Truth or Dare – how art gets us asking questions

Sun Xun, Maniac Universe, 2018. Installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2018, photograph: Anna Kucera.

Imagine a line-up of confessional booths, slam poets offering responsive exhibition tours, and a dining experience with magicians who encourage lies?

With the theme Truth or Dare, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) Conversation Starters program returns for its second iteration over the weekend of 8-9 September. The program features over 25 events led by artists, contemporary thinkers and poets and is designed to explore the inexactness of truth in contemporary life.

The theme resonates with the global climate of fake news, fake art, skewed social feeds, censorship and derailing of trust, as witnessed in our politicians’ Trump-esque antics.

Director of Public Engagement, Gill Nicol, told ArtsHub: ‘We are all different and we all learn differently. In today’s climate, many of us find it hard to decipher what is true or false in the world around us. The ethics surrounding truth is a compelling starting point for robust discussion.’

A good place to start to unpack those confusions and conflicts is in the interactive panel discussion The Ethics of Truth: An Experiential Program (8 September) led by Executive Director of The Ethics Centre, Dr Simon Longstaff AO.

Artists sit at the heart of the Conversation Starters program, Nicol said. ‘They think laterally about the world, and someone like Aleks Danko is really good at drawing things out of people, and to broach different debates.’

In his Chatter Workshop: Fake, Fiction, Fake News and Fear (9 September), Danko will investigate both the physical and psychological impact of an endless barrage of competing opinions.

He told ArtsHub: ‘Let me put it this way – yes, it is important to provoke “new” conversations as an artist. This has been a central to my recent art practice, strategy to alert the viewer/audience of the world around them and draw their attention to the blurring of fact, fiction and what really constitutes “fake” news. And how this fabrication is a platform in creating fear in the community.’

Danko will turn to newspapers collected over the past month and invite people to re-edit that news feed in order to provoke investigations into how our current lives are impacted by the media.

Visit mca.com.au/conversation-starters to browse the full Conversation Starters program.

MCA ARTBAR curated by Jonny Niesche, 2018, photograph: Sam Whiteside

Do you sit on the fence of truth or dare?

Nicol said that the Conversation Starters program is not entirely confrontational. ‘One thing that is more comfortable is our Conversation Wall, which poses a number of questions and invites answers from visitors. It was very successful last year and will remain up in the MCA for the duration of the Sun Xun exhibition (closing on the 14 October).’

MCA Public Engagement Manager, Yaël Filipovic continued: ‘There is often little opportunity for strangers to come together and have meaningful conversations. In terms of how we are looking at actual change, we are trying to get people to think about their individual responsibility in this bigger ecosystem and to think about what we can do individuals that has impact.’

A fun way to do to that is to take a tour of the gallery with a spoken word or slam poet. Poetour runs across the weekend (bookings suggested). Alternatively, visitors can sit down over a coffee at the MCA Café and discover how a poet thinks.

Filipovic explained: ‘We are really interested in the idea of storytelling, and we know that poets do that really well. You can have a one-on-one with a poet while eating lunch, or you can choose to take a tour through the galleries, as they add their inflection on the works shown.’

John Mawurndjul Artist’s Dinner, 2018, photograph: Kai Leishman

A highlight of the program is Eat these truths: Dinner and Conversation at MCA Café (8 September) – a dinner punctuated by three key presentations. Ethics Centre Director Simon Longstaff will be putting ethical provocations to the diners; artist Giselle Stanborough will lead participants in a game of truth or dare, and magician Adam Mada will take his cue from Sun Xun’s exhibition.

Nicol said that the Conversation Starters program is timely not just in terms of a political and global zeitgeist, but with regard to the shifting responsibilities of museums today.

So how does a program like Conversation Starters fit into the context of the museum?

‘We are inviting people in, to have a voice in that conversation. It is absolutely one of our key missions – to show contemporary art that comments and connects with society,’ Nicol said.

Conversation Starters: Truth or Dare will be presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia over the weekend 8-9 September.

Go to mca.com.au/conversation-starters to plan your visit.