The Mark Bradford Project, which I was never sure what that was, seems like the MCA was interested in some type of experiment. They seemed like they were interested in some type of experiment, to see if an artist could somehow work, in this very fibrous, sort of organic way, with the museum almost as an organism, just kind of open and this artist could kind of work with them, sort of a collaboration. And also, I was working with a high school, Lindblom High School, that has—Nathan Diamond is doing a great, very interesting kind of contemporary arts education. I believe he is one of the few. I’m sure that there’s a few but there’s not many that teach contemporary art in high school.

So I knew that I wanted to work with these kids, because their minds were already so open to these ideas and they were really describing themselves in these real contemporary ways, breaking down ideas of male and female, and what it means to be human, and race, and making it much more complex—which is so important for kids, to get them to look at the way that they self-identify, because they put so much thought—teenagers put so much thought into everything, from their beat-up tennis shoes to their T-shirts, and get them to sort of articulate why and making it really interesting.