This program was organized by Jamie Costa.

About Robert Farid Karimi

At root a comedic storyteller and experience designer, Karimi mixes humor, rasquatche aesthetics and performance to communicate poetic narratives that feed audiences an interactive cross-cultural collision of joy, pop culture & personal history in theatres, grocery stores, backyards, and off-Broadway. A Pushcart Prize-nominated writer, his work appeared in newspapers, NPR, literary journals, and numerous anthologies. A national poetry slam champion who has featured throughout the country at venues such as the Nuyorican Poets Café, Def Poetry Jam, The Smithsonian, and SXSW. Creative Capital, the NEA, the MAP Fund, Warhol Foundation, and SuperValu Foundation invested in his recent projects. He now serves as the artistic director of his own artistic career and ThePeoplesCook Project, which creates projects whereby participants’ stories, recipes, and cultures are the focus of artistic nourishment in order to make healthy messaging delicious. As his alter-ego, the revolutionary cook Mero Cocinero, Karimi has cooked for such luminaries as DJ Peanut Butter Wolf, poet Jose Montoya, Yuri Kochiyama, Michele Serros, and hiphop superstar MF Doom as well as served over 50000 people in the last 8 years with ThePeoplesCook Project. For ThePeoplesCook, he designed the world’s first Low Rider Bicycle Kitchen Cart: Kitchen Revolutionaria to get people eating and cooking together to discuss well-being in at-risk communities at the Smithsonian. Karimi tours the planet as producer/director, experience designer, performance trickster, and speaker on issues as mixed race/consciousness, food politics, and the power of the Fool to change the world. He currently designs interactive games and experiences that engage players to share stories and discuss social issues that concern the various communities he visits. For 2017-2018, he serves at the artist in resident for the USC Department of Physical Education.