We are as a buzzing hive. A city preparing for its annual carnival, its victory parade, its senior prom – we are feeling spoiled rotten that we get to have our once-in-a-lifetime blowout for the 13th time. The production lab is pumping out art. We realize that the whole is not more than the sum of its parts, and that each artist contains the whole genetic code of True/False. Same goes with the movies we’re screening.
Today’s exploits included an excursion to the True/False lab on the Business Loop. When we pulled up we saw a cluster of fluorescent arcade machines tied up together on the back of a trailer. Nearby, volunteers were loading what looked like a river made of wood into the back of a U-Haul. When asked what he was doing, T/F volunteer Matt Barnes said, “Movin’ s**t,” at which point we realized we might be getting in the way of the hundreds of moving pieces – and people – emptying the lab’s contents for destinations all over downtown.
We also went and looked at Jerry’s Map on the walls of Uprise Bakery. Jerry, we hear, has been collecting GIS data, in his own artistic way, since the summer of 1963. We hope Columbia now registers on his radar as a place he might include in a future map as good as the one on the Uprise Bakery wall. Then we realize, with certainty, that we at least have a pretty good shot since, after all, Jerry got here. We called Jerry to get a quote for this, our fest digest, but he was somewhere with very bad service. We can only imagine where Jerry was mapping that had the kind of bad service we heard through the phone when we called for the quote. “I can’t hear anything,” Jerry kept saying. We can only conclude that at that moment Jerry was mapping a wonderful land of mystery and thrills.
We caught up with Ygor (VJ SUAVE), who just came in from Brazil. For the curious, no, he did not bring his Suaveciclo on the plane. “I cannot bring my tricycle to other countries,” he said, which made sense given the size of this tricycle. He did, however, bring bicycle components which will enable him to turn the bike Karl Klunk gave him into a cargo-tricycle on-the-fly. He also brought a high-powered video projector. What kind of art does VJ SUAVE do? If your grandfather owned a cinema and your mother brought you to Disneyland every year for several years when you were a very small boy, and years later you returned to America as an adult because you were brought by a highly esteemed film festival to do art, what kind of art would you do? Join him for two rides this weekend: one starting 6pm Friday at The Picturehouse Lawn. And 10pm Saturday from The Great Wall at the southwest corner of Ninth & Broadway.
People tell us every year that we’re doing too many good things at once. To which we reply: If we got a call right now from the Barnum and Bailey circus, and they told us they wanted to set up and give a brief show in the lobby of the Broadway Hotel, would you advise us to deny them? Would you tell us that dancing horses would be too much, given all that we already have? What if it was a lone ventriloquist who called us on the phone and asked, last minute, if he could perform? These are the types of questions we think about all year.
Some simple advice going into your fest: Be adventurous eaters. And drink the right amount of 360 Vodka. Thank you, 360 Vodka, for partnering with the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture, Columbia’s strapping urban farmers, toward the goal of making True/False a sustainable enterprise. “We are excited to partner with the festival to make more compost than ever,” said Carrie Hargrove of CCUA, and she would know. CCUA has made a lot of compost.
Tonight we’re going rollerskating with old and new friends. We’re going to wear a strawberry-colored suit and we’re going to look alluring when we skate by you. We will plug in the earbuds and groove to Prahlad, the talented finger-piano guru who busks for us every year. We will make three or four quick laps, completely lost in our own world, enjoying some much-needed alone time before downtown erupts. When you see us on our skates, knees bent, butt up, arms swinging, you’ll start to get the picture.
True/False 2016 Daily Digest: Wednesday, March 2, 2016