553.html | URL-only record; posting time not preserved |
| ACH-06 | Portland, OR | 19 Mar 2004 21:34:26 | http://portland.craigslist.org/med/26865582.html | Posting / URL record |
| ACH-07 | New York, NY | 23 Mar 2004 – 29 Mar 2004 | — URL NOT PRESERVED | Date-range record; URL not preserved in summary |
Designer / Artist / Printmaker
Craigslist artwork · fictional employment advertisement
7 entries · 6 URL-bearing (5 distinct primary URLs) · 3 rjp URLs · 3 deletion notations
| Entry ID | Location | Date / Event as Recorded | Primary Craigslist URL | Record Type / Archival Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DAP-01 | New York, NY | 2004-03-11, 2:53PM EST | http://newyork.craigslist.org/med/26227351.html REPEATED URL | Posting / URL record |
| DAP-02 | New York, NY | 11 Mar 2004 20:25:43 | http://newyork.craigslist.org/med/26227351.html REPEATED URL | Second ledger entry repeats the same primary URL as DAP-01 |
| DAP-03 | New York, NY | 12 Mar 2004 19:07:54 | http://newyork.craigslist.org/med/26304128.html | Posting / URL record |
| DAP-04 | Seattle / Tacoma, WA | 15 Mar 2004 19:44:19 | http://seattle.craigslist.org/med/26516245.html | Posting / URL record |
| DAP-05 | Miami, FL | 17 Mar 2004 22:54:31 | http://miami.craigslist.org/med/26708003.html | Posting / URL record |
| DAP-06 | Minneapolis / St Paul | 19 Mar 2004 22:18:19 | http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/med/26866107.html | Posting / URL record |
| DAP-07 | Los Angeles, CA | 23 Mar 2004 – 29 Mar 2004 | — URL NOT PRESERVED | Date-range record; URL not preserved in summary |
Deletion as Material
18 RECORDED NOTATIONS
The visible "POST CENSORED AND DELETED" wording documents a removal notation within the surviving project record. Preserve the source order, adjacent location, date, URLs, and decorative wording. Do not present the phrase as a captured Craigslist system notice unless the inserted image is independently identified as such.
Deletion was not an external interruption to Help Wanted. The surviving posting records for the five artworks contain 18 separate notations reading "POST CENSORED AND DELETED." Three preserve exact deletion timestamps; fifteen do not. Their recurrence shows that disappearance, relocation, and renewed posting entered the documentary structure of the exhibition.
The wording belongs to the surviving project record and should not be mistaken for a captured Craigslist system message. Unless a Wayback capture, platform notice, correspondence record, or other direct source establishes the actor, the page must say that a post was recorded in the surviving ledger as censored and deleted, not that Craigslist definitively removed it. The surviving record establishes the deletion notation; it does not always establish who initiated the removal or the exact relationship between a deletion line and a neighboring URL.
Complete Removal Record — 18 Notations
| Removal ID | Persona | Position in Surviving Record | Deletion Status | Removal Timestamp | Exact Recorded Wording |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AF-D01 | Artist / Fix-It-Man | After AF-01 View source position in complete posting record | RECORDED DELETION | — | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| AF-D02 | Artist / Fix-It-Man | After AF-02 View source position in complete posting record | RECORDED DELETION | — | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| AF-D03 | Artist / Fix-It-Man | After AF-04 View source position in complete posting record | RECORDED DELETION | — | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| AF-D04 | Artist / Fix-It-Man | After AF-06 View source position in complete posting record | RECORDED DELETION | — | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| PG-D01 | Painter (Fine Artist) / Gambler | Source line aligned with Los Angeles, CA View source position in complete posting record | TIMESTAMPED DELETION | 12 Mar 2004 14:15:14 | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| PG-D02 | Painter (Fine Artist) / Gambler | After PG-04 View source position in complete posting record | TIMESTAMPED DELETION | 14 Mar 2004 05:06:42 | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| PG-D03 | Painter (Fine Artist) / Gambler | After PG-07 View source position in complete posting record | RECORDED DELETION | — | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| CAD-D01 | Commercial Artist / Artist / Director | After CAD-01 View source position in complete posting record | RECORDED DELETION | — | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| CAD-D02 | Commercial Artist / Artist / Director | After CAD-03 View source position in complete posting record | RECORDED DELETION | — | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| CAD-D03 | Commercial Artist / Artist / Director | After CAD-04 View source position in complete posting record | TIMESTAMPED DELETION | 13 Mar 2004 00:02:49 | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| CAD-D04 | Commercial Artist / Artist / Director | After CAD-05 View source position in complete posting record | RECORDED DELETION | — | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| CAD-D05 | Commercial Artist / Artist / Director | After CAD-07 View source position in complete posting record | RECORDED DELETION | — | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| ACH-D01 | Artist / Art Consultant / Art Historian | After ACH-01 View source position in complete posting record | RECORDED DELETION | — | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| ACH-D02 | Artist / Art Consultant / Art Historian | After ACH-03 View source position in complete posting record | RECORDED DELETION | — | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| ACH-D03 | Artist / Art Consultant / Art Historian | After ACH-04 View source position in complete posting record | RECORDED DELETION | — | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| DAP-D01 | Designer / Artist / Printmaker | After DAP-01 View source position in complete posting record | RECORDED DELETION | — | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| DAP-D02 | Designer / Artist / Printmaker | After DAP-02 View source position in complete posting record | RECORDED DELETION | — | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
| DAP-D03 | Designer / Artist / Printmaker | After DAP-04 View source position in complete posting record | RECORDED DELETION | — | POST CENSORED AND DELETED |
Survival-Duration Limits
The surviving summary records three exact deletion timestamps, but it does not provide enough unambiguous posting-and-removal pairs to calculate a reliable project-wide median exposure duration. PG-D01 is visually aligned with a Los Angeles location row whose relationship to the preceding New York URL is uncertain; PG-D02 follows a URL-only record with no posting time; CAD-D03 is the clearest paired interval. Individual intervals may be reported only where the pairing is explicit. No project-wide median, minimum, or maximum should be published from this source alone.
Selected Responses
SEVEN REGISTERSResponse quotations are transcribed verbatim from the surviving archive. Original spelling, capitalization, and punctuation are preserved; [sic] is used only where needed to prevent confusion. Except where a citation line is given below a quotation, the surviving record does not state the respondent's city, date, or publication page; the archive preserves the reply text and the attributed first name only.
Oh GOD pick me!
I don't care if the position advertised is real, but I'm pretty sure I love you and want to be near you.
Amani
— PDF p. 62. The facsimile reads “Oh GOD pick me!” The reply compresses the project's mechanism: suspicion, belief, desire, and the inability to separate advertisement from artwork.Unwitting Participation
The respondents did not arrive as art viewers. They arrived because they believed that employment might be available. That distinction gives Help Wanted both its force and its ethical difficulty. The applicants' sincerity, economic need, suspicion, anger, desire, and self-presentation became material for a work they had not agreed to enter. They were audience, participant, subject, and co-author at once. The project therefore refuses the comforting assumption that participation is automatically democratic or benevolent. It stages participation under the pressure of labor.
The replies are the social body of Help Wanted. Respondents did not merely view the advertisements; they completed them. They applied, submitted biographies, questioned the premise, recognized the fiction, condemned it, praised it, flirted, proposed marriage, offered collaboration, and sometimes continued corresponding after Williams replied. The archive records a movement from reading to belief, from belief to participation, and from participation to emotional investment.
Replies are organized as an escalating taxonomy of audience involvement: belief, recognition, admiration, hostility, desire, counter-offers, and prolonged exchange. Original punctuation and grammar are preserved without correction.
The replies move beyond passive viewership. Respondents applied, questioned, praised, attacked, flirted, proposed marriage, offered work, and continued exchanges—turning reception into the material of the exhibition.
The complete publication changes respondent names while preserving the original wording, punctuation, and grammar of the messages. The selections below follow that transcription policy.
“My aunt and uncle have an exquisite villa in Tuscany that is available 9 months each year, I am trained in fine arts and interior design and am an astute judge of circumstance and character. If it's your requirements and qualifications to a tee and I am an exquisite hostess and fabulous company. Let me know if you would like to know more.”
“Wow. This must be my dream job. If you’re not joking, that is. How did you know so much about me without even meeting me. Who wouldn’t want to work for next to nothing with so much responsibility for such a noble purpose (It is noble, right?).”
“Hello- Is this for real? If so, is the position still open?”
“Does this position include materials and booze”
“I gotta know, what sad, weird, sturm-und-drangish breakup story is behind these little faux ads? Alternately, what drugs are you on, and where can I find them to be sure I avoid the place?
The plaster production idea sounds interesting, though. And Wittgenstein is always good for a laugh and a think.”
“what would make you post this? just to see who would respond and how?
how many fools you can take in? ...or to attract like minded people?”
“This is a total joke, right?
If not, how demeaning can you get??”
“Is this for real? What artist does not meet these requirements? If nothing else, I very much enjoyed reading this ad.”
“This is the most insanely beautiful posting I have seen to this point. If it was indeed real I would think I must be dreaming.”
“i think you have just described me though rembrandt and van gogh have kissed me taste in blood in blood, i wouldnt simply do the european tradition but given villa, wine and fluent cash, i could flesh out horrors and beauties you might not be at all aversed to.”
“HILLARIOUS!!!!!!!!!! The funniest thing I ever read on Craig’s List. Please send me more!!!”
“we are english and american living in san francisco, close to this anyway. we will be in london in a few weeks. could I have your permission to reprint this in my conceptual print-ing project? my project is a not for any hope of profit project. credit would be yours.
he is a painter and I am the muse, model, artist and mother of love child. we forwarded your posting to some friends in london. you are accurate and clever.”
“stop smoking crack its bad for your reality just be honest and say your looking for a jackass who can work for your crack habit.
prediction: someones gonna end it all for you!
Turd
ps comedy is not your strong suite. stick to jerking yourself off with manicured fingernails loser.”
“I am an artist and your writing skills suck.
What the fuck do you want to see from me to prove I can paint better than you can write?”
“FUCK YOU, ASSHOLES!”
“stop wasting people's time with your stupid, idiotic ad.”
“Oh GOD pick me!
I don't care if the position advertised is real, but I'm pretty sure I love you and want to be near you.”
“I love you.”
“could you settle for a woman?”
“If you are hiring muses, I would love to join you on this fantastic hedonistic journey…”
“I’d would like to offer to shoot any candidates you may find… I can stretch canvas like a motherfucking canvas-stretching robot… At the very least I could like, shoot Chris Burden again.”
“My aunt and uncle have an exquisite villa in Tuscany that is available 9 months each year…”
“After you find your painter/gambler, if they need an assistant, let me know.”
“if only there were some way you could legally pay me less...
but what am i saying. I'm responding via email rather than smoke signals or, better yet, a wry knowing leer.
let me know asap”
“Hopefully we can at least continue this intriguing exchange. I must see what you do besides write.”
“Please write any time ;-)”
“Please send me more!!!”
“Do you get many responses, and what exactly are you up to? Just curious, though I would love to work for someone who thinks like you.”
Megan’s surrounding correspondence confirms a continued exchange. The other three selections explicitly invite further contact; they should not be described as confirmed multi-message exchanges unless additional sequence documentation is published.
Participation and Ethics
CONSENT & PRIVACYHelp Wanted depends upon a deliberate asymmetry that cannot be treated as a side issue. Williams was himself unhoused and searching for work when he assumed the voice of an employer. The people who replied did not knowingly enter an exhibition; they responded to what they understood as employment information. Their applications, suspicion, anger, recognition, flirtation, self-description, and need became the social material of a work they had not agreed to enter.
That structure does not cancel the project; it defines its ethical stakes. Williams did not observe economic vulnerability from a position of security. He occupied the same field and reversed its hierarchy long enough to expose how quickly authority can be produced by syntax, platform design, and the promise of work. Help Wanted therefore stages both identification and exploitation: the applicant becomes the employer, then turns other applicants' sincerity into evidence.
The surviving record presently available for this page does not establish whether respondents were informed during the original exchanges that they had entered an artwork, or whether later publication consent was sought. The publication changes respondent names while preserving the wording, punctuation, and grammar of the messages. Those name changes function as an editorial privacy measure; they should not be described as retrospective consent. The archive must distinguish the authenticity of the correspondence from the privacy of the people who produced it.
Public facsimiles therefore preserve the date, time, subject line, sender designation, and message text while redacting full email addresses and other unnecessary identifying details. The ethical problem remains visible because it is part of the work's historical meaning: an unhoused artist impersonated institutional authority and obtained sincere disclosures from people responding under the pressure of labor.
The Book as the Surviving Body of the Work
PCP PRESS
Complete resource · Print & PDF
Help Wanted:
The Complete Resource
Help Wanted: The Complete Resource documents Help Wanted, which belongs to the early history of large-scale participatory art made through commercial internet platforms. Its distinctive operation was to use Craigslist's employment categories, metropolitan structure, moderation system, and reply mechanism as the work's venue, distribution system, audience, and material. In March 2004, while living on the streets in Del Mar, California, LG Williams inverted the artist's role from job-seeker to employer, posting fictitious "Help Wanted" ads across Craigslist.org. What began as a last-ditch gesture of desperation evolved into a month-long global exhibition across multiple cities, drawing over 5,000 replies; approximately 500 are preserved here, alongside exhibition data and critical commentary.
ISBN 978-1-5464-7470-8
The publication is not merely a catalogue issued after the event. It is the principal surviving container of the event: the five artworks, their posting records, Craigslist URLs, job-advertisement facsimiles, approximately 500 exchanges, email screens, editorial commentary, and the project's later documentary reconstruction.
Later Periodical Appearance
Founded in October 2000, The Brooklyn Rail is an independent journal of arts, culture, and politics published in print and online, with particularly sustained coverage of contemporary visual art. The December 2023 appearance of Artist / Fix-It Man therefore documents more than a private reprint: it places one Help Wanted persona inside a long-running independent art-publication context. Unlike the comprehensive PCP Press volume, which preserves the wider archive, the Rail appearance isolates and recirculates one persona as an autonomous public artwork.
- Publication: The Brooklyn Rail
- Date: December 2023
- Work: Artist / Fix-It Man
- Status: Later publication / circulation
Why It Matters
CURATORIAL SUMMARYHelp Wanted converted the ordinary infrastructure of online employment into an exhibition system. Job seekers browsing Craigslist became an unwitting audience; Craigslist's own moderation apparatus performed deinstallation each time a posting was flagged and removed; and reposting across cities became a form of restaging, the artwork reappearing wherever the platform's categories allowed it back in. The thousands of replies were not commentary on the work from outside it — they were its social body, the material through which belief, suspicion, hostility, desire, and negotiation became visible.
That 2004 logic anticipates conditions now routine under platform labor: audiences recruited without consent through algorithmic visibility, identity performed and judged through a corporate interface, and a widening gap between the attention an image or advertisement can command and the material support available to the person who posted it. Help Wanted staged that gap directly, using the platform's own employment machinery as its medium.