A screenshot from Mark Menjivar’s project, Security Questions
Glasstire is pleased to announce the launch of a new project by San Antonio-based artist Mark Menjivar. The project, which is titled Security Questions and has been in the works since March of this year, is comprised of an interactive website that accepts and displays user responses to a long list of online security questions. Acting as an online forum, the website gives users a chance to reflect and expound on the oftentimes deep and sometimes humorous questions that companies use to help verify our accounts.
About the project, Menjivar told Glasstire:
“I started collecting security questions over 10 years ago. I’ve been using them for years in conversations with friends and strangers, on road trips and in airplanes, and all the places in between. When we get past the one-word answer, we usually find deep meaning in the remembering and listening. This project tries to expand on that. I like to imagine myself asking each person participating the questions directly.”
When you visit the project’s website, you will see that some people have already begun answering selected questions. As with many of Menjivar’s projects, which oftentimes center on community archives and social histories, the goal of Security Questions is both to allow users to view others’ anonymous responses, and to encourage users to submit answers to questions that speak to them. To help facilitate this, the website will be open and collecting community responses for the coming year, through September of 2022. After this, it will live on as a repository and catalog of peoples’ answers to these online questions.
You can learn more about Mark Menjivar below. You can learn more about Security Questions by listening to Glasstire’s podcast with Menjivar. To view and to learn more about Glasstire’s other residency projects, please go here.
About Mark Menjivar
Mark Menjivar is a San Antonio based artist and Associate Professor in the School of Art and Design at Texas State University. His work explores diverse subjects through photography, archives, oral history and participatory project structures. He holds a BA in Social Work from Baylor University and an MFA in Social Practice from Portland State University.
He has engaged in projects at venues including the Rothko Chapel, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, The Houston Center for Photography, The San Antonio Museum of Art, The Puerto Rican Museum of Art and Culture, Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum and the Krannert Art Museum.
Mark’s work has been featured by Artforum, TED, NPR, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, Gastronomica, National Geographic, Orion Magazine, GUP Magazine and more.
Mark is the artist-in-residence with the Texas After Violence Project which uses oral history and archives to create dialogue and action around capital punishment in Texas. He is also a member of Borderland Collective, which utilizes collaborations between artists, educators, youth, and community members to engage complex issues and build space for diverse perspectives, meaningful dialogue, and modes of creation around border issues.
He was also named a 2019 Mid-America Arts Alliance Interchange Fellow. This program, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, supports socially engaged artists making an impact in their communities.
