True/False brings a multitude of talented visual artists from near and far to reinvent venues and transform the City for the four days during True/False. What began as a visual backdrop for the festival fourteen years ago is now an integral part of the weekend. Each art installation responds to the festival’s visual theme, an annual process that results in a city-wide exhibition of visual art in conversation. For 2018, the visual theme is WHETHER | WEATHER. Weather and whether are two of the more evocative words in the English language and both words converse with today’s political and meteorological climate. The future is unclear, but these visual artists conjure thoughtful observations and insightful commentary from this prompt.
Art installations permeate every corner of the festival, including theaters, concert venues, and alleyways. This year, three pieces will also be featured in the 9th Street closure between Locust and Elm: Pneuhaus, a Rhode-island based design collective specializing in spatial design, temporary structures, and contemporary art, will exhibit Atmosphere, a new immersive inflatable structure that interplays light, space and vapor, the most basic components of weather. Daniel Heggarty, Joseph Fischer, and Mark Steck bring Gyro-Kinetic Home, a tiny house suspended and capable of rotating in essentially any direction, reflecting on the tumultuous impact that inclement weather can have on our homes. In Radar Walk, Carrie Elliott turns weather patterns often seen, felt and witnessed for tenants of the Midwest into physical radar maps that might remind folks of past weather events, or harken to possible future events
Projection artists Jordan Doig and Stephanie Gould are featured in this year’s Great Wall, True/False’s nightly outdoor video art installation at Ninth and Locust; their piece, disruptive, shows the dissonance that is created when patterns are compromised. At the infamous (and newly named) Re@ction party, video work leaps off the screen and onto the walls with Sasha Goodnow, Becca Sullinger, and Anna Neal’s video and installation Year of the Crone, a rallying cry to help our earth and each other.
True/False will also feature Screen by Alia Ali; hung from the high-ceilings of Jesse Hall, Ali has created a series of screens representing the C, M and Y color model. Through screen and projection, Ali’s work comments on the perception of reality via information viewed through the screens of devices. The lobby of the Picturehouse will be adorned with a veritable swarm of Cicadas hand-crafted by sisters Mollie, Zoe, and Emily Hosmer-Dillard along with some talented Missouri elementary school students. In the Missouri Theatre lobby, Propagation, Paul Kirby and Steven Krejciks’ towering installation, consists of a robotic tree constructed with detritus and other reclaimed materials that will respond to the viewers’ investigation.
For a complete list of the 2018 art installations, head here. Attendees can also participate in a walking tour of art installations with the ineffable Gabriel Williams. Art Walks take place the Saturday & Sunday of the Fest, stay tuned for the schedule.