• Upcoming TASKS: 2012

    The first TASK Book is here!!!!
    Published by Illinois State University
    176 pages with hundreds of images, 4 essays as well as many texts and recollections submitted by you.
    For more info please check the NEWS section

    February 16, 2012
    UWO TASK Art Jam
    University of Wisconsin, Osh Kosh

    Saturday, March 3, 2012:
    NAEA TASK
    The first TASK Party at the National Art Educators Association conference, this year in New York, NY.
    Organized by: Art21, School Arts Magazine, ArtED 2.0, and the NAEA

    March -April 2012
    I heard from at least a dozen new TASK Parties since NAEA TASK, most but not all of them in class rooms.

    Among them at ArtPace in San Antonio, TX, where TASK was incorporated into Family Day (around 850 visitors and participants);
    and Philips Exeter Academy, in NH, where plans are on the way to organize a large TASK Party for the entire school (around 1000).

    TASK Midwest
    The first TASK blog for the Midwest:
    http://taskmidwest.weebly.com

What is TASK?

TASK is an improvisational event with a simple structure and very few rules. TASK can be a planned, more formal set-up with an application process and a pre-determined number of selected participants (TASK Events); A more open structure without any limitations of size or divisions between viewers and participants (TASK Parties); Or tailored for the use in classrooms (TASK Workshop).

All TASK structures, the events, parties and workshops rely on the same basic infastructure: a designated area (usually but not necessarily made from construction paper), 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 rules: to write down a task on a piece of paper and add it to a designated “TASK pool,” and, secondly, to pull a task from that pool and interpret it any which way he or she wants, using whatever is on (or potentially off) stage. When a task is completed, a participant writes a new task, pulls a new task, and so on.

TASK’s open-ended, participatory structure creates almost unlimited opportunities for a group of people to interact with one another and their environment. TASKs’ flow and momentum depend on the tasks written and interpreted by it’s participants. In theory anything becomes possible. The continuous conception and interpretation of tasks is both chaotic and purpose driven. It is a complex, ever shifting environment of people who connect with one another through what is around them. It is also a platform for people to express and test their own ideas in an environment without failure and success (TASK always is what it is) or any other preconceptions of what can or should be done with an idea or a material. People’s tasks become absorbed into other people’s tasks, objects generated from one task are recycled into someone else’s task without issues of ownership or permanence.

Please check out TASK news and new videos in the folders above this introduction, and images, etc, on the right side of the screen. 

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