Post Studio Projects: The 100 Conceptual Assignments

In the tradition of John Baldessari each Post Studio Projects student must create 100 assignments of conceptual art. My creations, both questions and instructions, are as follows: 

1. Conjugate a word in a language you don’t know and make a portrait.
2. Inhibit consumption.
3. Create a self-portrait using your favorite/least favorite possessions.
4. Offer a stranger an apple and photograph their response.
5. Reconstruct something out of its opposite.
6. Put your favorite song(s) in a minor key.
7. Portray “adult” themes using elementary school art materials.
8. Change the senses, make someone see a scent or feel a sound.
9. Shave your head or grow your hair.
10. Collect objects from people that they think represent “safety.”
11. Condoms.
12. Have people rearrange your closet and photograph the result.
13. Create a portrait of your worst fear.  
14. Blank Canvas.
15. Give someone or something a makeover.
16. Induce feelings of doubt. Record.
17. Recreate a nightmare using only one word, image, and object.
18. Opposites attract, or do they?
19. Use the scientific method.
20. Think blue.
21. It starts with the light. Follow it. Record.
22. Destroy something precious.
23. Create with your feet.
24. Find the fruit of your loins.
25. “Use me.”
26. Take away the value of money.
27. Verbalize the unnecessary. In public.
28. Bring attention to the terribly ordinary.
29. Maximize your presence, everywhere.
30. Have a conversation with yourself. Record.
31. Edit your life.
32. Paper Mache. Everywhere
33. Make Believe.
34. Reverse the flow of time.
35. Find the means to break free.
36. Enact a fairytale.
37. Murmuration.
38. What can you do with a dish and a spoon?
39. Create an art show title from the seventh word on the seventh page of seven books.
40. Host a princess tea party, but how a child would do it.
41. Sit in the dark and draw what you think.
42. Are dreams in fact reality? Record your dreams and create a blueprint.
43. Try to start a conflict between two other people.
44. A walk in the woods should be relaxing, but in the dark? Who knows?
45. You can’t see them but they can see you.
46. Create the ultimate monster.
47. You’re living in a monochromatic world.
48. Words remain. Throughout the day have people write a word on you in marker.
49. Salvage from the forgotten.
50. Make music with your feet.
51. Remember the mean kid in school? Be them for an entire day.
52. Give power to good by knowing evil.
53. Create your own season, present with all senses.
54. What does value mean to you?
55. Play an instrument you’ve never played before, upside down.
56. If ever there were a time to dance now’s the time, in public, bathrooms, everywhere.
57. Cook cereal in a soup pot.
58. Limit yourself to only negative words for an entire day, and the rest of the week to positive words.
59. Become a hermit, but your shelter is in a public space.
60. Candy is dandy but tomatoes make great missiles. Demonstrate in a field.
61. Can you put the universe in a jar? Try it.
62. They say a picture steals someone’s soul. Steal 100 souls.
63. Pick a word from the dictionary. Scream it at random points during the day.
64. Curate a show based off of a song picked at random.
65. Be disgusting.
66. Imagine an object as an orphan. Create an orphanage.
67. Grow a garden in your shoes.
68. If the world were underwater…imagine.
69. Go ahead. Take it.
70. If the slipper fits.
71. Find your despair, now chase it. Give it a rhythm.
72. You have found yourself in a new land, what do you do?
73. Build an empire out of paper.
74. Pick a random word in the dictionary and create a movement from it.
75. Imagine your stress as a doll.
76. Fashion a new instrument and attempt to play it, then give it to someone else and see what happens.
77. You’re digging yourself into a ditch, will anyone help?
78. Baking soda and vinegar.
79. Piss off Joan Crawford.
80. What would John Baldessari disapprove of? Do it.
81. See how far you can get on a tank of gas.
82. If teas have medicinal properties, try to concoct the cure-all.
83. Can anything be a canvas? What if you wear it?
84. Become a personal cheerleader for a week.
85. Lick 33 elbows.
86. Harness the power of all the dogs in the Art & Art History department.
87. Observe pagan rituals for a whole month. Try and get as many participants as possible.
88. Create the most uncomfortable mask possible.
89. They say to dance to the beat of your heart, but what if you actually did that? Choreograph based on your heartbeat.
90. Find a remedy for the sickeningly sweet.
91. Stay up as late as possible and draw or write every twelve minutes.
92. Give up.
93. Pull yourself together, get string or something.
94. Now that you’ve gotten some sense of purpose, do the first thing that comes to mind.
95. Say yes to everything until faced with a moral dilemma.
96. Climb the mountain and describe the most ordinary rock you find. Bring it back if possible.
97. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, go the other way. What did you find?
98. Discover and document 49 answers to the meaning of life.
99. Is water sustaining or detrimental to life? Find out.

 100. Enact the desires of those you hate the most.