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. An internationally acclaimed writer, poet, prose stylist, translator, newformist, and cultural designer, 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.
He has also created, published and public-ed (made public) a plethora of 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’.
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. What is true for his ongoing, polylingual literary ‘open epic’ ÉPÏKÂNÕVÀ is true of the overall oeuvre: poetic fragments unfold on multiple platforms, in multiple arenas and spaces (private and public), and through various scriptural strategies—from the traditional (handwritten sheets and books) to the new (electronic, web). Narrative conventions are challenged, while poetic, stylistic and performative operations exploit possibilities unique to different languages and mediums. The overall experience is orchestrated through the creation of lasting artifacts as well as ephemeral events and monumental constructs. A theoretical apparatus and a critical enterprise engaged with the history and forms of literature and the reading phenomenon, the œuvre also challenges traditional modalities of publication, exhibition, commodification, dissemination and interaction.
As a Lecturer and Educator at The Museum of Modern Art from 2004-2011, Amir developed and directed programs, projects, and learning experiences for a wide range of audiences, including the community partnerships, Wider Angles, Double Exposures, and the Singular Educational Experience (SEE) entitled ‘1913: That Year This Time’—a multidisciplinary course that took place over twelve hours in MoMA’s galleries and classrooms. 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. 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.
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 curriculum 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 Omnibus2. 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.
In 2015, two of his books were reissued by UpSet Press, Tractatüus Philosophiká-Poeticüus and Drive-by Cannibalism in the Baroque Tradition. That same year, he launched his ‘SeaMa GloBa’, the Seasons of the Manifestoes Global Barnstorm, a multi-year lecture/performance venture with stops in various geographic locations and related to a number of disciplines and emerging fields. He was invited to deliver the annual Samuel H. Kress Lecture in Museum Education at The Frick Collection in June 2015, while ‘The Multilingual Literature Manifesto’ was delivered in an actual barn during his Marble House Project residency in Dorset, Vermont, in August 2015. Other manifestoes relate to innovative museum practices (Museo Equis), radical artworks (the theoretical foundations of Le Chaise (Yes, Le) and of The Complete NothingDoings), adventurous and artistic pathmaking (RiDE: On, the catalogue of the first three years of the Risk/Dare/Experiment series that he created and curated at Pratt Institute), along with a new world literature and the new literary epic (The New World Lit Lab–http://newworldlitlab.com).
Since 2016, he has published and created a range of works across various disciplines and fields, while also continuing the innovations within literature-proper. Nel Mezz and The Complete NothingDoings were published in 2019, while in 2021, he finalized Photodivan: The Instagram Variations & Compendium. Le Chaise (Yes, Le) is part of a newly fashioned species called the ‘clandies’, works characterized by their clandestine dissemination. He also put into action / ˈsen(t)əns/ and #yekshab1—a ‘multimodal multithreaded quiescent abstract scroll’—both of which were first public-ed at Red Hook Open Studios in October 2021, and together with ʌn/bʊk (2022), form the trilogy Hug Fiercely the Naked Waves (2023), a literary compendium that lives in space and off-the-page as well as in more conventional literary venues. The Last Bargain of Young Mephisto was a street theater piece engaging the pandemic and put into action with Oriana Parsa in spring 2021. On December 11, 2021, {frst rvlt}, in which is fashioned an anatomy of the first rebellion in The Americas, on the occasion of its quintocentenario—‘a manic embodied pluridisciplinary reckoning’—was first performed with the band Yes Exactly Yes at Hot Wood Arts in Brooklyn, on the 500th anniversary of the revolt on the island presently known as the Dominican Republic. The {frst rvlt} text/twine variation (2022, The Elastic Circus of the Revolution) is published online at https://frst-rvlt.glitch.me/. In 2022, LÏTTÉRÃMÛNDÌ I (Prolégomènes à une nouvelle littérature mondiale–L’Œuvre Indomptée) and LÏTTÉRÃMÛNDÌ II (Prolégomènes à une nouvelle littérature mondiale–La Nouvelle Épopée) were published by Éditions Caractères after a pandemic-induced delay. Subsequent performances—dubbed LÏTTÉRÃMÛNDÌ Live—took place at various sites, including at the Mairie du 5ème festival. Also in 2022, Rôboéta (of Brooklyn Yards), another volume of ¡ôwhatarevolution!, was published by The Consortium for Research on Robotics as an ebook.
Amir Parsa has instigated his unique encantations, readations and bassadigas in lecture halls, in streets and on rooftops, in broad daylight and in hiding, and at various festivals and curated venues, including the Janos Gat Gallery, Haven Arts Gallery, The Rio Gallery, Hotwood Arts gallery, The Bowery Poetry Club, the Queens Museum, at the Printemps des Poètes, the Conciergerie, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France among others. His curatorial interjections, performances, conceptual pieces and subversions, along with photographic, participatory and exhibition-based projects have taken place in a host of galleries, public spaces and environments. His works have been in over 30 group exhibits, and there have been more than 50 public performances and 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). He has conducted more traditional lectures, workshops and playshops on avant-garde poetics, literary/artistic innovation, critical education praxis and cultural design at venues, museums, and organizations across the world, including Norway, Mexico, France, Brazil, India and Spain. Residencies include The Marble House Project (2015) and Museo Amparo (2017). He was the artist-in-residence at The Museum of Modern Art in Bologna in June 2015 and June 2016, where he worked with a group of participants on cantos of ÉPÏKÂNÕVÀ. More recently (summer 2022), he was a resident artist at The Swimming Hole Foundation (Bearsville, NY), where he created and curated Signposts in the Sitescape, a collaborative work that culminated in an Album + Sitage (constellation of works across media, performances, and the invention of a new collaborative framework), with Maria Baker, Luke Degnan, Alex Goldberg, and Megan Suttles. At the Swimming Hole Residency, he also wrote and performed the first iteration of in the labyrinth of forestial sunspots i will always vanquish the dreaded beasts on June 26, 2022.
Amir Parsa is currently Associate Provost for Interdisciplinary and Integrative Learning at Pratt Institute, 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. He continues his work as the Founder and Frontman of The Elastic Circus of the Revolution. 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 and ¡ôwhatarevolution!, a projected eleven-piece 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.