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Artist Oliver Herring Teaches Studio Inquiry this Summer

Studio Inquiry: TASKEncuentro with Visiting Artist Oliver Herring
June 6, 2014
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Source: Department of Art Education

Facilitated by Visiting Artist Oliver Herring, TASKEncuentro will explore art-making and pedagogy via a two-week intensive participatory performance-cum-workshop.

Herring's creation, TASK relies on a basic infrastructure: a designated area, a variety of props and materials (cardboard, plastic bags, pencils, tables cling wrap, tape, markers, ladders...) and the participation of people who agree to follow two simple, procedural instructions:

  1. to write down a task on a piece of paper and add it to a designated "TASK pool," and;
  2. to pull a task from that pool and interpret it any which way he or she wants, using whatever or whomever is around.

When a task is completed, a participant writes a new task, pulls a new task, and so on.

Previous tasks have included:

  • Rid yourself of the pocket lint in your right pocket by turning it into a flower blossom.
    Share it with the first person you see;
  • START a revolution;
  • Make an outfit of the future;
  • Divide the room into males and females.
Photo: Oliver Herring, TASK in Philadelphia Photo: Oliver Herring, TASK in Philadelphia

Participants in the course will explore the pedagogical and creative potential of TASK, an extended event within the context of Encuentro, the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politic's international conference of visual and performing arts, co-hosted by Concordia University June 21-28, 2014.

Working together to create and understand TASK as an innovative model for making, teaching, learning, course participants will form a collaborative team to brainstorm, plan, and implement a TASK event specific and meaningful to the Encuentro context and their own interests and desires. Course activities will build on participants' existing abilities, and encourage growth in improvisational, collaborative and entrepreneurial practices.

TASKEncuentro will use Art Education's Undergraduate Studio (EV2.645) as its launching pad/laboratory/installation site, transforming the space during the course of the event.

Session dates

Classes will assemble at the following times (totaling 26 hours), with the TASKEncuentro site being open for engagement for longer daily hours, to be determined collectively by the class cohort.

  • Monday-Saturday, June 16-21: 4:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. (6 X 2.5 hours = 15 hours)
  • Monday, June 23: 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. (1 x 2.5 hours)
  • Tuesday, June 24: Fête national/St. Jean Baptiste Day, university is closed, no classes scheduled
  • Wednesday-Thursday, 4 to 6:30 p.m. (2 x 2.5 hours = 5 hours)
  • Friday, June 27: 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. (3.5 hours)
     

About the artist

Oliver Herring is a Brooklyn-based artist whose experimental work encompasses sculptural, video, photographic and participatory practices. A mid-career retrospective at the Tang Teaching Museum (Skidmore College, 2009) categorized his work into three overlapping chapters, ultimately giving the show its title: Me, Us, Them. The earlier works in the show - mostly sculpture - were created in the studio as a product of physical labor. That mostly solitary practice was broadened around 2001 to include collaborative videos and performances, largely generated outside the studio, that continue still. In 2002, Herring began a participatory performance project called TASK as a way to create a platform for creative behavior. Increasingly educators use TASK as a teaching tool.

Information

For further information and registration, please contact Kathleen Vaughan, Associate Professor of Art Education, Concordia University: kathleen.vaughan@concordia.ca

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