Oliver Herring | Task

On Saturday, June 28, the Frye, in collaboration with our partners the Seattle Public Library, On the Boards, and Tacoma Art Museum, staged Oliver Herring’s performance Task. An improvisational event, Task brought together a group of thirty-five strangers of diverse ages, professions, and backgrounds to create an original site-specific artwork. The performance took place over the course of the day at the Seattle Public Central Library in downtown Seattle.

Task’s participatory focus created opportunities for the diverse group of performers to interact with one another and express aspects of their individual personalities that might otherwise be hidden. The performance began with the participants choosing and acting out simple tasks provided by Herring. When these first artist-assigned actions were completed, participants invented their own tasks, placing them in a “task pool” for selection by their fellow performers. Some elaborated upon or undid the results of previous tasks; others created entirely new tasks.

Inherent to this performance is its unpredictability: the artwork was created by the ideas developed on stage as well as the relationships formed by the participants. After outlining some basic ground rules, Herring opened Task to improvisation, and did not interfere with the activities on stage. Therefore, the performance’s outcome depended on the kinds of tasks created by the participants, and how they decided to utilize seemingly mundane props such as markers, toilet paper, blankets, bubble wrap, and cardboard boxes. At times, the thirty-five participants could simultaneously execute thirty-five separate performances, or the entire group might perform a single task together.

The performers’ invention and enactment of tasks filled the stage with activity: a complex, shifting sculptural arrangement of bodies and objects. Some of the narratives that unfolded on stage were not always easy to interpret, creating a chance for dialogue among those watching the performance. The constantly evolving nature of the performance kept the audience engaged throughout the day even as they witnessed the ebbing and flowing of the participants’ energy levels. As Task unfolded, a communal sense of trust emerged—between the performers themselves and between the performers and their audience.

Herring began exploring participatory performance in 1998 as a way to open his process of art-making to the chance encounter. In 2001, the artist began inviting strangers to perform simple actions in his studio before a video camera. Herring had no preconceived idea of the outcome of these visits. Rather, the resulting artworks developed from his collaboration with the strangers. Basic, the video series that resulted from these studio performances, and the more complex Task performances, point to a utopian vision that underlies Herring’s work: the desire to establish temporary communities in which ordinary people are individually and collectively empowered to create art. The artist’s willingness to leave Task open to chance allows participants (and audiences) the opportunity to experience firsthand the potential of creative freedom and artistic experimentation.

Seattle’s Task was the fifth iteration of the performance and the first performed in a public institution during its normal operating hours. Herring has staged Task in a former Federal Security Bank in Lake Worth, Florida (2003); in the Masonic Temple at the Great Eastern Hotel, London (2003); at L’Ecole Supérieur National des Beaux Arts, Paris (2002); and at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2006).

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. Herring has received grants from Artpace, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Solo exhibitions include those at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; 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).