Robert Farid Karimi on remixing cultural identity

​​This week, Robert Farid Karimi brings his tour de force spoken-word identity piece Self (the Remix) to Intermedia Arts. The performance explores personal and political history with a remix of cultural identity. Karimi, who's of Guatemalan and Iranian heritage, travels from Mexican restaurants to mosh pits accompanied by a soundscape by DJ D Double mixing together everything from hip-hop to punk to disco.

Karimi took a moment to talk to City Pages about the show, and about the power owning the flow of a mixed cultural identity. 

The show originally started off as an attempt at an autobiographical look at being half Guatemalan and half Iranian. It began with my experiences during the Iranian hostage crisis, and it basically blossomed into an exploration in to how we create identity through the different things that happen to us.

I play 23 characters. There's a DJ who spins and mixes live--he's part soundtrack and part puppet master--and there's a call-and-response element.  

I started the project in San Francisco eight years ago. I've been working on it off and on since then.  

It originated from my spoken word. There's a mix of interactive performance coupled with theater and character work. It's meant to reflect the journey of life--funny and sad and crazy.

When I did show in Vermont someone said to me, "Your show has the same soundtrack as my life." It's a very specific story. But people come away from it understanding the power of their own story. 

That event woke me up. A lot of the activist and political work I do has to do with the idea that events wake all of us up. My identity is more a point of departure.

I was a hip-hop kid and a punk-rock kid, and I listened to Morrisey and to heavy metal. My mixed culture gives me an understanding of how things flow together. When you are little, you don't think it's a blessing--it's a curse. But my mixed heritage gives me the power to blend--to crossfade, to be able to kick it with the hip hoppers and the punk rockers--and understanding that you can do that with ease. 

It was on the TV; for days that was it. The first kid blames you for it and you have no idea what you're being blamed for. You get beat up for it. You remember that.  

Then there's the idea that my parents were immigrants; being the one that had to speak English to supermarket people or to teachers sometimes. That's how I became aware of things going around me. 

With death of Osama Bin Laden, one cannot help but harken back to '79. Holy crap, if Al Quaeda does something, I have to be Guatemalan right now. What happened to this kid in '79 could happen to another kid after September 11. Everyone in "post racial America" thinks racism is over. We have a hard time with empathy, with acceptance.

You are who you are. I've never felt like I had to wear it like an armband, or throw it in someone's face as a fist. It's just who I am. These struggles, these things that go through our life, if we dance it out, if we laugh it out, if we are bad asses--we are the ones that can't be divided anymore. That's amazingly powerful. If we can remember that, see that--that's the power of the full cultural dialogue I have. Not necessarily the specifics of my biological makeup.

If people come early, there's a dance party at the beginning where you can dance onstage. Then, there's 23 characters. A lot of my work has been about making people laugh. I'm breaking some of the conventions of spoken word that disengage the audience. I try to engage them so they feel they are part of the journey.  

I play various characters. Sometimes they talk to each other, or they talk to the audience. There are some monologues from my spoken-word pieces. With the spoken word, I'm taking a lot stuff and remixing it into a new creation, which is what I think we always do. Even in my spoken word I sometimes will remix the poem to fit whatever audience I'm in.

I started acting at 16. I went to UCLA and did a lot of work with independent playwrights. I acted in San Francisco. I did improv work. I directed in Chicago. And then I started doing spoken word as I wasn't getting gigs in LA. I started writing. I won a national poetry slam--that's how I came here. In '95 I  came to Carleton and read there. The Loft brought me in 2003. The slam title got me into rooms nationally.

I want people to have a damn good time. Get their brains and imaginations dancing.

Self (The Remix)
May 11 through 14
8 p.m. (arrive early for the live DJ Dance Party)
Intermedia Arts
2822 Lyndale Ave. S.
612.871.4444
$10 advance/student/senior; $12 at the door.