Oliver Herring | Task
On Saturday, June 28, the Frye Art Museum, in collaboration with our partners the Seattle Public Library, On the Boards, and Tacoma Art Museum will stage Oliver Herring’s performance Task. An improvisational event, Task brings together a group of thirty-five strangers of diverse ages (14-82), professions (house-cleaner, retired judge, stay-at-home mom, barista…), and backgrounds to explore and experiment for one working day at the Seattle Public Central Library in downtown Seattle. The audience for this version of Task, if it is a usual summer day at the library, will be 7,000 people, making this performance as dynamic for the public as for the participants.
Task’s participatory focus creates opportunities for the diverse group of participants to interact with one another and express aspects of their individual personalities that might otherwise be hidden. The event begins with the participants choosing and acting out simple tasks provided by Herring. When these first artist-assigned actions are completed, participants invent their own tasks, placing them in a “task pool” for selection by their fellow performers.
Task’s open-ended, participatory structure creates almost unlimited opportunities for this group of people to interact with one another and their environment. After outlining some basic ground rules, Herring opens Task to improvisation and does not interfere with the activities on stage. Therefore, the performance’s flow depends on the kinds of tasks created by the participants, and how they decide to utilize seemingly mundane props such as markers, toilet paper, blankets, bubble wrap, cardboard boxes, ladders, chairs and tables.
The participants’ continuous conception and interpretation of tasks fills the stage with activity: a complex, shifting, socio-sculptural arrangement of bodies and objects. The constantly evolving nature of the performance keeps the audience engaged throughout the day even as they witness the ebbing and flowing of the participants’ energy levels. As Task unfolds, a communal sense of trust emerges—between the performers themselves and between the performers and their audience.
Task at the Seattle Public Library is the fifth iteration of Task and the first performed in a public institution during its normal operating hours. Herring has staged Task inside a secret Masonic Temple at the Great Eastern Hotel, London (2002); at the L’Ecole Supérieur National des Beaux Arts, Paris (2002); inside an abandoned former Federal Security Bank in Lake Worth, Florida (2003);); and most recently outdoors at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2006).
In addition to the more focused and planned Task events, Herring has begun to stage Task-Parties, which are similar in structure but take place without a pre-selected group of participants and therefore no clear differentiation between participants and audience. The first of these Task-Parties took place in December 2007 in Philadelphia (FluxTask). The schedule for 2008 is: Task at UMD (University of Maryland, April 2008); Regent Task, (Toronto, June 2008); FluxTask 2 (Philadelphia, September 2008); SF Task (San Francisco, October 2008).
Born in Heidelberg, Germany in 1964, Herring lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He received a BFA from the University of Oxford (Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art) in Oxford, England, and an MFA from Hunter College in New York. Solo exhibitions include those at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. Herring’s art was seen recently in the Northwest in the Frye’s survey Oliver Herring: Taking and Making (2005) and in Tacoma Art Museum’s group exhibition Sparkle Then Fade (2007).
Herring was featured on PBS’s Art21, Season 3. A survey of his work will be mounted in February 2009 at the Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, NY.
Contribute to Task by posting your impressions, photos, and more at taskseattle.wordpress.com, a blog devoted to this performance.
Images, top to bottom:
Oliver Herring. Task - Photo Archive #63, 2006. Digital C-print. 7 1/4 x 10 1/2 in. Collaborative performance at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., 2006. Courtesy of the artist and Max Protetch Gallery, New York.
Oliver Herring. Task - Photo Archive #61, 2006. Digital C-print. 9 1/2 x 14 1/4 in. Collaborative performance at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., 2006. Courtesy of the artist and Max Protetch Gallery, New York.
Oliver Herring. Task - Photo Archive #34, 2006. Digital C-print. 14 1/4 x 9 1/2 in. Collaborative performance at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., 2006. Courtesy of the artist and Max Protetch Gallery, New York.