If you’re in search of truth, it might just reside inside a 15-foot tall, inflatable speech bubble.
Last month, In Search of the Truth (the Truth Booth) visited Flint’s new Mott-Warsh Gallery. “The Truth Booth” is a project created by artists Ryan Alexiev, Jim Ricks, Will Sylvester and Hank Willis Thomas, who are members of The Cause Collective – a group of artists and ethnographers currently located in the United States, Ireland and Columbia. The group started in the early 2000s with a goal of producing large-scale public arts projects.
“The Truth Booth is a work that we’ve created as a sculpture that gets toured around, but it is also a work that the public can engage with and participate in, helping to create something that will be exhibited later on,” explains Will Sylvester, one of the artists in this collaborative project.
The inspiration behind the Truth Booth is the idea that as human beings, we all share certain truths, but some are quite different.
“For each one of us that is involved, there is a different piece of why we do the Truth Booth,” Will says. “For me, it’s mostly about understanding good truths. Although I may not agree with everything I hear, I can definitely understand that what I hear are other people’s truths that they’re sharing with us. There’s a certain level of vulnerability one must have when they walk into the Truth Booth and give – maybe not the most profound statement in the world – but they are going on camera to say, ‘The truth is … .’ I appreciate what people give to the Booth.”
“The Booth functions as many things – it’s anything that you make of it.”
Will Sylvester
The driving force for those who participate is that this is a way for them to share whatever they want, without fear or judgement – different than social media where one can share whatever they want for anyone to see.
“With the Booth, you are on camera, and you don’t have to say your name or where you’re from – people can see you,” Will says. “This is a great opportunity for people to express themselves freely. We, as an artist collective, don’t censor people. You get to fight those kinds of battles with art that you may not be able to fight with other types of media.”
The Cause Collective launched The Truth Booth in 2011 at the Galway Arts Center in Galway, Ireland. The project has since traveled internationally to Afghanistan and Cape Town, South Africa. Within the U.S., Truth Booth events have taken place in Charlottesville, VA, Long Island, NY, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, OH, Palo Alto, CA, Menlo Park, CA, Black Rock, NV, Miami Beach, FL, Chicago, IL, Brooklyn, NY, and Boston, MA.
“The word ‘truth’ has multiple definitions, so you’re going to get multiple interpretations. I think that’s the great part of this project,” Will adds. With the many different languages, there are many different definitions of the word and also how it is expressed. For example, in Afghanistan, before they say, “The truth is …” they habitually start with, “In the name of Allah, the truth is …” They are not confessing; they are expressing that this is the truth by God’s will.
Will adds that in South Africa, participants included a mixture of nationalities because the population consists of people from all over the world. “The Booth is the same white space … you could be anywhere in the world,” Will says. “So we get many different perspectives at one time.”
For the “final” project, they have created compilations of the Truth videos that more closely resemble a short film. In their next compilation, they hope to present the work in a way that is a bit more experimental. They have a 60-foot video wall, and are working with three projectors; the videos will be in a collage format, taking care to avoid too much curation and make choices that are more sincere. They hope to have at least one screening of the Truth video at Mott-Warsh Gallery in the near future.
“The Booth functions as many things – it’s anything that you make of it,” Will says, adding that you have full control of what gets recorded. “The first step is just to show up, to be there … even if you don’t press the ‘record’ button.”
Photography by Eric Dutro
