Fast forward a decade or so, when Hank Willis Thomas stumbled upon the Question Bridge tapes.
The project resonated strongly with him, and sparked an idea. “Around the same time, a lot of my own work had been about deconstructing black male identity; I was struggling with the narrow perception of what it meant to be black and a man,” says Thomas. “I was invited to apply for a new-media fellowship for the Tribeca Film Institute, and I kept thinking of Question Bridge as offering an amazing opportunity.” He and Johnson applied together and won the fellowship. Viewers of Question Bridge: Black Males see a black man, on camera, asking a question that he feels to be of significance to some unknown, other black man. Cut to another black man, who offers an answer. The second person is always different somehow—in a different city, or of a different socioeconomic class, for instance—and has been selected by the filmmakers for his ability to speak to the first person’s question. The dialogues are edited together to flow like a conversation, facilitating the viewer’s capacity to process the diverse views and perspectives coming from what they might have previously thought to be the same demographic. The artists recorded 160 men from across the country and amassed more than 1,600 thought-provoking question-and-answer exchanges. An accompanying interactive website is in development; the artists anticipate that that will be the primary distribution channel for the work. A key collaborator throughout was the multimedia artist, photographer, and arts educator Bayeté Ross Smith. Smith is Thomas’s former CCA classmate and Johnson’s former student. The fourth partner, Kamal Sinclair, is an artist, director, and producer, adept at balancing the creation of art and the business of art; she was instrumental in the development of Question Bridge: Black Males as an educational curriculum, with community “bridge” events and a dynamic online learning community that the artists hope will reach audiences far beyond museums and film festivals. The
43
43 43 alumni stories
the divisions that social class, economic opportunity, and cultural values have created within the greater community of African Americans. Question Bridge (1996), an hour-long installation at the museum and the nearby Malcolm X Library, used questions as a way to establish connections among people. The seemingly simple idea of having individuals from the same ethnic group—but diverse backgrounds—ask one another questions turned out to be very powerful. It enabled the subjects to speak honestly and examine the familiar concept of race from unfamiliar standpoints.