Participate!

Mixed Blood Portraits is a collaborative art project that seeks to celebrate and explore the self-formed identities of those who consider themselves of mixed racial and ethnic origins. Project Directors Francoise Duresse and Neil Chowdhury are collecting video self-portraits and images of interested individuals to mix into a video collage that reflects the diversity and complexity of multi ethnic identities in today’s increasingly globalized societies. This is your invitation to contribute your own story to this project. Using the questions below as a guide, please send us a video “self portrait” that tells the story of how you identify yourself in terms of race, ethnicity and culture, as well as how you feel you are perceived by others. Along with the video tape (mini DV or VHS cassette, NTSC or PAL format), please send us a photographic portrait of yourself, as well as pictures of objects and symbols that you consider important to your cultural identity, both traditional and contemporary. Submission of video recordings and images to Mixed Blood Portraits constitutes permission to use them to create and exhibit videos and reproductions for artistic exhibition, publication, and promotion of the Mixed Blood Portraits project. Credit for the original source material will be given wherever possible. Please include your contact info with your submission, so we can keep you notified of the progress of the work and upcoming screenings and exhibitions. The ultimate aim of this project is to help end racism, and to increase the tolerance, appreciation and understanding of human diversity. Thanks for your help!

Sincerely,
Neil Chowdhury & Françoise Duresse

E-mail us for more info on how you can participate in this project. mixedblood@mixedblood.org

1. Where are your parents from? Where were you born? Where were you raised? How do you identify yourself in terms of ethnic, national, and cultural affiliations?

2. How has this choice of identity caused conflict amongst your friends and/or family?

3. What cultural symbols, practices, and traditions do you identify with the most, and from where do these influences originate?

4. How did you choose what to assimilate and what to reject out of the complex mixture of lifestyles, values, and religions found in your parents’ cultures and in the place in which you were raised?

5. Was this process of forming of your identity “accidental” or the result of conscious choices?

6. Talk about an incident that resulted from a person’s confusion over your racial or ethnic origins.

7.When somebody asks, “Where are you from?” how do you answer?