Judul : bikram yoga college of india
link : bikram yoga college of india
bikram yoga college of india
>>stacy brown-philpot: good afternoon. myname is stacy brown-philpot and i am an entrepreneur in residence at google ventures. and i'm excitedto introduce our guests today from question bridge. so question bridge started, i guessthe concept back in 1996, when chris johnson came up with the idea of unprompted q &a asa way of getting into the minds and the hearts and the beliefs of the african american communityin san diego. chris is a filmmaker and is
bikram yoga college of india, notably known for "the roof is on fire" thathe produced with a woman named suzanne lacy. and it was aired on crime tv. and he's goneon to do many other things but he's currently a professor of photography at the californiacollege of arts. so hank found out about what chris had doneand talked to him. i guess a decade or more
than a decade later. and talked to him aboutthis project and proposed the idea of doing something similar for black males. hank'swork has been exhibited all over the world and some of the more famous places, like theguggenheim, and the museum of modern art. and one of his films along the way was featuredat the sundance film festival. so these two great minds thinking about mediaand art and photography. and the black man. have come together into an inspiring project. for the last four years, i think it was, theywent to 11 cities and spoke with over 150 black men. just to ask questions. and hearthe answers. and it was unprompted. i think they got about 1500 conversations out of thisproject. and the idea was that people would
ask a question and someone else would answerthat question. different person, different mind, as a way of bridging the gap betweensocioeconomic status and also age status. so they've got some interactive things they'regonna show us today. i think chris said it well when he describes this project as a "unrehearsed,totally spontaneous expression of the truth." and i'm sure you'll enjoy what they both haveto say today. and if you wanna see more you can visit the oakland museum where their exhibitwill be on display until july 8th. so please welcome hank thomas and chris johnson.thank you. [applause] >>chris: well, i'll begin. thank you verymuch for being here. i wanna say that it's
really an honor to be here. and i wanna thankdaphne mews and anne farmer for making this possible for us. and as she said, we're hereto talk about a project called "question bridge black males" which has a really ambitiousgoal. what we intend to do with this project is actually change the way people understandthe nature of black male consciousness. which sounds like a lofty goal but i think you canunderstand, given the things that are happening in our culture right now. and the news. whythat's really important to do. one of the things i hope we get the chanceto talk about maybe when we do questions and answers is exactly why would an artist tryto take on an issue like that and how to go about it. so what we've done is prepare alittle clip to show you just what our methodology
is. to give you a sense of what we're doing,and so, this is our trailer. [silence] >>male #1: black man. >>male #2: do you wanna get out of the situationthat you're in. >>male #3: what is the reluctance for takingresponsibility for our people and our communities? >>male #4: are your children better or worseoff as a result of your involvement? >>male #5: why wouldn't you be happy withyour son being gay? >>male #6: why are you so violent? >>male #7: why do you have that "take" mentality?
>>male #8: why are you afraid of being intelligent? >>male participants: why? why? why? why? why? >>male #9: what i wanna know is >>male #10: why? >>male #11: i believe that we have incorporateda lot of things that are unhealthy to us. >>male #12: we are supposed to be tough. >>male #13: i can't let 'em see no type ofsucker. >>male #14: along with various other stereotypes. >>male #15: the level of mentorship in ourcommunity is not as strong as it possibly
could be. >>male #16: when i came up, crack was a quickway for a black man to make a million dollars. >>male #17: sometimes i think because we thinkwe're black we're some other kind of human beings. but we are just like most other humanbeings. >>male #18: why didn't y'all leave us theblueprint? >>male #19: we did leave you a blueprint. >>male #20: we did leave you a blueprint. >>male #21: we just didn't tell you whereit was. >>male #22: that's something that we droppedthe ball on.
>>male #23: what do you fear? >>male #24: that something will harm my children,and >>male #25: i fear success. >>male #26: am i the only one who has problemeating chicken, watermelon and bananas in front of white people? >>male #27: hah, hah, hah. >>male #28: alright, that's crazy. [laughing] >>male #29: that word, he has to stop usingit. >>male #30: i think black people can say "nigga"any time they want.
>>male #31: how dare you? what right do youhave to use this word? >>male #32: lot of "nigger" questions forthe rapper. >>male #33: what is common to all of us, thatwe can say makes us who we are? >>male #34: hm. >>male #35: this is the easiest question inthe world to answer. >>male #36: the thing that we have in commonis that we are male, and we are black. >>male #37: my question is, i try to livegood, but i'm surrounded by bad. and i wanna know, what it is i could do to do better andlive peaceful. surrounded by all evil. how can i do that?
>>chris: so what that brief sequence doesis give you a sense of what we've tried to do. and that is, to take the deceptively simpleprocess of asking a question and put that right into the heart of one of the most pressingand troubling social concerns of our time. and that is, the fact that the black communityis radically divided from itself. the fact that black men are having to contend withbeing one of the most opaque, and troubled demographics in our time. what we've doneis just experiment with the idea that black men not only have really deep questions aboutall the concerns that affect their lives. but they also have the answers. and puttingthem together, gives us a chance to really understand from the position of privilegedwitnesses, that this conversation is very
complex. and it unfolds in the installationthat we created. but it has a history, as she said, that began with my experience wheni was growing up in brooklyn. this is a slide by the photographer roy decarava.and i use this as a way of illustrating the way that i experienced bed-stuy when i wasgrowing up. as a kid in the '40s and '50s. at that time, the black community was stillforced to live in one community by itself. i mean, there were many many generations andmany different socioeconomic classes. i don't wanna oversimplify the fact that there wasobviously crime and lots of other issues. but what i love about this slide is that itgives a sense of the way i experienced the black community as a child. you see a mother,maybe walking her children from school. and
that sense of being part of a community thatwas a whole with all of the issues that were part of it. but then with the passage of the civil rightslaws, one of the unintended consequences was, there was a split in the community. thosewho were able to leave the african american community did. so this next slide by brucedavidson is probably more typical of the way people think of the black community. and ittypifies a lot of the problems that we suffer. and so, what happened was, i left new yorkwhen i was 17. came to california. i was very lucky to have mentors. that brought me intothe photography world. i studied photography with ansel adams, judy dader, winn bullock.and people like that. and i became a professor
at california college of the arts over theyears. and suzanne lacy who's renowned performanceartist. she's really well known for going to communities and trying to assess what theissues and values in that community are. and she and i formed a collaboration that gaveus a chance to work with kids like this in high schools. we created a project called"the roof is on fire." and what we did was, take the idea that young kids if you createa safe environment around them, will reveal truths that they'll withhold from you if theyare aware that you are there. so what we did was, we put the kids in cars on a rooftop.we got the commission, the rooftop of a parking garage. we put 200 cars with kids in the carsand we told the kids that they were to use
the car as a safe place to talk. and so theyhad a badge around their necks that said "shut up and listen" and that was a way for theaudience to create an opportunity to really hear the truth from their point of view. andthey talked, as you can imagine, about issues that were passionately important to them.they talked about sex, and drugs and values and language. and it was a really animatedconversation. but one of the things that inspired it was, inspired the whole process, was thatthey felt as if they were given permission to really be listened to. and you can seein this slide the woman in the background, is performing the generous act of listeningto these young people. and it was a really powerful experience. andi think the people who saw it came away with
real different insights into what was goingon in the lives of these young people. so that project was broadcast on korn. andi sort of became known in the art world for doing projects like this. and a few yearslater, i was commissioned by the museum of photographic arts in san diego to do a projectcalled "republic" and they asked me to do something that related to the black community.and i thought back to that initial experience i had as a young person of seeing the blackcommunity divide into those who made a decision to leave the community, to seek opportunitiesand freedom. which is great. but of course there is a cost to that. and the one thingthat i took away from the initial experience was the fact that listening is a passive formof being very generous. but there's probably
a more active way to do that. and that's askinga question. so what i decided to do was give people on both sides of this divide. thosewho live within inner city working class neighborhoods and those who don't. to ask questions of thoseon the other side and vice versa. so what you're seeing here is keyona johnson. she'sa woman who lives in the inner city of san diego. and william gaines. and so i gave hera chance to ask questions of him. and vice versa. so what i'm gonna show you is a briefclip of this exchange. [on video]>>william: have you given any thought to where the money comes from for people who are receivingpublic assistance? and do you care? >>keyona: i've thought about where publicassistant money come from. and i do care.
but for one, i am on public assistance andit's not because we don't wanna work. it's not because we wanna sit at home and get acheck. or anything like that. a lot of people perceive us young teenage mothers to sit athome and just collect a check. where a lot of times, we do go out and look for work.we do work. we can't work as long because childcare is really up there. at this pointin time, i pay 300 dollars a month and i have two. and i pay 150 dollars a month for anotherchild. the 300 is 'cause my child is under two. the 150 is 'cause my child is over twoand is school age. so yes, i know where the money comes from. it comes from tax payers.but we do have people who take up american jobs who are not taxpayers. because they'renot an american citizen. how about that? we
get decreases in our checks because we'reamerican citizen. but yet if you're a refugee or you're an immigrant, or a legal workingalien in the united states. you get a increase in your check when you come over here fromdifferent countries. because the united states government have, so called, some kinda agreementwith them. they come over here and they're able to get grants to start business. wherewe are already living here working, doing the backbone of the country. and we don'tget that same type of respect. but yeah, people look down upon us because we are on publicassistance. they like to say "oh, the black teenage moms, they're going out openin' theirlegs and havin' babies just to get on welfare, to get out the house." that is not alwaysthe case. it's a small proportion that does
that. but you only focus on this small portion. >>chris: so you can imagine what it was likefor me to be in the middle of this process and have this kind of really amazing truthtelling. just emerge spontaneously from the people who were involved with it. the piecethat i put together for the mopa installation was an hour's worth of really poignant questionsand answers that came from the people who were involved. so i knew that somehow or anotherthat this process was animating something that these people wanted to share. where didthese incredibly articulate answers come from? so that's who question bridge was born. ihad ambitions back in '96 of it maybe becoming an hbo documentary and going on. it turnedout not to happen that way. basically i sent
it around to a bunch of friends. luckily oneof the friends i sent it to was the mother of hank willis thomas. and i think hank willpick up the story from here. >>hank: yeah. so, i had [clears throat] iwent to the california college of the arts for graduate school when i was photo major.and i was one of chris's students. he was my mentor. and along the way, i, both seeingimage, seeing a documentary of "the roof is on fire" but i also saw him do a presentationon question bridge. and about three years after i graduated i was offered an opportunityto apply for a fellowship from the tribeca film institute for new media. and around thesame time i came across a vhs that my mother had of the question bridge original installation.and i, it struck me as having so much potential.
because of the rawness with which the exchange,happened. and in fact one of the things chris talked about was the fact that you, if youhave the same people in the same room, having a discourse, it'd be a lot more contentious.and people would be less willing to listen to each other. but somehow by mediating aconversation through video, it allows for a deeper way of listening and a more sincereand earnest response. and myself and one of our collaborators bayete ross smith who alsowent to cca, were doing a lot of work contending with issues about the limitations of notionsof black male identity. especially. and i was really interested in how we could usethis question bridge model to speak to what i saw as the diversity within the africanamerican male demographic. which kind of is
frequently spoken about in monolithic ways. and so i approached chris about how we couldpossibly apply to do a question bridge about black males. and so over and through thatwe wound up traveling with bayete ross smith and then soon our fourth collaborator kamalsinclaire came on board. and then actors jesse williams and delroy lindow. and then my mothercame on board as executive producers to kind of help create this team to kind of fulfillthis kind of undetermined mission. at the time. which soon became this vision to representand redefine black male identity. but the simplicity of the way the project worked hasalready been expressed but this is a brief illustration.
[video playing] >>male #33: my question to the black man inamerica, or anywhere else, is, what is common to all of us? that we can say makes us whowe are? >>hank: so we found this personality in philadelphiapennsylvania. and he asked this question. and we then went around and found people toanswer the question. and this is just one of the answers. >>male # 37: our commonality is in our history.but i think our beauty as black people is also in our diversity. >>hank: and so at first we thought about justdoing this as a simple one to one. just one
person asks the question, another person answeredit. one of the real essential elements of the project was this idea that we pride ourselvesin being a diverse nation, where everyone has these kind of, can be, a space to be themselves.but we all contend with narrow notions of who we are at the end of the day. and kindof live under these clouds of assumptions about our own perception by other people.but one of the things that we're really trying to contend with at our project is, how dopeople within that group relate to one another and each other. and how does that affect thingslike the achievement gap, the discipline gap, the over representation of black males inprison. and one of the things that we really feel like this project has the potential todo is affect the major thing called "implicit
bias". which was a major factor in the trayvonmartin case where somebody sees a young black male in a hood and makes this whole host ofassumptions about that person. and that affects the way that many african americans, travel,navigate the world. and african american men, especially, benefit from people seeing morewhole and diverse representations of who they are. rather than seeing one or two or threepeople actually seeing how each of them is a representation of only themselves as individuals. >>chris: so this is an illustration of themethodology. just to make it clear, what we really do, as naive as it seems, is we simplytouch black men wherever we are. we, there are instances where we saw a black man wholooked interesting. there was a guy in chicago
who had a guardian angel's hat on. the veryfirst man in our project was someone sitting next to me on the plane. that i said "thisproject is something that gives black men who have questions about other black men achance to ask those questions and get answers." and so we would simply go around and we'dsay "do you have a question you'd wanna ask another black man you feel very differentfrom?" and surprisingly black men no matter where we were said "sure, i have a question."and so they would sit in front of our little makeshift studio, and you can see me heresetting up lights around this person. and we simply give them a chance to ask the question.so the questions come spontaneously from these people.
and then you can imagine that once you'vebuilt a critical mass of these really powerful questions. and one of the things that hanksaid is that this is perceived as an opportunity by the men in it to really reach inside theirown lives and be reflective about what do they think defines a difference between themand somebody else. you can imagine how different the projectwould be, what a different dynamic it would be if we said "do you have a question forsomeone that you admire?" what you would get is a very very different process. and this man was a librarian in the museumwhere we were appearing. and. >>hank: birmingham alabama.
>>chris: and because we had no idea what themen were gonna ask, it was really remarkable. so this is a good example. [video] >>male #38: you know, i wonder, black man,are you really ready for freedom? and if not, what would it take for you to want and needthis freedom? >>chris: so you can imagine that once we havethese questions, you are kind of assigned by the nature of the project to try to finda place to get a poignant answer. because this question related to freedom, one of thethings that a lot of the issues that came up dealt with was the issue of the behaviorof black men. and so we knew that we needed
to go to prisons if that was possible. i gotthe opportunity to teach meditation at the county jail in san francisco. the administrationthere became comfortable enough with me to allow us to bring in cameras and lights. andso we asked, we presented that question in video form to this man. and here's his answer. >>male #39. am i ready for freedom? and whatwould it take for me to want that freedom? first i would have to stop and ax myself,man. that's a tough question. 'cause freedom to me is a mind state. you know, because yougot some people that's not in jail that's not free. you know, you got people that'sin prison, in dysfunctional relationships. you got people that's in prison with jobs.they work nine to five, that they don't like.
some people are in prisons with alcohol anddrug abuse. so i would have to, um, ax myself, what's imprisoning me. and what's been imprisoningme is self-esteem. my lack of self-esteem. my lack of self-esteem has led me to commitcrime. to hurt people. to manipulate people. because if i loved myself there's no way icould walk outside this room and punish somebody. and esteem within myself. so to be free, tome, would have to be, i would have to change. you know. so in order for me to grow i haveto change, because if change is necessary for growth, in order for me to grow, i wouldhave to adapt the mentality of something's gonna have to change in me. i'd have to changemy mind state. i'd have to change the way i talk. i'd have to change the people i interactwith. that would be "free."
>>hank: so one of the things that was so fascinatingto me, actually having in the room with chris and bayete when we showed this question. thatwas his immediate, three seconds later response to seeing that image on the screen. and ithink watching some of your faces here, it's, your experience and that feeling that we feellike really works for question bridge. like, how else were we gonna get someone to givethat kind of authentic response. or, if you walked up on the street corner like, you know,do, what is it, you know? asked 'em that freedom question. "do you really feel free?" is thatwhat are they gonna say? or you go to jail, whatever. and i think that potency for theproject was something that really got us through the doors and things like the bay area videocoalition's and the producers institute and
sundance where we met eric dovesburger whoworks here at google. and sundance new frontier story lab with bayete and kamal sinclair.went, were at bavc—this is kamal, kind of being, kind of very efficient with our ideas.and started to think about how all the ways our project could work. and initially we thoughtabout doing a documentary. and as we started to brainstorming, the documentary kind offell to like fifth place among the ways the project could grow. so we thought about theart installation. there's a website that we're working on. and then kamal, chris and bayeteput together a curriculum that is being used and piloted in ninth through twelfth gradeclasses in the bay area and also in new york. and then these community events that we'vebeen doing. and then hopefully eventually
it'll happen, we can do the documentary. but we approached rene deguzman from the oaklandmuseum and also the brooklyn museum about this idea of having a simultaneous launchof the installation and we showed this kind of 3d animation of how the installation mightwork. [many voices talking on animation] >>male #1 in animation: so much. so many ofyou, using the racial slur. and you know what word i'm talkin' about. it's very serious.we have to stop usin' it. why don't you stop? >>male #2 in animation: i think it's bullshitthat black people can't say "nigger." i love saying "nigger" and i think it's' fantastic.first of all it's one of the most beautiful
words to use in the english language becauseit can express so much. much like the word "f---" the other thing is, you can't givewhite people magic power over us with a word. like if we stop saying a word because whitepeople use it poorly. that's an absurdity. and it also gives them much more power thanthey would have if we just used the word freely and enjoyed ourself with it. we have muchbigger issues. >>male #3 in animation: i think it's a ignorantstatement and i refuse to use it myself. and i've heard the argument that by saying itin popular culture we're desensitizing the effect of this word. i think that's foolish.and it just blows me away when i hear people who are not even black now, like other minoritieswho are around black people when they say
this. have no idea of the historical significancein this word. and i think they're showing their own ignorance by continuing to say thisword in public. >>male #4 in animation: for myself, amongfriends and people i've known for a long time, and that we understand each other or feelwe understand each other, we can use that, use "the n word." that's the way i look atit, and i hate to hear people, when they say you shouldn't use the word in any setting,as if no other group, no one ever discusses that other groups, racial groups do the samething. they use the word among italians, polish, irish, i've heard them say it among themselves.they call each other "dago," "pollack," "guinea," "mick," and, but you understand that you can'tuse that word in their group. and how it would
be taken. so it's a little different. it dependson what setting you're in and who's using the word. chris: so what you're seeing here is a cgithat we put together to help us think through how do we deliver this content. what we'vegathered is so precious. i mean one of the things you saw on this slide was the dynamicof a powerful question letting loose so many different answers. and we realized what weneed to do is honor all of those answers and give people a chance to feel as if they weresurrounded by these black men in almost a sacred space. that's why they're organizedon five pillars in kind of an arc. so you have a chance to sort of be embraced by thepeople that are talking. and what we wanted
the people who were witnessing this to feellike as if they were sort of invisible. they were privileged witnesses to this very intenseconversation that has many dimensions. 'cause what you see from this little sequenceis, a question like something like the word "nigger." generates so many different answers.there's no general agreement among black men about how to relate to that word. so one ofthe things that we felt like we needed to do in putting together the installation washonor that diversity of values and give people a chance to see that there's an internal debatethat goes on within the greater consciousness of black men about all these issues. and therange of issues that this project automatically generated was really almost it was inspiring.as she said earlier, we spent four years traveling
to a dozen cities around the country. samplingblack men talking. and one of the things that always surprised us was as hank said, howprepared these men were to answer those questions. so it gave us a chance to thing conceptually,why was that possible. it's certainly a pressurized situation when you invite a stranger intothe studio. you put a camera and a monitor in front of them and give them a chance totalk. why does it work? and one of the things we realized is that internally, marginalizedpeople, and maybe all of us, are sort of rehearsing answers that to questions that float overus like a cloud. and so what we're doing is tapping into this question cloud that peopleare looking for opportunities to share. so that's what question bridge is more than anythingelse. it's a vehicle for the transference
of inner truths that are always there andwhen you tap into a demographic that really is underrepresented. one of the things thatwe thought about is that it's very much like giving ralph ellison's "invisible man" a placeto speak. that's what this is about. 'cause if you look at black men all aroundyou, they have so much to tell us about survival, about accountability, about consequences.one of the things that we were, it was vital for us to do was not populate this projectwith too many well-known black men. we wanted it to feel as if you could walk out and encounterany black man in the world. and that would, that person could be part of question bridge. so we had this idea [chuckles] and then thequestion is, what do you do with it? and once
it sort of formulated itself into the ideaof the installation, we were very lucky to get an opportunity to do a presentation atthe brooklyn museum and much to our surprise they embraced it. almost immediately. andnot only were they willing to commit a six month installation of the show, but it's actuallystill there. but then they encountered rene de guzman who's sitting here with us and reneand charles edemere decided to make a bi-coastal representation of it. so here's this representationof black men talking on both sides of the country. we also the next slide will showthat we opened this year at new frontier at sundance which was a real honor. we also simultaneouslyopened at the utah museum of contemporary art and the city of atlanta committed thechastain gallery to a single channel version.
we'll be showing you a version of that shortly.the way the five channel dynamics looks when you condense it down to one channel. theseare installations, shots of the way it appears in brooklyn. every space of course has totreat it a little bit differently. at oakland for example it's divided between two galleries,and what it amounts to is a three hour, five channel, high definition experience. you canimagine for us going to sundance what it was like to sort of be there as directors of thishigh definition three hour movie. and the project, as hank said, organically neededto represent itself in many different ways. so one of the different things we did wascollaborate with innovent, a software development and web design company. and we created thismobile app. because what we realized was that
it was really important for us to get theexperience of the presence of a black man asking you a question out into the world.so what the kiosk experience in the museums allows you to do is have preselected questionspresented to you. you get to identify yourself. in terms of your demographic. also in termsof a few keywords that you think define your sense of who you are. and then you get touse the web cam built into the kiosk, into the ipad, to actually answer that questionand present that back to the world. >>hank: and this is yet another google employee,bernardo fernandez, was one of the first people to come and test out the mobile app, and wasactually impressed by it, which we felt like was a major achievement.
and so what was really exciting about actuallyhaving the opening is seeing on, literally dozens of people kind of crowd around thisinstallation. and the fact that it is a five channel, three hour installation is somethingwe never expected people to engage in on that level. we tried to make it something thatpeople could exit or enter at any point. we also made the education curriculum availableonline. so people could download it and engage with their family, friends, but also of coursestudents. and then >>chris: we should say that kamal sinclair,our collaborator was really key in developing that curriculum. >>hank: and then these ideas, one of the thingsthat chris really, was most moved by early
on was this idea of this intergenerationalexchange. and i witnessed that very much watching him and bayete relate. especially, i don'tknow, me and bayete are the same age. but there's this really amazing kind of way whichas black men, they have such different perspectives about things. and have the three of us havingthese kind of different couldn't agree on what issues were central to black male identity.while we're doing this project about black males. and so chris, had this idea of why don't weactually see what it's like to put this format to test in the public. where we have thisintergeneration exchange where we had these things called blueprint round tables.
[video starts] >>male on video: i'm trying to figure outthe parameters of blackness. [video stops] >>hank: whoa. whoa. oops. sorry. i don't evenknow how that got in there. oops. it was going so smoothly. [laughs] [audience laughs] let me see if i can skip that particular clip. so this is a question that inspired this blueprintroundtables. we had our last one on saturday in oakland which was supposed to be just atwo hour exchange which went on to be this
four hour conversation with hundreds of peoplethat stayed. and the one at the oakland museum was very moving. i got teary eyed, and itwas pretty amazing. but this is the question that inspired that.[video starts] >>male #1: i love older people. i respectolder people. i live for older people. 'cause i come from somebody that's older. so firstand foremost, i wanna say, we did do wrong. we did things, we stuck on ourself. we dida lot of wrong things. you know. and for the most part, it's i don't respect how you lookdown on us. you treat us a certain type of way. it's alright. we gonna do it for thenext 30 years. we gonna show you all. we gonna do what we gotta do. but my whole thing is,my first and foremost. i should have just
said this from the beginning, but i'm gonnasum it up with this. why didn't y'all leave us the blueprint? peace.>>male #2: i suppose some of us, myself included, feel like we did leave a blueprint. if youhad experienced the euphoria that we felt during the 60's,when we would see one anotheron a corner, and there wasn't no such thing as you had to throw up some kinda gang sign.when you saw the black people, you weren't like this, they weren't like that. everythingwas just fine. that's not the way it is now. i thought, me as an individual 'cause i can'tspeak to other people. i thought there would be a continuum, i thought if i raised my childrena certain way that things would stay that way. i thought that we were progressing. iunderestimated the seriousness of our enemies.
i underestimated them. that so much time andeffort would be spent in dismantling those things that brought about self-esteem, thosethings that brought about self-love. those things that brought about respect for oneanother. a great deal of time and energy was spent dismantling that. by our enemies. andit is our fault. that we did not see that for what it was. and combat it more thoroughly. >>male #3: i think maybe we did leave youa blueprint. and yet, we too were so busy trying to survive, that we were not as organizedand disciplined as maybe we should have been. but speaking from the platform of martin lutherking's civil right's movement. martin luther king never had more than 100 people on hisstaff. and that was only for one or two movements.
he never had more than a half a million dollarsa year to try to change the world. none of us had a blueprint. but what he taught usto do and what we learned from gandhi in india, was that we could find our own way by standingup for the truth. >>male #4 well, after the civil rights movementof the 60's proved to be very very successful, i think blacks felt that we have crossed athreshold, and it's easy going from here on in. but the worst was yet to come. i kindathink we thought that the waves would continue to roll. and we did drop the ball. only tofind out later that other people were making plans and were putting certain kinds of negroesin heads of organizations and paying them well. and they became the spokespersons forblack people. and they became the protectors
of the plantation. being paid by white people. >>male #5: i think that we left you the blueprint,we just didn't tell you where it was. it's there. but we didn't just show it to you orlay it out. you had to look at us and see what we were doing to find out. how to goabout that blueprint. you see, some things can't be explained to you. some things yougotta look at a person and then you gotta see what it is that they're doing. the blueprintis, you get an education. you don't just be in the middle of the road. you don't try tobe with the kids who don't do well. you try to be the best. ok? you do as good as youcan, no matter how angry people become when you're really good. you know, what? successis not easy. it is not. if it was, everybody
would be successful. it takes time. it takeshard work. and everybody's not geared for hard work. some people want it overnight.and it's not gonna happen that way. so what you have to do it, we old people, we've laidthe groundwork for you. we've already put the blueprint out there. now you might notlike that blueprint. you might wanna alter it in some way. and you can. but if you alterit, and it's not for the better, you will not achieve what us old folks have achieved. >> chris: so again, you can imagine. you cansee that what we're doing is, we're telling a story. we're allowing the men in this projectto tell the story. and in this case there was a hunger for an intergenerational exchangethat doesn't happen when the men don't have
fathers and grandfathers who are there. andso this project becomes a vehicle for talking between generations. >>male #6: i'm tryin' to figure out the parametersof blackness. i know there's stuff that i'm supposed to believe and read and listen toand look at if i'm definitely gonna be black. like in a heart of blackness. but i keep wondering,suppose for example i prefer to listen to classical music? or i prefer to travel toplaces where there are no black people? or i like picasso maybe even more than i likeromare bearden or jacob lawrence. am i still black? or exactly how do we figure out wherethese boundaries are. or what we're supposed to be if we want to be a part of this community?
>>male #6: oh my god. i am so f---ing sickof regulatory blackness. because this is what your question is all about. what do i haveto do in order to prove my blackness. let me just answer your question like this. iknow i come from a rich tradition that is diverse as it is deep. i don't have to doparticular things in order to prove that i'm more or less black. i mean, that's absolutelyridiculous and i think it makes us schizophrenic. i think it makes us crazy to run around thinking,well, if i don't listen to hip-hop, i'm not black enough. um, if i go to rock concertsor something like that, i'm being white. if i do this or if i do that, i'm not seen asbeing a full black person in the black community. f--- that shit. i'm black. i'm proud of that.and i don't have to adhere to all these cultural
norms in order to prove that. >>male #7: see, i've always believed in dealingwith different type of people. i never was set in stuck in like one type of box. so,basically the answer for that is, like, you can do basically whatever you wanna do. justalways remember that everything comes from black. you know what i mean? so if like, youcan deal with whoever you wanna deal with. i like white people. i gotta few white friends.you know what i mean? and there's not nothin' wrong with that. it's your choice to do whatyou wanna do. but just always remember, try to rub off and always try to take what youneed to take from certain people and do what you need to do with them, and create whateveryou wanna create. brothers.
>>hank: this is one of the more compellingexchanges that we came across. which i think when we heard this question, i was, that wasthe first one when i was like ok, i think we've reached our, our stopping point. whereas, chris decided to forge forward andyou kind of see where it led us. >>male #1: alright, cool, so this is my question.i've got a lot of brotha's in the hood, listenin' to a lot of rap music. and i just wanna know,what is so cool about selling crack? cause someone tell me that. why is that so glorifiedin the music and the things that we talk about? >>male #2: well, for myself, when i came upcrack was a quick way for a black man to make a million dollas. i'm 40 years old. in '85when the crack scene hit. i was 15, 16 years
old. watching two parents work dog hard todeath. and watchin' the dude next door who was selling crack ride big cars. to me, ithought that was cool. and once i learned how to sell crack, and learned how to acquiremy own money. and steal, learn how to have things white folks was havin' and get up wheni wanted to get up. to me, that was cool. >>male #3: to me, crack is wack. but to mostpeople i think, why to most people my age and where i come from, my community, i thinkit's cool because you could make money. you know, you could really just sit on your buttand, you know, make some money. don't really have to do nothin' except you have to watchfor cops and you be paranoid and everything. >>male #4: ain't nothing cool about beingup there. taking life chances. sitting on
my corner. not knowin' what's gonna occurat any given minute. tryin' to get some, what material possession.[coughing] ain't nuttin' cool out there. i mean, oppressingmy people because i'm hurt. hurt people hurt people. ain't nuttin' cool with that. ain'tnuttin cool with me sellin' crack to my mama. takin' the christmas toys away from my littlesiblings. 'cause i'm charging my mama a hunnred for a dime on credit. >>male #3: i believe, like, sellin' drugsis just, um, as much of an addiction as the person that is using it. you know, you seethat money, you get a high. >>male #4: i gotta answer for everything ido. my actions and my inactions. and i've
been a part of bullshit. and i didn't seeit on the streets, i was blinded to what, the delusion of grandeur. thinkin that i'mgreater than life itself. and i wasn't. you feelin' me? i'm responsible for hella hurtthat i caused people like broken families out there. i'm responsible for children that'sincarcerated right now as we speak. i'm incarcerated for death out there based on me selling crackbecause i never know what a person had to do to go get it. you feelin' me? i'm responsiblefor that shit. ain't nuttin cool with that. and at nighttime i sit and i sleep in my cellman. and i sit there lost in thoughts man. damn. i'm responsible for a lot of things.and um [sighs] man. i ain't know why it's up for that. just sitting here with the bullshitthat i created. just sittin' here and watch
my people sit here and cry. i'm responsiblefor everything. i hold myself accountable. shit. but i been committed suicide a longtime ago when i was a part of that bullshit. now i claim my life. and i'm a part of somethingthat's greater. and that's the solution. >>chris: [sighs] so, again, you can imaginewhat it was like to be in the presence of that kind of disclosure that came spontaneouslyfrom this man just given an opportunity to do it. the same thing is true in this examplehere. we had no idea what this man was gonna ask. >>male #1: this may seem like a silly question.i wanna know, am i the only one who has a problem eat'n chicken, watermelon, and bananasin front of white people.
[other men laugh and comment] >>male #2: i don't have a problem with it.period. >>male #3: no, i'm gonna be honest with you.i don't even eat watermelon because of the connotations that it has around black people.um, but i will eat some chicken though. [men laugh] >>male #4: i never heard the bananas one.i never heard. bananas, really? >>male #5: i don't know if you the only one,but it's not a problem for me to eat whatever i wanna eat in front 'a anybody. >>male #6: you're not the only one brother,to be honest. every time i still eat chicken.
i eat a lot of watermelon. and i love bananas.but i'm always lookin' over my shoulder. wherever i'm at, seein' who's watching me eat thiswatermelon and this piece of chicken. and this banana. always. you not the only one. >>male #7: no, i know plenty of african americanswho as a rule will not eat watermelon in front of white folks. now, for me, i've difficultyrelating to the question only in the sense that i've never ever liked watermelon. [laughter] and i don't eat meat. so i don't find myselfin the situation [laughs] where chicken and watermelon comes to a head. but i do knowthat there are times where you feel like you
are the stereotype. because you know, if theysay "hey do you wanna go play some basketball?" and of course i love basketball. i playedit every single day. but there's a part of me that wants to say "nah. i don't wanna playany basketball. what makes you think i wanna play basketball?" but in those moments, ithink we have to be honest with ourselves. and just know that there are some things thatare true. yes. you know. we like chicken. we like watermelon. and there's nothin' wrongwith that and it's nothin' to be ashamed of. >>male #8: it's not a silly question brother.my family sells 50,000 pounds of watermelon every week in the streets of south chicago,milwaukee, and gary, indiana. and have been since 1953. and we're ok with that.
[laughter]and by the way, i like fried chicken. 'fact, i'm gonna make some tonight. >>male #9: i don't know if you're the onlyone ashamed. i'm not ashamed, but i do give chicken a second thought sometimes. even wheni mention it. but i always pass it off as sort of like in a jokey joke way. 'cause ido love chicken. watermelon. i don't eat watermelon so much. so i'm not really so much ashamedof it. bananas, i hadn't thought about bananas because i was always thinking about banana,because i'm gay in a sexual way. so when i put a banana, i'm always self conscious infront of anybody. just because, sexuality. but not because of race.
>>male #10: i thin really the question leadsto a deeper question. why are we so concerned what they think about us? i mean, you know,that's what the real question is. i don't really care. you know, i know somewhere inthere, i do care, but in my consciousness and what i'm gonna say is, i don't reallycare what they think. you know, i don't need their approval in order for me to go aheadand be me. or for me to do my job. you know, or for me to be who i'm gonna be. i don'tneed their approval. i don't need their jaw. none of that. you know, i think it's' reallyimportant that we stop worrying about what they think and start worrying about what youthink about yourself. and maybe what the little black kid next door to you thinks about you.f--- some white person thinkin' about what
they think about you eatin' a watermelon oranything else. your shoes, your jacket. your hat backwards. i don't go with the saggin'pants but you know, whatever you do. and that's because it's your cultural identity or yourfood or whatever. what they think about it is not really important. >>hank: so this is, and you saw that exchangebetween the heaviness of the crack questions and kind of the, i think the, we have so manyother, my favorite answer to that particular question isn't even in here. because we had,there's so many different kind of answers and what we found is everyone is an expertabout something. everyone like, we found this guy who said my family's sold watermelonsfor 60 years. you know, like these are the
kind of things that lie beneath, in everyone of us in this room there's all these things that we don't ever think about how they relate,how we relate to one another. i'm gonna skip this one. and then show you this clip andthen we're gonna pretty soon wrap up. >>boy: i have a question. how do you knowwhen you become a man? >>male #1: wow, that's deep question for sucha young person. how would you know when you become a man. well, basically, responsibility.you're able to take on assume responsibility. hold fast to your commitments to yourselffirst, your family and the community of which you live in. and if you can do those things,you're on your way to manhood. >>male #2: the question of when you becomea man, you're born a man. when you become
of age, may be a more relevant question. butsome of us become of age, many many times throughout the course of their lives. i thoughtthat i was a man at 21, ready to write memoirs of all my experience. you know. and so i don'tknow how many times that i thought i knew the answer to everything. and so i'm hereagain [laughs] thinking that i know it all. but you, you'll know. >>male #3: young man, there are a couple ofdifferent factors that make you a man. you have to be financially stable. that's one.you definitely got to have your own place. own roof over your head. you have to go tocollege. you know that's for all the young men out there. that's one step that you gottatake in order to lead to financial stability.
and you have to be taking care of yourself.and buy your mama a house. then you become a man. >>male #4: i think sometimes, i still tryto answer that question, whether or not i've become a man. i grew up in a single familyhome without a father. but i'm the youngest of seven and i have six older brothers whotaught me about being a man. and so part of that is trying to be responsible to my family.and to my loved ones. and being a responsible citizen. but i think each of us have to findour own way to that path. of what it means to be a man. >>male #5: young brother, it, you know, iknew i became a man when i had to take on
certain responsibilities and obligations withfamily, community and otherwise. >>male #6: oh, that's a fine question there.i think that one of the mistakes that we often make is thinking that the first time thatwe're intimate with a woman, that now we're a man. in traditional societies, in orderfor boys to go into manhood, they had to go through certain rituals which included thembeing prepared to fit whatever role they had in that society. if they were hunters, they'dlearn how to hunt. if they were farmers, they'd learn how to farm. if they were fishermen,they learned how to fish. and when they were through with everything that prepared themto be a responsible member of that particular community and that particular town or villageor tribe or whatever, they were given visible
symbols of their completion. a scar on theface, a type of clothing, a type of jewelry or something that they wore that a woman couldlook at them and say "well this person is now a man." >>male #7: young'un, young'un. hooo. i'm stilltryin' to figure that out myself. um, it's, it's tough. it's really tough. i just forme, i really don't know when that's gonna happen. right now i'm just trying to takethese strides in what society thinks a man is, you know. going to school and gettinga job, and being able to stand on my two feet. it's gonna be a difficult road. but it's probablygonna be well worth it. >>hank: so, we have all of this content. wehave actually more than 1500, we have almost
2000 now, question answer exchanges. and sowe worked with ryan alexiev, who's here also today to kind of start to, he also designedour ipad app. and we have a beta form of a mobile app that we did with innovent. butthe main thing that we're really hoping to get to as engagement energies are these postersthat we can distribute and a lot of people using qr codes and >>chris: nfc tags. >>hank: nfc tags to actually respond to questionsfrom their mobile devices. but also to log onto our website which we hope someday soonwill be user generated. where you can kind of look at questions, upload your own answersto questions and then have these different
ways of searching questions and answers throughthis integrated identity map. as well as a map based on what kind of values people arekind of representing. through locations, and things like that. and then lastly just usingthe slide of one of bayete ross smith, one of our collaborator's work. to show kind ofhow our hopefully we, our ultimate goal of the question bridge will lead to showing thatwithin each individual is a much more complex and diverse human being that no one couldbe deduced to a simple demographic stereotype or notion. >>chris: one of the ways that we symbolizethat is by emphasizing that the title of this project is question bridge, colon, black males.the colon is really important. there really
is no reason why this methodology couldn'tbe applied to any demographic. and that's one of our aspirations. >>hank: especially when it's not even raceor gender specific. question bridge google. >>chris: so thank you. >>hank: thank you all. >>stacy: feel free to ask questions with themic. >>audience member #1: so i, your project isa fascinating amalgam of psychology and sociology and politics and art and i guess my questionis about the artistic and the maybe political part. or anthropological part. i don't know.but as the people doing the selection curation
of this material, and deciding how to presentit and which parts of it to present to the people who interact with it or, and becomea part of the project, in that way or to the people who maybe go to the oakland museumand view the installation. obviously you bring some biases very openly to your selectionprocess and you've articulated some of them. like there's value in the diversity of thisdemographic. and i'm sure you probably have a very conscious awareness of the role thatyour biases play in the selection of this stuff. and which parts are you gonna emphasize,which are the interesting parts. i'm interested in your comments about how do you decide whichare the right biases to apply in choosing the material? and which ones are the onesthat you might try to suppress?
>> chris johnson: well, i think the essenceof that goes back to the fact that as i said at the beginning of this, this is a projectthat even though it does share methodologies and values that anthropology, sociology, psychologydoes, journalism, for example. all of those are pursuits of truth, but because it's awork of art, what drives all those decisions are, first of all, the initial experiencethat we feel like we wanna convey. i mean, that's primary. and because the initial experienceof this is our experience as black men, our understanding of how complex we are as individuals.our experience of the fact that because we are marginalized, i use the notion of us beingopaque. that the mission of this as artists is to have visibility. for those black men.and so what we wanna do is listen very carefully
to the stories that emerge. and then sensewhere there's an implied narrative arc, like where the meaning lies by the juxtapositionand sequencing of these questions. and you can see that in the sequences. so you makethose decisions intuitively. hoping you're creating an experience that becomes an exchangebetween us as artists and you as viewers. and then you use formal strategies, of coursethe framing. and i talked a little bit about the way the installation is designed. youknow try to be inclusive. those are all things that are driven by our sensibilities as artists.and then we hope that experience is transformative for the viewers. >>hank: well, i agree with him to a degree.i think one of the things he didn't mention
'cause he's being diplomatic is, we argue.[chuckles] because it's a collaboration and it's a collaboration and the making of a fivechannel, three hour project, you have, we have like six or seven voices involved. andnot all of them are african american males. and we each have different subjects. differentpeople who, like this is, i love this person or i love that person. and i think part ofthe reason that its' also, it becomes more complex is because no one single vision isdefining this conversation. we're very sensitive to that aspect. the only reason its' eventhree hours is because we didn't have time to make it six hours. because we have over85 hours of like really great content. and i think, you know, if chris were left to hisown devices. if i was left, i'd make it one
thing, and that's, i think this project, oneof the things that it really tries to challenge is this idea of an authoritative narrativevoice. that within especially social sciences says, i have an expert from the outside that'sgonna come in and apply these generic kind of format to finding out information abouta certain group. whereas our project is really organic. youknow, chris will walk up to somebody on the street. or bayete will call somebody in anotherplace. or kamal will say, oh i happen to know. everybody happens to know some black man somewhere.so the diversity is implied in the way that we find people. and then we show them questionsand when we first, chris asked them to pose a question and they would give a questionand the bias was in me, chris, and bayete's
selection of question we showed them basedoff the question they asked. >>chris: but let me just give a further answer.what emerged as hank said, was in a sense, a synthesis of two key things. one of themhad to do with healing. and so you heard me talk about how the project was for me a chanceto try to create a connection between these different segments of the african americancommunity. who for historical reasons were separated and needed each other. so that onehas a sense of empowerment and freedom to move through opportunities and the greaterworld. others have a strong sense of community, belonging to each other. and so, wanting toheal that. so healing became one theme. and that could have been the driving force behindthe whole project. but another one emerged
that was really important. and that is representation.the opportunity of black men through this format to speak and define themselves. withoutan author telling them what to say, and how to say it. and so those dynamics played outeven within a particular sequence. and that's what gives it such depth and richness, i think. >>male audience member #1: thank you. >>male audience member #2: i just have a quickquestion. do you guys ever film reactions? when they hear like 15 different answers,like how their opinions might have changed after that. >>hank: you wanna take that?
>>chris: well, sure. as you can imagine partof the process entails filming the person while they're listening to the question. sometimesthat's really important. and the way that would work, this is something hank and i didsort of telepathically. he would give me a cue that this question is gonna prompt a response.and i would be really careful to capture that. and then you could see how we used some ofthat footage. the headers. in and out of a question. as a way to create a dynamic ofexchange in the installation. and so we definitely captured as much of that as possible. butone technical thing, working in digital video, you become very mindful of disc space. sowe sometimes would see things running out and so we more, conservative about what wecaptured. but yeah, that was part of it. that
was part of it. >>hank: but also one of the factors of chris'soriginal question for this project. i wish we had the time to do, was to take certain,and chris especially has ambition, a mission, to go back and find the man who asked thepeaceful question. and show him the range of answers we got to that question. and ithink the, basically a rebuttal. that that was part, you did. >>chris: closing the loop. >>hank: closing the loop. and the originalquestion bridge project that we haven't really had a chance because we have to track downthese 160 men. but we will.
>>female audience member: on that note, thankyou very much for coming to google today. [jazz music plays]
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