I think my own identity changes whether I did the project or not. I think identity is a conscious ongoing process. We always redefine who we are, depending what we want to do consciously, and sometimes it’s unconscious, who we hang out with. I know that when I hang out with my lifeguard friends I talk a different way. And I know that when I hang out with my Karate brethren I speak a different way, and I know that when I’m living in Japan I speak a different way, or living in Hawai`i, I slip right back into pidgin. And there’s a certain thing that we sometimes just drift into our identities.
The example I give is let’s say you hear someone talk on the phone. I use it for college students. Say you listen to your roommate talk on the phone, and he talks to his mother, he’s like “Yeah, okay. Yes, okay. Yeah, I gotta go,” and then he hangs up and talks to his boss and he’s like, “Oh, no problem, ha ha, sure, sure, I got it, bye bye.” And then he calls some girl he met at the bar and says “Hey baby, how you doin’?” We have these guises, so I think it’s a process, we’re always changing.
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum.
Interviewee Bio
Kip Fulbeck was born in 1965 to a Chinese mother and English/Irish father. At age five, he was told by his full-blooded Chinese cousins that he was Hapa. He never gave much thought to the term as a child. As he grew older, faced with the dearth of knowledge relating to mixed-race identity (or worse, the negative connotations associated with it), he began thinking about ways to promote a more realistic and human portrayal of Hapa identity.
Fulbeck chose to explore this issue by creating the Hapa Project as a forum for Hapa to answer the question “What are you?” in their own words and be photographed in simple head-on portraits. He has now photographed over 1000 people from all ages and walks of life. The project is now a book, Part Asian, 100% Hapa (Chronicle Books, 2006) and an exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum from June 8 through October 29, 2006 titled kip fulbeck: part asian, 100% hapa.
Kip Fulbeck has been making films and art about Hapa identity since 1990. Known as the nation's leading artist on the identity, multiracial/ethnicity, and art and pop culture, he has spoken and exhibited his award-winning films, performance, and photography throughout the world. Fulbeck is currently Professor and Chair of Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is a three-time recipient of the Outstanding Faculty Member Award and also an affiliate faculty member in Asian American Studies and Film Studies. (May 3, 2006)