USC Visions & Voices Project in partnership with Roski School of Art & Design
Under the guidance of the internationally renowned artist and activist Suzanne Lacy (Roski), the ITSC partnered with Visions & Voices to bring Chris Johnson and Hang Willis Thomas’s unique installation on cultural identity, power, performativity and race to challenge held notions and create an artistic dialogue on USC’s campus.
What is “Question Bridge?”
Question Bridge: Black Males is is an innovative, transmedia project that uses video to facilitate a conversation among black men from diverse backgrounds. The project assembles a series of questions posed from one black man to another through videotaped interviews, along with the corresponding responses, also through video. The questions range from the comic to the sublimely philosophical: from “Am I the only one who has problems eating chicken, watermelon, and bananas in front of white people?” to “Why is it so difficult for black American men in this culture to be themselves and remain who they truly are?” The answers are edited together into videotaped conversations that tackle the issues that continue to surround black male identity today in a uniquely honest, no-holds-barred manner.
While the ostensible subject is black men, the conversation is ultimately about the nature of living in a post-Obama, post-Ferguson, post–Voting Rights Act America. Question Bridge is about who we are and what we mean to one another. Question Bridge can be utilized as a model to explore the identity and socioeconomic issues of any demographic (Question Bridge Curriculum). Most critically, the project asks: How can we start to dismantle the myths and misconceptions that have evolved around race and gender in America? How can we work to reset and disrupt the existing narratives?
This project is co-presented by Taj Frazier of Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the Institute for Diversity and Empowerment at Annenberg (IDEA), Suzanne Lacy of Roski School of Art and Design, and the Race, Art and Placemaking initiative funded by the Provost.
Learn more about it at http://questionbridge.com.