Amir Parsa

A pioneering and avant-garde multilingual writer, poet and translator, a cutting-edge cultural designer, and an internationally acclaimed and innovative educator, Amir Parsa is a pluri- and neo-disciplinary scholar/theorist and artist creating new ways to understand, represent, and operate in the world.

Born in Tehran, Amir Parsa attended French international schools in Iran and the U.S., studied at Princeton and Columbia universities, and currently lives in New York. He is the author of more than twenty literary books, including Drive-by Cannibalism in the Baroque Tradition, Feu l’encre/Fable, Erre, and L’opéra Minora, a limited edition 440-page multilingual book that is in the MoMA Library Artists’ Books collection and in the Rare Books collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, as well as a host of innovative ebooks, new forms and radical literary and book-specific projects. He has also created, published and public-ed (made public) a plethora of artworks, performances, pieces and projects, as well as alternative literary ventures, such as {frst rvlt} on twine, and byk.ryd:dor.set, an epic digital scroll, as well as several ‘litstills’ and ‘textallations’.

Ø  At Pratt, and within higher education, he has brought the same affinity for innovation and radical transformation, contributing to systemic and structural changes, curricular offerings, and sustained artistic and professional development for students, faculty and staff across his decade and a half engagement at the Institute. These include: 1/Systemic Institutional Transformations–transforming foundational academic systems at the institute level; 2/Structural Programmatic Creations—fashioning projects that involved structural considerations, including, for example, the creation of a new taxonomy of minors; 3/Mechanisms and Processes Revisions—reviewing and changing mechanisms and dealing with atomic-level issues related to programs and projects; 4/Conceptualization and Implementation of New Programs—from the creation of new minors (The Book) to the Customized Minor and the overall implementation of new type of courses, the Pratt Integrative Courses; 5/Leadership Contributions—from serving on multiple crucial steering committees to contributing to accreditation efforts and creative working groups. Overall, along with colleagues, he’s overseen the creation of an entire terrain of Interdisciplinary Studies at Pratt, one that has been cultivated and created, built and constructed, expanded and deepened, solidified and again re-energized and reconfigured to continuously be at the forefront of the creative institution. He is the inaugural Associate Provost for Interdisciplinary and Integrative Learning at Pratt, as well as Founding Director, The Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, and Curator, Individualized Learning. He also teaches in the Pratt Integrative Courses program (part of the trans/neodisciplinary initiatives that he leads) as well as the Writing department, while co-coordinating the Book Minor and directing the unique Customized Minor program.

Ø  An uncategorizable body of work, his literary œuvre—written directly in English, French, Farsi, Spanish, Franglais, Spanglish, Fransi  and various other hybrids—constitutes a radical polyphonic enterprise that puts into question national, cultural and aesthetic attachments while fashioning new forms, discursive endeavors and types of literary artifacts. His books interweave various genres to create new ones, employ various registers of textuality and explore possibilities unique to each language and to literature as a whole. He has 22 published books (including 3 translations and 3 collaborative books), 12 alternative and innovational forms (including e-books), and 1 new epic. Literary works include long and short prose, theory, manifestoes, poetry, prose poems, essays, translations and, most especially, the creation of new genres, new forms, and new literary artifacts. Readings and performances of his literary works have taken place at various venues around the world, including Queens Museum, The Jewish Museum, The Guild Gallery, VII Gallery, and at various festivals, including the HASTAC Conference, Festival du Livre du 5ème, Marché de la poésie, the Highline, Mehregan Festival, Festival international de poésie, Paris en toutes lettres. A feature solo Performance at The Bowery Poetry Club  took place in 2010, bringing to the fore fragments from the faux anthology, “Pieces from the Last Anthology of Persian-American Writers at the Edge of Madness and Enlightenment”.

Ø  Artworks and actions have included photographic works, textworks, conceptual pieces and several new forms and multimedia constructions and interventions. Works have been in over 30 group exhibits, and there have been more than 50 public performances, and over 10 extended guerrilla actions, along with 2 solo exhibitions: in New York (SoloS, Nelson Hancock Gallery, 2008) and in Paris (Si un jour dans ton quartier, Galerie at Caractères, 2006); Pieces and performances have been included in Hot Wood Arts, Twelve Gates Art Gallery, Public Assembly, Sensei Gallery, NOMAA Art Gallery, and at Dumbo Arts Festival, Baroquissimo Festival, Show Up–a Day of Radical Joy, Backlot Festival, and Uncomun Festival among others. Invited residencies include Museo Amparo in Puebla, Mexico (2017) and MAMBo—Museo de Arte Moderno of Bologna (2015-16). Other residencies include Marble House Project and The Swimming Hole Foundation (in 2015 and 2022).

Ø  Since 2004, hundreds of lectures and workshops connecting various themes within literature, the arts, education design and transformative actions have been held at various institutions, including universities, museums, schools and organizations across New York and the U.S. Internationally, lectures and workshops have been held in various locations including Mumbai, Guadalajara, Puebla, Mexico City, Rome, Bologna, Milan, London, Madrid, Girona, Oslo, and Porto Alegre.

Ø  As a Lecturer and Educator at The Museum of Modern Art from 2004-2011, he developed and directed programs, projects, and learning experiences for a wide range of audiences. He was the Director of the multi-prize-winning Alzheimer’s Project at MoMA, a program that has been replicated in hundreds of museums across the globe. He also conceptualized and created the PinG (Poets in the Galleries) program at the Queens Museum in 2007, the Rooftop Roars & Riverside Revolutions in uptown Manhattan, and the RiDE episodes at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. With colleagues, students, and friends, he launched in the mid-2010s, the Museum Innovators’ Collective and the Translation Innovation Ensemble among other initiatives, while spearheading avant-garde actions and changes in both museums and higher education at various levels. The collected works within the museum field he has dubbed The Musies, while the work in higher ed (from ‘institutional sculpture’ to  learning and experience design) he refers to as The UNI3s (for The University Ninja’s Innovations, Interventions and Initiatives). Along with several  other collections, these belong to a suite of works he calls Other Vanguards Omnibus(2). He also directs and orchestrates his own trans/neo disciplinary and literary/artistic/performative troupe, The Elastic Circus of the Revolution. ECR’s projects include performances, agitations, interventions, publications at the intersection of disciplines and practices—with the printed endeavors often exploring ways of ‘performing’ the print or the book.

He is currently at work on the ongoing ÉPÏKÂNÕVÀ, a number of shorter prose novellas, and several series and suites, including La Pentalogia del Delirio, The Micro-Epic Decalogy , {La Zona : La Trilogía}, a project that explores the Zona colonial of Santo Domingo through literary, photographic and performative realms, and ¡ôwhatarevolution!, a projected suite of works exploring, interrogating and analyzing political ‘revolution’ through various mediums, languages, strategies and discourses. Overall and through the years, his books, transgressive literary works, artistic fusions and neo-disciplinary interventions and disruptions have dazzled and bedeviled, enchanted and pissed off, drawn praise and scorn, and punctured many a wanna-be emperor’s balloons. He has also operated and engaged in various artistic, cultural and political theaters under a number of pseudonyms. Deeply anarchistic in his sensibilities, he continues his work as the Founder and Frontman of The Elastic Circus of the Revolution.