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Recipes of tactical play of Robert Karimi (Tactical P.O.R.K.)

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Recipes of Tactical Play of Robert Karimi (Tactical P.O.R.K.)

by

Robert Farid Karimi

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE
USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
AUGUST 2018

Copyright © 2018 R Farid Karimi

Karimi i
Dedication

To Bea Bedoya, who taught me how to fight;
Laurie Carlos, told me “Keep it light;”
Laura Colouch, my mother, simply said: “Never stop. Write.”

Aquí está.
C/S.
Karimi ii
Epigraph

Consider for a moment that old Kiowa woman, my grandmother …for her words were medicine;
they were magic and invisible. They came from nothing into sound and meaning. They were
beyond price; they could neither be bought nor sold. And she never threw words away.
— Reverend J.B.B. Tosomah from
Momaday’s House Made of Dawn

Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.
— Adrienne Rich
Karimi iii
Table of Contents
Dedication ............................................................................................................................................... i
Epigraph ................................................................................................................................................ ii
List of Illustrations ............................................................................................................................... iv
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................ v
0: Introduction....................................................................................................................................... 1
1: Radical Allurement............................................................................................................................. 2
What’s in a name? .............................................................................................................................................. 2
Setting the Strategy............................................................................................................................................. 3
Affective Roots of the Games of Tactical Play ..................................................................................................... 6
Game Encounters and Game Hosts ..................................................................................................................... 8
Putting it all together ........................................................................................................................................ 11
Poem: red light. green. go.................................................................................................................... 13
2: The Tactical of Tactical P.O.R.K ..................................................................................................... 14
Tactics .............................................................................................................................................................. 14
The elements of Tactical Play: Fabric, Food, Fun .............................................................................................. 17
Game: Instruction for New Movement #74 ........................................................................................ 19
3: The P of Tactical P.O.R.K. ............................................................................................................... 20
The Cooking Show con Karimi & Comrades: LGBT(Q)A Torta Demonstration .................................................. 20
ThePeoplesCook Project: the power of chisme .................................................................................................. 23
Self-Deprecation and Mero Cocinero ................................................................................................................ 27
Blank Against Blank: Playing against the Muslim Ban ...................................................................................... 32
Game: Bling Fear. (Bling it. Bring it.)................................................................................................. 36
4: Calling the Kindred Spirits of Radical Allurement ......................................................................... 37
Sample: Funk from Philadelphia ........................................................................................................ 42
5: Concluding Thoughts on the Futures of the Tactical P.O.R.K ....................................................... 43
Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................ 45
Karimi iv
List of Illustrations
Figure 1. A furry customer wants to add an Ally to their LGBTQA Torta ............................................ 21
Figure 2. Viva La Soul Power pop-up restaurant housed in Feed & Be Fed interactive art exhibition ..... 25
Figure 3. Would you trust this man with your stomach, or your food revolution? .................................. 29
Figure 4. Green Bay TV host learns how to protect yourself from intruders and white onions ............... 31
Figure 5. A look at the CAISISYLASCNK&V cards and a player having fun .......................................... 33
Figure 6. Blank Against Blank: Game night at the Ford Amphitheater! .................................................. 34

Karimi v
Acknowledgements
I’m grateful to my thesis advisory committee: Professors Marientina Gotsis, Suzanne Lacy, and
Karen Moss – a dream team of thoughtful virtuosos whose caring, meticulous observations whittled up
my ideas and made me rethink and reconsider the multiple ways of speaking truth to power. Michelle
Serros, I miss you, and thank you for constantly reminding me my voice is necessary; I have so much
more to do; I will not stop. Jeffrey Hallford, who made me realize we can be beautiful poets and
thoughtful witnesses of the world. Lorna Dee Cervantes who told me to get my MFA; Tyehimba Jess who
reminded me educating ourselves is priceless; Jaime Cortez who steered me to go for an MFA for adults.
Laurie Carlos, who singular acknowledgement could take pages, but I will just say she was right - I
should always remember I can do this. Mi tocayo Roberto Bedoya for giving me the words and the fuel
for mi corazon. Anida Yoeu Ali, my sister always in my corner for every fight, every success and every
artistic experience. Ellen Sebastian Chang, my sister who sparks me into new universes every time we
talk! Genevieve Valderrama, Auntie J, for teaching me the power of food and games. Tom Borrup and
Harry Waters Jr. for being my champions, making this journey less lonely and reminding me about self-
care. Chris Widdess for being the muscle of my heart, for Guillermo Gomez Peña for reminding me I am
Loco. James Luna: thank you for making me a part of your life on stage. I thought of you throughout this
essay. EPD. Guízar: for being mi compatriota in art, film, and other locuras. Julayne Lee for all her
support and cheer. Dimaano y familia! Luis Hernandez for being alive. Rudy Guglielmo: for keeping me
rooted in what matters, sparking me to dream when I forget to. Nao Bustamante for her guidance
throughout this process. Ruby Lerner and Brad Thomas for their words of love that brought me to Los
Angeles. Tamara, Celine and Stephanie for making me believe I could do this and for being the caring
individuals to help me fly. raúlrsalinas, José Montoya, Angela de Hoyos, and Sterling Houston – – who
stirred my poet soul and never lost faith in me; I miss you all. Leticia Hernandez, my sister, my rock, my
shoulder, my wing man who helps me find words when I am at a loss, so grateful for you. Joe Colouch:
you are immortalized in my heart, thank you for your support behind the scenes. My mom, Laura Colouch
Comparini, who risks everything to support me, tells me to keep writing and taught me we are never too
old to take on our greatest fears. Finally: Bernie DeKoven: I am forever grateful for inspiring all of us to
be Mr./Ms./Mrs. Fun. Rest in peace. To all my relations, thank you for bringing me to this moment. If I
forgot to put you in these printed pages, may my spoken stories be an offering to your memory.
Karimi 1
0: Introduction
Imagine: this essay as a game. Papers have their own rules. There's an implied dynamic between
reader and writer, and aesthetic necessities like academic language, proper fonts and pagination which
function as part of the image that declares: you are reading a thesis. I even organized the words of the title
to elicit a reaction. The acronym P.O.R.K. is a visual pun — pork is haram (forbidden) for Muslims, even
half-Muslims like me. Play, especially tactical play, can be considered taboo as well as beneficent, safe as
well as unsafe. This duality can sit inside any player’s mind before they enter a playspace. To alleviate
any suspicion of my intentions; let me begin with the question: May we play?
I ask your permission. You don’t have to go on.
For fun, I’ll insert some instructions to add some spice to the game:
Breathe:
Inhale once through your nose, then exhale slowly.
Find one thing in the room that grounds you into the moment.
Smell onions. The sizzle, the aroma.
Then.
Inhale all the good energy you deserve.
Afterwards,
Exhale any energy that blocks you from having a clear mind.
Repeat as many times necessary, and
every time I break the rules, or do something fun,
hoot and holler.

This may seem crazy, or perhaps, a way for us to start playing well. I don't know if you have
engaged or are engaging in the activity; that's up to you. Completely voluntary. Or perhaps there's
something in my request: the layout of instructions or diction, that made or makes you want to play.
Who knows? We do. This essay will provide a framework for this knowledge.
It serves as a platform for radical Allurement. By the end of this game, the term will have some
resonance for you, and I will provide some tools to create your own game. If you wish to proceed, then
together let’s declare:
Play on, player. Let’s play!
Karimi 2
1: Radical Allurement
What’s in a name?

Indeed, the privileged act of naming often affords those in power access to modes of
communication and enables them to project an interpretation, a definition, a description of their
work and actions, that may not be accurate, that may obscure what is really taking place.
— bell hooks
1

There is power in naming. There exists a history of various groups having things named for them
by those in power. Those without power scramble to understand the proper vocabulary in order to gain
access to the crumbs institutions leave for them. As a son of immigrants, I learned firsthand how this
power manifests in faulty, vague laws to keep those not proficient with English from having ingress into
mainstream society. Rather than be paralyzed by this discrimination, I tap into my spirit of play: one I
learned from my parents to use when confronting injustice. In the same way this spirit also sparks
immigrants to this country to create new vocabulary and new rituals in order to level the playing field. As
Chicano artist, poet, writer and humorist José Antonio Burciaga points out: “So many other cultures and
languages from Black English to Yiddish have contributed to the English language. These words enriched
because they gave birth to a new world of ideas from a combination of cultures, ideas that were lacking a
name until then.”
2

Since my early childhood, I thought differently than others when it came to cultural identity and
the universe at large. Back then, people thought of me as a cultural oddity, a political peculiarity, a
biological experiment between a Mayan-Italian-Guatemalan woman and an Iranian man who produced
me
3
. I learned to respond with my own wild, freeform reactions, struggling to understand what it means to
live in the U.S., whether to dance with utter abandon as pre-teen or make up galactic worlds to protect
myself from the Earth I lived in or the other planets that I imagined would welcome my kind.
The spirit of este ensayo originates from my whimsical childlike mind. I am the “player” Allan
Kaprow prophesized: “If one is an artist, certain limits on perception govern how reality is acted on and
construed. But new names may assist social change. Replacing "artist" by "player," as if adopting an alias,

1
hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, 1st:62.
2
Burciaga, Drink Cultura: Chicanismo, 4.
3
This may include those, who hated Iranians from 1979 on, used their xenophobia to construct my identity as a terrorist.
Karimi 3
is a way of altering a fixed identity. And a changed identity is a principle of mobility, of going from one
place to another.”
4
I assume this new identity because fluidity and identity changes for mobility are my
way of life in this world. My consciousness — of my intersectionality of all my identities and worlds I
intersect — predates the naming of the concept of intersectionality. Therefore, in this essay, the terms
“artist,” “designer,” “player” exist simultaneously for me.
I offer this text as a way to begin a dialogue about how we as artists design interactive
experiences; how we engage publics as co-producers and co-playmates. Throughout the subsequent
pages, I will define all terms, but for now, I will provide a taste. In the past 10 years, through my work, I
sought a way to discuss how artists design platforms in the art of engaging publics. Too many times, I felt
that colleagues omitted the role of design in their socially engaged art. They planned the objects, the
performance, the activities, yet balked when I asked about the design of the experience as a whole – from
the moment of encounter with the public, before and after. I found it surprising how many socially
engaged artists omitted the word “design” in the conversation. And what about play? Play combined with
design represented the core of my practice, and I wondered if they feel the same.
I seek kindred spirits. This moment marks my call, like the muezzin to prayer, to bring these
spirits into the room. This essay serves as a way to help me define, as well as hopefully provide a new
name for, this type of practice. I propose a way to honor play and playfulness in socially engaged art by
providing a framework for a strategy I call radical Allurement. When thinking about engaging publics,
how do we create organic connections that resonates both artistic intention as well as the public’s
experience? What are tactics that allow audiences to feel they are in dialogue with an artist in a deep,
symbiotic way? Is there a game involved? Yes, there can be. Let me set the stage.

Setting the Strategy

In 2009, I struck a pose on a large tower of stairs dressed up like a poor man's Freddie Mercury,
lead singer of Queen: tight white jeans, a thrift store-bought gaudy mustard shirt, flowing satin white
sheet tied around me like a fabulous cape, campus crew haircut and a porn mustache I bought in a store in

4
Kaprow, “The Education of the Un-Artist, Part I,” 31.
Karimi 4
West Los Angeles. The moment the show's DJ looped the break beat of Queen’s hit "Under Pressure,” the
crowd roared. They suspended their disbelief. They disregarded our sparse set, and the lighting, sounds,
and costume convinced them they were at a concert, not a show about the legacy of xenophobia in U.S.-
Iranian relations. As the show’s energy built, the audience rose to the occasion - they hissed, spoke to me,
participated in ways I could not imagine. I realized on the show’s closing night that this was not just a
performance, it was something else. I could never define that something else, until now. Radical
Allurement: two words gifted to me by cultural theorist Roberto Bedoya who uttered them into existence
to describe my work. They appeared one night when we argued about the difficulty for artists like myself
to explain the totality of who we are and what we do. His response "radical Allurement. That's you.
Define that. That's you." Thus, this chapter is as much about understanding my practice as it is about
solving the riddle of these two words and providing a framework for a set of ideas.
Radical Allurement is a development of tactics and implementation strategies to lure participants
to play together, in service of an issue formulated by designer (and participants, over time) that leads to
new revelations about self and community that resonate past the original experience. Radical Allurement
honors the intrinsic human impulse to play and uses playfulness and game design as basic tenets of its
platform construction. Simply put, radical Allurement entices participants into the game of the designed
experience where they can explore personal and community symbiotic nourishment. It's the art of how to
negotiate inter-subjectivity across intersecting spans of time. The person who engages the strategy is
called a radical Allurist and their work embodies the idea of tactical play.
The history of radical Allurement as a strategy emanates from cultural ceremonies and games
which have served as allegories for cultural wisdom – for example, an annual spring ritual to honor nature
(Nowruz) or an extended metaphor to teach about concepts of war (chess). Its predecessor, in business,
public relations: "an activity which concerns itself with the relations between an enterprise and the publics
which it serves, on which it is dependent.”
5
In the world of art, it counters the tradition of abject art which
attempts to make society uncomfortable by rearranging its relationship to what it deems profane. Unlike
abject art, radical Allurement attempts to make society feel comfortable to rearrange its relationship with

5
Bernays and Ewen, Crystallizing Public Opinion, 7.
Karimi 5
uncomfortable complex subjects that it cannot talk about. Especially where radical allurists seek to gain
the community’s trust, this act may come into direct conflict with abject art-making. Even though I
relished my training as a performance artist from 1990s LA and SF performance artists, many of their
techniques did not allow me entry into community conversations. Radical Allurement strives to make its
own tradition where tactics of play bring people into dialogue about the uncomfortable dissonance and
even profane aspects of our lives.
I capitalize the A in “allurement” to remind the artist who implements this strategy that even
though radical is at the term’s beginning, allurement is of importance for “radical” to have influence. The
term’s etymology springs from the two words themselves. "Radical" is not about a political movement or
"simply a matter of resources and taste.”
6
I bring into play the word’s mathematical origin which
describes the symbol meant to get to the root of numbers.
7
Mathematicians used this word because it
originally meant “radish,” thus I define the “radical” in radical Allurement as digging into the roots of
something.
For “allurement,” I start with the 1540s definition of "the quality of being fascinating and
desirable.”
8
I recognize its past as a word for temptation and seduction. I don't run away from that.
Allurement can be more than seduction. It’s the desirability it piques to lure someone into potentials. In
this sense, radical Allurement acts more like flirtation in the way the artist “flirts” so that the participant
can “flirt” back with them. Adam Phillips in his book On Flirtation gives a glimpse of how to perceive
this interchange: "flirtation is the game of taking chances, of plotting illicit possibilities.”
9
This posits
radical Allurement as a game people play. Not to win necessarily, more as a tool to visualize possible
moves for future interactions. The art space becomes a playspace. And this “flirtation” engenders action.
Play theorist Bernie Dekoven points out, “Playfulness and the playful use of technology suggests a
positive interest in acts of continuous discovery.”
10
Thus, the various implementations of radical
Allurement spark wonder, and reconnect participants to their imaginations and primal role as players.

6
Chang, Who We Be: The Colorization of America, 235.
7
Ballew, Origins of Some Arithmetic Terms-4.
8
Online Etymology Dictionary, Allure | Origin and Meaning of Allure by Online Etymology Dictionary.
9
Phillips, On Flirtation, xxiv.
10
DeKoven, The Well-Played Game: A Playful Path to Wholeness, 147.
Karimi 6
Affective Roots of the Games of Tactical Play

To best understand how I came to these two words, and the ideas behind them, the cognitive and
sociological roots of the concepts in relation to radical Allurement need to be unpacked. This begins with
neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp, whose study of the brain suggests that play “is an ancestral gift of the
mammalian BrainMind.”
11
We, the primal player, have passed down the act of play for generations
according to Panksepp. Therefore, creating play through playfulness serves the experience designer with
understanding radical Allurement as well as human behavior as it relates to planned playfulness: “playful
activities, in their many forms bring all young mammals great joy… the brains PLAY networks may help
stitch individuals into the stratified social fabric that will be the staging ground for their lives, and these
networks may also prepare them to handle various unexpected events that life will surely throw their
way.”
12
Joy and playfulness can help in human development. With this in mind, radical Allurement
evolves into a strategy to foster the development of individuals and communities. Play and playfulness
can help individuals rehearse future things that they have to deal with concerning institutions in society.
To make participants open to becoming players, the radical Allurist must ensure the environment
and the individuals are game ready. As with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Panksepp reminds us that
“play only occurs when one is safe, secure and feeling good, which makes play an exceptionally sensitive
measure for all things bad. Play, however, is also a robust system: if young animals are healthy and
feeling good, they almost invariably play together when given the chance.”
13
If participants feel unsafe,
unsecure, or not well-fed, play cannot occur. The radical Allurist needs to make sure to balance the
dynamics of the experience, so play will indeed take place. Panksepp points out when animals have too
much advantage or when their opponent loses too many times, an animal may feign weakness in order to
keep the joy of play. "Nobody wants to play with a bully."
14
We love to compete, and win, but we also
love to play. To maintain the joy of the experience, a winner is not required, you don’t have to have
prizes, just playing for play sake can be enough for all mammals. With radical Allurement, the artist

11
Panksepp and Biven, The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolucionary Origins of Human Emotion, 355.
12
Panksepp and Biven, 355.
13
Panksepp and Biven, 355.
14
Panksepp and Biven, 359.
Karimi 7
implements systems that complement Panksepp's evidence: "the primal urge to play is an important
influence in helping program higher brain regions – – to become happy adult brains with abundant
creativity and zest for life.”
15
With Panksepp’s ideas in mind, radical allurement becomes a way to get
people to reconnect to an aspect of their humanity.
In this context, Panksepp’s call for the "need to establish more ‘play sanctuaries’ – safe places for
children to indulge themselves, pro-socially, and playful activities that they themselves initiate”
16
make
sense for all ages. These sanctuaries signify vessels for fabric, food, and fun. Educator Neva Boyd
constructed these sanctuaries during her time in Hull House in Chicago. Although her work precedes
Panksepp, at times, it feels like a sociological mirror of his results: “[Play] directs potentialities and helps
to find a means of giving them constructive expression and which creates the freedom of action favorable
to progressive development of the potentialities.”
17
These constructs Boyd mentions are the platforms of
dances, folktales, and games she utilized in her work. Each one of these platforms depends on the
participants sensing "freedom of action" and without it, the participants lose their joy. Boyd believes:
"spontaneous creative problem-solving offers a vitality of interest which makes extraneous prizes and
awards superficial. In fact, there must be something wrong if it is necessary to resort to prizes and
awards."
18
Boyd believes that for participants to reach their desired state, they will do it without any need
of reward: “activities should be valued for their intrinsic good, not their external value.”
19
In this way, her
action-oriented qualitative research champions Panksepp’s ideas about mammals wanting to play for play
sake, and reinforces the idea that designers do not need to create a win-state for players to play in the
platforms they create. With radical Allurement, the act of play is the reward, and the freedom and the
interchange between people it creates the value for everyone who plays. Thus, tactical play has a goal: to
create an experience where participants enjoy playing.
Game and Fun expert, Bernie “Mr. Fun” DeKoven, offers a more accessible term for this relation:
“a well-played game.” DeKoven’s concept instigates a roadmap for radical Allurement, by pointing out

15
Panksepp and Biven, 365.
16
Panksepp and Biven, 386.
17
Boyd, Play and Game Theory in Group Work: A Collection of Papers, 216–17.
18
Boyd, 24.
19
Boyd, 9.
Karimi 8
that players create the feeling together; “a well-played game” unfetters itself over time: “Any victory,
now that we know what it is that we want to create together, is shared. No matter who wins a game, if we
have played well together, we have accomplished what we set out to do. That victory is not determined by
who wins, nor by what game we play, but rather by the quality of playing that we have been able to
create.”
20
This is key for the radical Allurist to consider. Fun comes from a well-played game which I
define as symbiotic nourishment.
How does a radical Allurist achieve this?
The answer to that question comes from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of “Flow:” the state
in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so
enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”
21
DeKoven’s concept of
a “well-played game” represents the dynamic group version of “Flow.” Csikszentmihalyi asserts to get
Flow there must be a balance of challenge and ability. He breaks down the nine components necessary to
achieve this flow for the individual:
1. There are clear goals every step of the way
2. There is immediate feedback on one’s actions
3. There is balance between challenges and skills
4. Action and awareness are merged
5. Distractions are excluded from consciousness
6. There is no worry of failure
7. Self-consciousness disappears
8. The sense of time becomes distorted
9. The activity becomes autotelic (an end in and of itself).
22

Csikszentmihalyi fleshes out the roadmap more. The process of structuring a fun, “well-played
game” comes from these 9 steps. A radical Allurist could use these nine as a framework to build the
platform, communicate ideas to partners, and create an evaluative tool to assess an experience’s success.
Game Encounters and Game Hosts

The concept of a “game” serves as a unit that combines the components of radical Allurement to
provide a stronger visual understanding of the dynamics of each element of tactical play. The minute we
think of the experience as a game; we can visualize its configuration through our understanding of what

20
DeKoven, The Well-Played Game: A Playful Path to Wholeness, 4.
21
Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
22
Csikszentmihalyi.
Karimi 9
we think is a game and the game’s relationship to play. The idea of defining the basic unit of radical
Allurement as a game originates from Erving Goffman who compared encounters to games to establish
what defines a thriving encounter. He uses “gaming encounter” as an “organic system of interaction…a
mutual activity [which] can utterly engross its participants”
23
The gaming encounter points to the fact that
people strategize in every encounter, considering their moves in relation to how engaged they are to the
moment at hand. Goffman’s analogy continues as he points out that games have three elements: “rules of
irrelevance, a schema of interpretation, and resources realized fully within the possibilities of the game.”
24

These ideas serve his theory of “strategic interaction” whereby the suspension of disbelief (through the
game’s mechanics), the game’s dynamic, and game resources (aesthetics) all serve as metaphors for the
actions that occur in encounters. Strategic interaction defines what engagement should look like in order
to engage flow within a “gaming encounter:”
Two or more parties must find themselves in a well-structured situation of mutual impingement
where each party must make a move and where every possible move carries fateful implications
for all of the parties…[the] exchange of moves made on the basis of this kind of orientation to
self and others can be called strategic interaction.
25

Goffman breaks down strategic interaction into two parts: one: physical constraints represented
by the participants’ actions themselves, and two: empathetic decision making whereby each person in the
interaction considers each participant in their choices. This makes their decisions intertwined, and if we
transfer Goffman’s concepts to radical Allurement, the radical Allurist must design an impactful space to
all parties in order to create these conditions. How? Decision machines, boundaries, and game hosts. Just
like Goffman’s definition of “gaming encounter,” Boyd’s definition of the game calls to the radical
allurist’s attention the necessity to suspend a participant’s disbelief:
a game, then, is a situation set up imaginatively and defined by rules which together with the
prescribed roles, is accepted by the players. He psychologically picks himself up and transplants
himself from the genuine situation to the artificial or imagined one. He accepts the total situation
of the game, including his own role in it; and, as long as the game lasts, acts as consistently in the
new situation as though it were genuine.
26

23
Goffman, Encounters; Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction., 36, 39.
24
Goffman, 37.
25
Goffman, Strategic Interaction, 1:100–101.
26
Boyd, Play and Game Theory in Group Work: A Collection of Papers, 47.
Karimi 10
One of the easiest ways a radical Allurist can achieve a suspension of disbelief and lure a
participant into a “genuine” situation is the utilization what Goffman calls “decision machines.”
27
These
can be tokens of a board game, chess pieces, any object that inspires players to make choices. In radical
Allurement, this means designing objects within a space to get people to make decisions alone or together.
This could be an interactive digital controller or a wooden spoon where people can cook or not cook with
it, or a digital counter that calculates how many people think capitalism works for them.
28
These objects
bring the participant into the mythology and choices of the system of the game, or the encounter.
Tracy Fullerton, in her book Game Design Workshop, emphasizes the need for boundaries to
create this genuine experience for the player and make them feel safe to enter the game:
Boundaries are what separate the game from everything that is not the game… the act of agreeing
to play, to accept the rules of the game, to enter what was Huizinga calls the “magic circle” is a
critical part of feeling safe that the game is temporary, that it will end, or that you can leave or
quit if you don't want to play anymore. As a designer, you must define the boundaries of the
game and how players will enter and exit the magic circle.
29

Thus the player feels safe to suspend disbelief, trust, and play with the game designer, or in our case, the
radical allurist. Fullerton introduces the idea of designing informed consent when discussing boundaries.
Her words remind us of Panksepp’s hierarchy of play. Boundaries create structured platforms where
players feel safe. Considering how people agree to play or stop playing can enhance the flow of the
interaction. Robert Perinbanayagam notes that these boundaries can even spark players to achieve feats
beyond their normal abilities: “It is a structure in which social acts can be undertaken – but within certain
boundaries, and within these boundaries, an agent has to produce his or her creative acts, redeeming
moves, or heroic gestures.”
30
The power boundaries have is not just to restrict the participants, but also to
give them pegs to hold them up to climb higher, play harder, focus on the game even more.
To maintain this strategic interaction, Boyd provides the radical Allurist with some tools on how
to maintain fun and playfulness in their designs. She does not believe play groups should be leaderless. In

27
Decision machines: “intrinsic game resources can be allocated to the parties at play, and their players allowed to commit these
resources to prediction whose correctness or incorrectness is then determined by the equipment in play.” Goffman, Strategic
Interaction, 1:120.
28
Lambert, Capitalism Works For Me! True/False | Steve Lambert.
29
Fullerton, Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, 84.
30
Perinbanayagam, Games and Sport in Everyday Life: Dialogues and Narratives of the Self, 66.
Karimi 11
fact, she believes that a leader should always be present in a group to foster playfulness and play. She
chides leaders who tried to overpower a group: "Leadership that only makes plans and uses others to carry
out the plans defeats this process. This is what the assembly line does. Leadership that organizes
potentials into problem-solving intelligence is the basis of becoming for the individual as a productive
person and of the group as a productive unity (unit).”
31
Therefore, radical allurists should plan for
experienced leaders (or themselves) as facilitators to ensure each participant values the collaborative
power of the group. In this way, the facilitator has the opportunity to reverse the dehumanizing processes
of power that limit individuals and groups from engaging in their playfulness and their primal power of
play. For Boyd, to create this role, one must construct a facilitator who has the following:
the kind of love for people that is impartial and sees beyond human frailty to that which is more
enduring and hopeful,” plan for “unforeseen situations [which] are the rule rather than the
exception in intimate groups and both the leader and the members must often act with spontaneity
that precludes foresight of the remote results,” so "the group may be led to achieve what seemed
to the members to be impossible.
32

Her words set up a framework for this person, which I call the “game host.” The game host cares
about the people in the “circle” and strives for their success in playing well. They keep the Flow going
with decision machines and boundaries, so players can construct, with the game host, a well-played game.
The game host invites people to play but does not intervene, unless they really have to. Boyd provides the
rationale for this mediation: “An adult leader or a teacher does not prevent the best contributions of
members from forthcoming. You guide the process and helps prevent the politician or aggressive member
from ruling the group.”
33
Boyd’s hope is that the facilitator of play, the game host, can stop bullies who
kill the play and intimacy of a group. This parallels Panksepp’s conclusion: someone who destroys the
competitive spirit through bullying can damage the tethered relationship of everyone playing.
Putting it all together

So here we have it, fellow players. Radical allurement! A strategy of tactical play. Tactics we can
use to re-engage participants to our experience to their intrinsic playful selves. A strategy to foster the
development of individuals and communities. Play and playfulness can help individuals rehearse future

31
Boyd, Play and Game Theory in Group Work: A Collection of Papers, 222.
32
Boyd, 215–17.
33
Boyd, 213.
Karimi 12
things that they have to deal with concerning institutions in society. We can create platforms to lure
people in, to talk about difficult subjects in their world, so that this resonates beyond the initial
experience.
Radical allurists use “play as currency.”
34
The artist who activates this strategy remixes the
techniques of public relations, behavior science, and game design to build platforms of possibility,
participation and performance through play and playfulness.
The stage has been set. We have a term. We have a neuroscientist, a sociologist, and play
theoretician to support the importance of play to our human condition. We have a goal: a well-played
game and fun. We have a unit to call our platforms: a game. We have some beginning principles for
strategic interaction: boundaries, decision machines, game encounters and a game host. We have a
roadmap: Flow.
We are ready to play on!

34
Kaprow, “The Education of the Un-Artist, Part I.”
Karimi 13
Poem: red light. green. go.
(for four voices)
By Robert Farid Karimi

(one main voice reads text on left side of paper;
other 3 voices alternate with the text on the right side of the paper;
while onions cook in olive oil a pan on a portable Korean stove on low heat.)

Red light!
Green light!
Red light! You moved.
No fair.
Who did you vote for?
Green light!
Red light. You
moved. You moved.
No fair. You don’t know how to play.
That’s not how we play here.
How do you play?
We move our body like this.
When we say red light or green light.
OK. We’ll play by your rules.
Did you vote, though?
Green light!
There! A-ha!
Got me.
(Laughter) (All laugh.)
I’ll show you how this is done.
No cheating this time.
I am not in charge. I have to go
Back to the pack. Yes! I’ll win this time!
You still didn’t answer my question.
Did you? …

…

Vote?

What does that have to do with playing a game?
Karimi 14
2: The Tactical of Tactical P .O.R.K
Tactics
The radical allurists’ basic instruments? Tactics. Curator and writer Nato Thompson, defines
tactics in his statement for his Interventionists’ exhibition curated at MASS MoCA (2004-2005):
[tactics are] set of tools…they are a means of building and deconstructing a given situation…a
motley assemblage of methods bringing political issues to an audience outside the insular art
world’s doors…Humor, sleight of hand, and high design are used to interrupt this confrontation
and bring socially imperative issues to the very feet of their audiences.
35

Thompson’s definition provides a foundation for understanding the radical allurists’ intangible palette.
Tactics acquire their “materiality” through process, methodology. They evoke emotions and spark certain
behaviors. As Thompson points out in a lecture he gave at Statens Konstråd about Paul Chan’s Waiting
for Godot in New Orleans: “It’s not a production of a play; it’s a production of a public.”
36
The artist
fosters publics through the weaving of these tactics.
I’ll provide context for the first four foundational tactics of tactical play radical Allurist should
use to engage publics effectively. The first: “Grounding in the public,” (GITP), I extract from
Thompson’s same lecture about Paul Chan, during his attempt to differentiate public artists from
advertisers: “It’s not enough to do amazing artwork. You know who else does amazing artwork? Red
Bull. Aesthetic production without any grounding in the public is oftentimes just advertising.”
37
In this
context, GITP builds the initial strands of connection between designer and public. Thompson extends his
talk imploring artists who deal with the public to seek “buy-in” and “get the people excited.” These ideas
offer active choices when using the tactic. This harks back to Brazilian educator Paolo Freire’s warning to
educators they cannot move forward “without a relation of mutual understanding and trust”
38
in order to
create symbiotic relationships with the participants of their workshops. Thompson relates this to Chan’s
experience in New Orleans: “You had to talk to [the people in the community] and listen and care and
change things based on feedback .”
39
GITP designs require a symbiotic loop between experience designer
and public. Cultural theorist Roberto Bedoya offers the spirit in which GITP may be deployed in

35
Thompson et al., Interventionists: Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life, 14.
36
Thompson, Lecture: Nato Thompson, Creative Time - Living as Form - YouTube.
37
Thompson.
38
Freire, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Trans,” 102.
39
Thompson, Lecture: Nato Thompson, Creative Time - Living as Form - YouTube.
Karimi 15
discussing creative place making: “before you have places of belonging, you must feel
you belong. Before there is the vibrant street, one needs an understanding of the social dynamics on that
street – the politics of belonging and dis-belonging....”
40

The next tactic, the “agonistic approach,” emerges from Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic model; it’s
the idea that “the public space is the battleground where different hegemonic projects are confronted,
without any possibility of final reconciliation.”
41
This reminds the radical Allurist they cannot appease all
conditions in their design of a public space, nor should they conform the public to one idea, mold them
into an ideological monolith. Dan Getz, in his book Event Studies, notes: “it is not possible to guarantee
or predict what individuals ‘experience’ cognitively and emotionally as an outcome. Nor can the event
designer know for a certainty what meanings will be attached to those event experiences or whether they
will have any transforming impact.”
42
No guarantees? Why do anything if there is no certainty for
transformation? Instead of giving up, we can view Getz’s statement as the representation of the ever-
changing nature of the public space’s “blank slate.” The “agonistic approach” as a tactic frees artists from
worry about creating absolutes and relies on the idea that the artist works with the public to strike a
balance, alternate control, and engender dialogue together. To do the opposite Mouffe warns “would
require the availability of a consensus without exclusion, which is precisely what the agonistic approach
reveals to be impossible.”
43
If radical allurists impose their will, they create an impossible engagement, a
fake dialogic experience, and audience confusion. Therefore, it’s best to use this tactic with GITP to
assure the public: “We’re in this contentious space together!”
The third tactic, “estrangement,” relies on the idea that separation can lead to a stronger
connection. The Best Friends Learning Gang (BFLG), a collaborative project, is a “pedagogical
experiment that engages in education as an embodied, decentralized and undisciplined activity,”
44
utilizes
this tactic in their work. Founder Joey Cannizzaro explains the word “defined by Victor Shklovsky as a
technique, and an aesthetic to a lesser extent. His estrangement was about the writer, the artist, making the

40
Bedoya, “Creative Placemaking and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-Belonging.”
41
Mouffe, “Art as an Agonistic Intervention in Public Space,” 10.
42
Getz and Page, Event Studies: Theory, Research and Policy for Planned Events, 263.
43
Mouffe, “Art as an Agonistic Intervention in Public Space,” 10.
44
Cannizzarro and Bustillo, “On the Subject of Best Friends Learning Gang.”
Karimi 16
experience of the thing less natural, and specifically more labored, to allow the audience access to new
ways of seeing and thinking.”
45
The BFLG uses this technique in their amateur hours, by choosing “a
topic we hardly know anything about and pretend to be taking a “how to” approach— which is partly
what we do—but really we’ll approach the topic from as many different angles as possible, encouraging
everyone to grasp it in whatever way interests them rather than insisting that only one approach is
“scholarly”, is producing knowledge, and therefore valid.”
46
This tactic of “estrangement” places the
audience on a level playing field with the artists. It may seem as a ruse; however, BFLG’s use of
“estrangement” allows the audience entry into the subject matter, to take ownership and become experts
together. Everyone is an amateur, and thus can produce knowledge. BFLG makes it more difficult for the
audience by providing obstacles, but this artificialness made by design, oddly, gives the audience agency.
The fourth and final tactic, “deliciousness” combines aspects of other three tactics above. I
developed this idea through my ten-year project, ThePeoplesCook Project. As a foundational precept for
“deliciousness,” I use Raymond Williams’ and Jeff Chang’s definitions of culture. Williams’: “Culture as
a term, must be seen…not simply as a disadvantage, which prevents any kind of neat and exclusive
definitions, but as a genuine complexity, corresponding to real elements as experience.”
47
Chang’s:
culture is the realm of images, ideas, sounds, and stories. It is our shared space. Is the narrative
we are immersed in every day. It is where people find community, and express their deepest held
values, whereas Eduardo Galeano put it, ‘the collective symbols of identity and memory: detect
testimonies of what we are, the prophecies of the imagination, the denunciations of what prevents
us from being’
48
are circulated.
49

Chang’s and Williams’ definitions serve as the theoretical spine for the four principles of
“deliciousness.” The main principles of “deliciousness” as a methodology of community engagement are:
1. Honor the Wisdom of everyone (in the room…)
2. Honor Culture (be culture-centered)
3. Allow for others to shine
4. To make space for joy so that we NOURISH EVERYBODY
50

45
Bustillo et al., “Like When the Teacher Leaves the Classroom: A Conversation about Artist-Run Programming within
Exhibitions.”
46
Bustillo et al.
47
Williams, “The Analysis of Culture.”
48
Galeano, Days and Nights of Love and War, 138.
49
Chang, Who We Be: The Colorization of America, 5.
50
Karimi, Artist Statement.
Karimi 17
These principals have progenitors. The first — Honor the Wisdom of Everyone –– puts into
action Freire’s point about mutuality with the public. The second is from Chang and Williams: Culture is
intersubjective and dynamic in dialogue with the past, present and future of the individuals living it.
The third — Allow for others to shine — also brings to mind Freire and his quest to remove the banking
method of education: the idea that education should be participant centered; the alternative dehumanized
students into vessels who receive and regurgitate information unconsciously.
51
The fourth — make space
for Joy — derives from my observations from my past projects: participants value symbiotic nourishment.
To understand this concept, consider that a radical Allurist creates a platform where either they or
someone else functions as the leader of the experience. Their design organizes the audience and allows
for the possibility of exchange and action. This process parallels the idea of making food delicious. The
cook strives to execute a recipe that the guests find delicious, or else they do not eat it. This deliciousness
could come by chance and using the cook’s expertise; however, the best way to create something
delicious is by dialogue, deep listening, and a conscious choice by the cook to use this testing with the
eater. In this way, the radical Allurist does the same, with the goal of being an activator and incubator of
ideas for the group, instead of a literal delicious meal. “Deliciousness” as a tactic can also root the
designer in thinking about how to activate the public to work on their becoming. To create what Viola
Spolin, founder of Improv and the Second City, considers a designer’s ideal, a “living, organic, non-
authoritarian climate” which “can inform the learning process and, in fact, is the only way in which
artistic and intuitive freedom can grow.”
52

The elements of Tactical Play: Fabric, Food, Fun

Tactics should interweave with what I consider the 3 major elements of tactical play: food, fabric,
and fun. I use these elements to assess if the tactics can serve the work I create within the strategy of
radical Allurement. The 3 elements break down the following way:

51
Freire, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Trans.”
52
Spolin, Improvisation for the Theater; a Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques., LIII–LIV.
Karimi 18
Food (Inducement): This is the sensorial lure. The smell of onions, the sizzle of a steak, the
sound of a sexy voice or the kind touch of a helping hand. It’s not just primal emotions it evokes. It’s
what brings the participant to the table, so to speak. It attracts. And at a higher level, the food element is
about perceived nourishment for and by the participant. This nourishment, like that of the fourth principle
of deliciousness) keeps the participant playing. It becomes a call to enter Buber’s “I-thou” concept which
symbolizes the quest for wholeness through encounter in an organic way. Without the food element,
players become less likely to join the fun and at another level, experiences lack substantive sustenance to
keep the players in the game.
Fabric (Materiality): The material aspect of food, a physical element that attracts. Gestures can
be part of this, anything that draws our attention and, perhaps, pleasure or curiosity. Imagine the
underwear band of a man with sagging pants. He wants to call your attention.
Fun: Fun represents the tie that binds the fabric and the food together. Play for play’s sake is key,
as this type of play creates the most “intersubjective communion.”
53
This is where the player derives their
joy. “The essence of all play lies in its spontaneous creation for the pleasure the process affords the
players in the fun of playing. When this essence is lacking, only the semblance of the play activity may
exist, and this is not play.”
54
Simply, remove fun, remove the pleasure. Educator Neva Boyd’s definition
of fun implies that through players’ interchange, they discover fun together to build trust and community.
Bernie Dekoven takes it a step further: for a designer to build “a fun community is to care more about the
players than about the game. If fun is what we truly want for each other, it matters less to us what game
we are playing.”
55
The element of fun in radical allurement allows all players to concern themselves with
each other and less on the objects of the game.
The previous tactics: GITP, the agonistic approach, estrangement, and deliciousness, work within these
elements. They give the radical Allurist a jumping off point and perhaps a guide for platform design. I
offer these as a way to root the discussion of tactics in the later sections, and to provide a framework for
the creation of more tactics when discussing the work of myself and other artists.

53
Perinbanayagam, Games and Sport in Everyday Life: Dialogues and Narratives of the Self, 70.
54
Boyd, Play and Game Theory in Group Work: A Collection of Papers, 79.
55
DeKoven, The Well-Played Game: A Playful Path to Wholeness, 16.
Karimi 19
Game: Instruction for New Movement #74

1. Dance around.
2. Question this instruction.
3. Do we always do what we see in print,
4. Or do we follow the oral subtext present
5. Between the lines?
6. Dance, even if you just sway in your chair.
7. Or follow your own rules,
8. Or take a break in your own way,
9. Even sing your favorite karaoke song.
10. Upload your song or dance or unique break activity to Instagram or YouTube,
11. Or send it to me telepathically.
56

56
Go to Robert Karimi at Idea Festival 2014: https://vimeo.com/107875648 for telepathic examples.
Karimi 20
3: The P of Tactical P .O.R.K.
Since Radical allurement originates directly from my experience, I wrote in the third person in
the earlier section to allow the term to breathe more, undo its ties to me, in order to explain its principles
in a general way. Now, I want to bring it back to my work to show how I use the strategy. I introduced
four preliminary tactics of tactical play and how they can be used to construct interactions. I added the
elements food, fabric, and fun to provide my rationale for how these tactics came to be and serve as a
point of departure to create new ones. In the next sections, it’s all about revealing the framework for the P
of Tactical P.O.R.K.: play. I’ll discuss how I use specific tactics related to radical Allurement I employ in
my performances and how I continue this in new work in game design. The first example I share a project
where I implement the 4 preliminary tactics, and the next examples offer new tactics to the conversation.
The Cooking Show con Karimi & Comrades: LGBT(Q)A Torta Demonstration

In 2008, I designed a food demonstration where my performance character Mero Cocinero
57
and
his revolutionary sous chef Comrade Castro served slices of a vegetarian sandwich in order to create
conversation around the issue of gay marriage called the LGBTQ(A) Torta
58
Demonstration at Whole
Foods in Philadelphia. The experience was part of a multi-location residency at community arts
organization Asian Arts Initiative, who invited my comedy cooking show – The Cooking Show con
Karimi and Comrades – to perform on our way to the Asian American Theater Festival in New York
City. I developed The Cooking Show, a satirical public television-style cooking show, in 1997 at Galeria
de la Raza in San Francisco. The show’s host, Mero Cocinero, a character I created at the same time,
quips about politics and tell stories about food while teaching people how to cook the dishes he prepares.
Since Mero Cocinero is a leftist Chef that attempts to change the world through cooking, I reworked
leftist terms to fit Mero Cocinero’s worldview. His absurd love of the Left made the text easy to write
because I lampooned my own leftist idealism; thus, I conflated the concepts that may be applied to a
cooking show or to food education or recipe sharing with ideas of a radical leftist. Mero used terms like

57
“Mero Cocinero”, translated from Spanish, means Best Cook/Chef. Also, it’s a hyperbole, so it can also be read that the cook is
not so good, or just the friendly neighborhood cook. The triple entendre is intended.
58
LGBT(Q)(A) torta: a vegetarian sandwich I developed for TPC during the Gay Marriage legislation discussion. Its ingredients:
Lettuce, Guacamole, Beans, Tomatoes, Queso (cheese) and Ally herb – usually cilantro.
Karimi 21
“Brother,” “Sister,” “Comrade,” and espoused his own maxims; i.e., “We bring the ingredients down to
the people, so the people can rise together!” or “The Revolution Starts in the Kitchen!” In this case of the
LGBTQA Torta, I blended the concept of a Demonstration as a political protest with a food demonstration
in a supermarket to take on the issue of gay marriage.
I collaborated with Asian Arts Initiative to find a partner that would be open to the experience.
We found one in Whole Foods. I downplayed the political aspect of the show to the supermarket chain
and told them we were going to serve a healthy cultural torta and make people laugh and have a good
time. The reason: Whole Foods audience was the public. I needed the corporate managers’ buy-in (GITP).
When I explained the dish: The LGBT(Q)A Torta, I thought they would hesitate; however, the community
manager loved the idea of politics, food, and gay marriage, especially because of the store’s location in a
predominately culturally mixed part of Philadelphia.

Figure 1. A furry customer wants to add an Ally to their LGBTQA Torta
When designing the Torta experience, I considered vegans, vegetarians, and meat eaters. The
sandwich’s ingredients were made for the largest base of eaters, not just for the food politics. In the
design, I knew the shoppers may be agonistic towards the ideas, so we spelled out the ingredients on a
side menu. And I outlined a script where sous chef Castro and I just offered the sandwich; we did not talk
about gay marriage. We would only say “We are marrying the ingredients. Everyone loves the LGBTQA
Torta.” We even had an ally herb: cilantro, using the term “ally” as a play on the LGBTQ community’s
use of the word as well as using it as an accompaniment for a dish. We used the lexicon of the gay
Karimi 22
marriage movement to discuss the recipe, using our wit to maneuver when someone pinned us down and
asked us to explain what we were serving or what product we were selling. My character would
improvise, “We’re just selling healthy choices by marrying lettuce, guacamole, beans, tomato, queso and
the ally herb, cilantro. We always choose that delicious relationship!” or “We are in solidarity with all
men, women, non-gender specific, eaters. No matter how you identify, this sandwich is for you!”
We worked with Whole Foods employees to make the sandwich and the experience. We
explained it to them throughout the process. They giggled, grew excited, and even gave us more food.
They called their friends to come to the demonstration. Although the deliciousness of this experience
could be highly contested, in our improvisation we never dismissed our participants’ choices. It was a
platform to get them to talk to each other about the issue, which they did. They exchanged wisdom as
they either made fun of our sandwich or shared a laugh, and they, like the workers, would share the
experience with their friends. In terms of radical Allurement, the food of the demonstration was literally
the food. The antics of the cooks at the demonstration, even the story of what and why we were doing it.
The fun derived from the silly chef and his partner selling an absurd sandwich. The repartee between
audience and performer became the fun. Even those in the periphery, listening, took part in the fun.
The fabric of the demonstration leads to the allure. The physical demonstration table at Whole
Foods, the store’s advertising of our event, the act of us working in the kitchen beforehand give us a
performed authority akin to the Yes Men! who use suits and briefcases and their physical appearances to
gain access to newsrooms and boardrooms.
59
The entire time, from our initial connection with the store,
until the end of the event, and afterwards, no one questioned if we knew how to cook or if the food is
delicious. We showed up with fancy knives, chefs’ outfits, and our identities (Asian/Latino and Filipino),
they assume we know our way around the kitchen. The employees, the managers all vouch for us, and
instantly we are welcomed to serve food, and serve the LGBTQ Torta and all the surrounding discussion
before anyone is the wiser.
The community of shoppers had no idea I was going to be there, and I did not collaborate with
them at all. In a way I obstructed their shopping experience to talk about gay marriage in the United

59
razorfoundation, Bhopal Disaster - BBC - The Yes Men; Bichlbaum, “Pranksters Sink the WTO.”
Karimi 23
States along with communicating nutritious food ideas. This led to some participants to question if I was
making a “gay sandwich,” and if I was trying to force my ideas on them. The community had agency to
join me during the demonstration and could even cook with me. However, I did not collaborate nor get
their permission to do the performance – – unless you consider Whole Foods and Asian Arts Initiative as
representative of an entire community, which I do not.
The LGBTQ(A) Torta exemplifies how an experience can be designed using the 4 tactics as a
confrontation and keep the community out of the collaboration until it is “served.” Although I kept the
spirit of play throughout the experience, something was missing. The playfulness was mostly mine and
my characters’; however, I sought to make something playful for both the participants and myself.

ThePeoplesCook Project: the power of chisme

In 2008, I discovered doctors diagnosed my Iranian father with Type 2 Diabetes (T2D). It
changed the trajectory of my work. Prior to that moment, I created interactive theatrical experiences with
ensembles in various communities and toured and presented my solo performance work and the Cooking
Show in venues globally. My father worked to combat the disease by going back to a diet of foods he ate
when living in Iran and exercising. He hates drugs, so he used these methods to subside the impact of the
disease all the way to remission. Being an individual who loved fast food, I feared my own demise from
T2D. I read the REACH 2010 study which stressed that T2D could be greatly reduced by 2050 if
interventions included culturally-specific culinary remedies and honored the cultural culinary history of
the at-risk communities with the disease.
60
After my team’s nutritionist, Avril Greenberg, chided us (and
threatened to quit) if we just made an educational play or created some spoken word one day event, I
decided to create a multi-disciplinary platform consisting of more participatory environments and thus
birthed ThePeoplesCook Project (TPC). I designed it as cross-disciplinary array of experiences to unite
cross-cultural cooking and interdisciplinary art to promote well-being and make healthy messaging
delicious. TPC’s first charge: to see if the Project could stem the rise of Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) in at-risk

60
Liao et al., “REACH 2010 Surveillance for Health Status in Minority Communities — United States, 2001–2002.”
Karimi 24
communities
61
using multi-disciplinary live food experiences to spark groups in the sharing of their
cultural wisdom and cultural recipes. My thought: create spaces for audiences to remember these histories
and remedies through sharing stories and cooking together. I crafted various installations, happenings, and
workshops with an ensemble of artists, cooks, nutritionists, and eaters. I engaged them to expand the
conversation about community health by creating cultural food wisdom exchanges in the battle against
T2D. TPC’s initial audience: those at risk for T2D, and the families and communities around them,
expanded over time as we served over 50,000 people since 2009.
TPC’s staff nutritionist Greenberg recommended a point of departure for our interventions: The
Plate Method (VSP): 50% vegetable, 25% starch, and 25% protein on a 9” plate. I wanted audiences to
practice moderation by plating their portions using their cultural wisdom and cultural recipes. The idea
came from months of interviews with people with T2D who were overwhelmed by the barrage of health
information and medical professionals’ condescension. They spoke of how the disease (and sometimes
medical professionals) made them feel guilt and shame. For this reason, they felt they had no agency to
create a more balanced diet or lifestyle. TPC served as a counter to this narrative so those at-risk or those
who already had T2D could understand their personal capacity to take on the disease. Rather than using
guilt and fear, I deployed play and playfulness to remind them a balanced life could be joyous. For
instance, I built pop-ups, created food contests, designed food storytelling curriculum, and taught
engagement workshops for nutritionists and medical professionals.
During this time, I noticed something else. The support staff of producers, performers,
administrative staff made substantive change towards a healthier balanced lifestyle and caused me to
change how I designed interventions in the immediate future. The groups who helped us administer the
project spoke of health changes during the exit interviews. I re-tracked my steps to see the origin of the
change. It started with the VSP Plate Method. At the beginning of my interventions or residencies, I
explained VSP to everyone––all production staff, performers, artists, curators, community members who
assisted TPC had to learn it, so we could move a residency forward. This way we had a common

61
At the time of the project, according to the Center for Disease Control, the communities most at-risk for Type 2 Diabetes in the
U.S.: African-Americas, Latina/os, Native Americans, and Asian Americans, and recent immigrants to the U.S.
Karimi 25
vocabulary for the work, and it allowed collaborators to rehearse sharing their stories with each other. It
provided quick cohesion to our mixed intergenerational groups. Producers, especially marketing and
audience engagement staff, worked to communicate these basic ideas to potential partners and audiences.
The more effectively TPC engaged these producers and their staffs, the more they remembered the
information and could effectively get buy-in from their partners and audiences.

Figure 2. Viva La Soul Power pop-up restaurant housed in Feed & Be Fed interactive art exhibition
I used a visual and physical mnemonic device to assist with knowledge retention. One fist up for
protein, the other one for starch and two fists for vegetables. This measurement of moderation gave
people a physical way to embody what we wanted them to remember. After a while I noticed the support
staff became experts in transmitting genuine knowledge of nutrition and ancestral health narratives--they
taught people they encountered in their daily lives. The fists went viral. Our circle expanded. I could tell
when people approached me and explained VSP with their fists!
I designed postcards with a plate for their staff refrigerators. Some people reported taking the
postcards home and showed them to their families – always sharing the story of where they learned the
information with them and sharing food stories because of it. They would bring ancestral recipes and food
stories to exchange with me. Support staff reported changing what they bought for lunch or served for
lunch or dinner at home based on The Plate Method with their culturally specific recipes or recipes they
Karimi 26
learned through TPC. Executives at some of our commissioned residencies implemented incentives in
their health plans because so many staff members had been proactive in changing how they eat and cook.
This revealed that perhaps rather than a direct intervention for this kind of awareness/food consciousness,
the people involved in making the intervention might be getting more direct effect and become stronger
catalysts for behavior change. They own the concept, and then champion TPC’s ideas and continue the
work, through storytelling, the memory of the residency after TPC leaves. This proved to me that the
power of play could resonate well beyond the initial experience.
What makes TPC flow so well? The invitation to eat, to share stories. A participant’s
understanding of the value of their own personal history and recipes as medicine. Free food! That’s not
the whole picture of this thesis of my practice. What was the magic behind all this?
Yes, the elements of radical Allurement exist in TPC. And, I weaved the 4 tactics into the project,
but there was something else. A system of information exchange to counter the medical industrial
complex’s flow of hierarchical information. The system? Gossip — or as I call it, chisme. Chisme is the
Spanish translation for the word “gossip,” but it connotes something more complex than just what early
19
th
century Christians reduced it to “idle talk,” and a sin. Chisme in the Americas can be closer to the
etymology of its English root. The word gossip derives from “godsibb” – a relative or sibling
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; thus, like
chisme, the basis of the transmission of information is based on the trust between teller and listener.
Chisme replaces the news, subverts the authority. And, as a child of immigrants I learned that word of
mouth combined with trust was very valued in my familial and community circle. My framework for
chisme comes from Literary Theorist Lisa Lowe’s ideas on gossip: “Spontaneous, decentered, and
multivocal, gossip is antithetical to developmental narrative. It seizes details and hyperbolizes their
importance; it defies the notion of information as property…[gossip] often plagiarizes, and in doing so
satirizes, official civil institutions.”
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Lowe’s idea of gossip can be applied to chisme in the context of
ThePeoplesCook Project. My goal: to counter how the industrial medical system messages to at-risk
communities about how they develop strategies for their well-being. Using chisme as a tactic could

62
“Gossip | Origin and Meaning of Gossip by Online Etymology Dictionary.”
63
Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics.
Karimi 27
counter the institution and allow for participants to own the information themselves. In food terms,
recipes, and even home remedies are shared like chisme in my neighborhood; thus, every I went, I created
spaces for that chisme to occur. As people spread the stories, they held the information: the plate method,
the recipes, the stories, all became a material that contextualized well-being that they could communicate.
Chisme became the communicable system to infiltrate the heath system that did not completely serve the
realities of the constituencies of my residencies.
Yet defying possession by a single owner and moving easily across the class boundaries that
express the concept of property, gossip is always in circulation, without assignable source and
without trajectory or closure. Mobile and promiscuous, it collects significance as it travels from
site to site; orality and speed make it “common” and yet difficult to detect or trace.
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With this in mind, chisme, and creating a space for this chisme, allows for these ideas to have
maximum impact. Professors at Arizona State University (ASU) studied the effectiveness of TPC’s work
in an initial pilot study. While they did not conclude our work created healthier communities, possibly
because of the limited time of the intervention, they did show “positive shifts in healthy eating behaviors,
beliefs, and attitudes.”
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This tactic of radical Allurement is much more than about leading people to art.
By creating this playful environment, we can create this feeling of trust where community members who
participate, feel open to discuss more, share secrets, and create movements for the nourishment of self and
community.
The food, fabric and fun interweave together with chisme to spark people into action. TPC serves
as an example of these elements of radical Allurement in combination with chisme to produce their own
call to play and hopefully generate an environment where players desire to value their own systems of
exchange in response to the systems that confront them daily.

Self-Deprecation and Mero Cocinero

Over the past 20 years performing The Cooking Show and doing work with ThePeoplesCook
Project, another tactic of radical Allurement revealed itself: self-deprecating humor (making fun of
oneself). The roots of self-deprecating humor in performance can go as far back as jesters who ridicule

64
Lowe.
65
Winham et al., “Integration of Theatre Activities in Cooking Workshops Improves Healthy Eating Attitudes Among Ethnically
Diverse Adolescents: A Pilot Study.”
Karimi 28
themselves to amuse royalty. The twin-fold power of the Fool to both tickle the power structure as well as
satirize it gives a glimpse of the capacity of self-deprecation’s dual role in terms of hegemony. Politicians
utilize it to gain respect from voters that may see them as too elitist and not able to handle the issues of
the street.
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I did not aim to use self-deprecation in The Cooking Show as an asset. As any young comic
performer, I only saw it as a tool to satirize what I ridiculed; however, now I see it as a way for people to
perceive the approachability of an individual at the same time valuing their contribution to conversations.
I employ self-deprecating humor through my embodiment of the character of Mero Cocinero. I
created the Mero Cocinero, a buffoon in the tradition of Italian clowning, to satirize chefs on public
television in the 80s and 90s who peddled their cultural foods and foodways as cultural food authorities.
From my experience, with self-deprecating humor, the individual must create a sense of
importance for it to work. I first created an image of an expert Chef. The costume, the look, the narrative
of the marketing materials and the word of mouth had to let people know that this Chef was capable in the
kitchen. I had to improve my cooking skills, and as technical adviser Laura Colouch warned I had to learn
from “People who cooked every day for their families, not just people who had assistants in fancy
kitchens. Those people don’t cook, they chef.”
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These skills, the vast database of recipes and tips, and an
air of culinary importance was key to the later ridicule I would incur on myself to make Mero Cocinero
more approachable. I had to appear an expert of the recipes and skills of the everyday cook.

66
Sorenson, “TO THINE OWN SELF BE CRUEL: AN ANALYSIS OF THE USE OF SELF- DEPRECATING HUMOR AS A
RHETORICAL STRATEGY BY FIGURES IN POSITIONS OF AUTHORITY.”
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Colouch, Laura, Interview with Food Advisor Laura Colouch, technical advisor for Mero Cocinero.
Karimi 29

Figure 3. Would you trust this man with your stomach, or your food revolution?
As I stated earlier, I absurdify my idealism with the political left with Mero’s monologues and
dialogue. I also mash up Mero’s movements with the same text and with the rituals I observed of Mexican
performance artist/culture jammer Guillermo Gomez Peña during the time I worked with him. Peña
would introduce Butoh (Japanese dance) and Aztec physical rituals in exercises and in the play between
ensemble members. He made noises and movements to create his own ritualized characters that he
performed in public spaces. At first, I combined chef actions (cutting, mashing, stirring, flipping a pan,
etc.) and turn them into absurd Peña style rituals with guttural noises and proclaimed this was Mero
Cocinero's way to prep the kitchen.
In the beginning, I built gestures for Mero based on actual chefs that consulted my culinary
practice. I greeted people with the elbow bump – – a gesture that mixes the ideas of comedian Paul
Mooney's fist bump
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with the Muslim heart shake. I developed it when I noticed that cooks did not shake
hands in the kitchen, so I created this gesture as a fabric to disarm and charm my audience right away
when they entered the space. I developed Mero’s silly idealism even further during The Cooking Show. I
performed from 2007 to 2013. Mero always did the recipes in an inexact way, using leftist terminology to

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Mooney, Black Is the New White.
Karimi 30
measure amounts ("you don't want to put too much cumin in your hummus, that’s Taco Bell!”) or always
running late and asking the audience for help, saying he didn't know how to do this recipe or that he
forgot how to do something. Mero’s silliness made him approachable – as some would argue a clownish
brown man always does – and created the show’s humor where people on both aisles of the political
spectrum felt comfortable to watch because Mero’s absurdity made him the Don Quixote of the Leftist
kitchen. This self-deprecation gave the audience entry into the performance, and we could talk about
difficult subjects while cooking and eating together.
An example of the power of Mero’s self-deprecation occurred in 2007 on a morning TV show in
Green Bay, Wisconsin. Collaborator John Castro and I were asked to be on television to promote our
show at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Castro, the creator of the dish
we made, and I realized we were in Wisconsin while the NFL football team Green Bay Packers prepared
for the playoffs. The Packers mean the world to Wisconsin! We discovered, during this time, that the
Green Bay Packers were America's only nonprofit football team, so Castro developed a recipe that an
idealistic leftist chef like Mero Cocinero could make to honor them — a Working Classadilla. The recipe
consisted of the same ingredients as a quesadilla: tortilla and cheese, with a twist – – guacamole made
with onion juice and oregano – to be like the yellow and green of the Packers’ uniform. Mero’s goals: to
create a dish on TV that tailgaters could make, to bring the community together, and honor the Green Bay
Packers. This premise we knew would be the food of the experience as football fever rose in Green Bay
during the playoffs!
The setup: we were there to promote the show at John Michael Kohler Arts Center and only
supposed to be on at 5:30 in the morning, which at the time we had no idea was a popular time for
farmers and workers in northern Wisconsin to watch TV. In the performance I used an old bit: "the white
onion" as part of this. The white onion bit works like this — while audience members walked in to the
theater, I feigned panic as Mero Cocinero. I used estrangement to act like a bumbling fool who, although I
was the apparent cook of the kitchen, needed help. I’d ask a volunteer to help because Mero is running
late because he's a Lefty chef and the Left is always late. Mero prepares the volunteer with an apron and a
Karimi 31
ritual hand washing, then teaches them how to cut a white onion so that, as Mero says, “the white onion
doesn’t oppress them” and makes them cry. He grunts an Aztec chant and teaches them proper knife
handling using the star finger technique to keep away from intruders because “cooking is a martial art.”.
Eventually the piece unravels even more to the idea of self-protection and protecting ourselves.
“It's better to protect yourself with this hand (the star shaped hand to hold the vegetable) then the hand
with a knife. That's a felony! No blood or jail time in the kitchen” as we slice the onions Mero asks, "did
you notice?” The participant usually answers they didn't cry or asks no they did not what did happen. And
Mero responds “yes, you didn't cry! The white onion didn’t oppress you. When you dance with the white
onion, the onion won't make you cry. Remember that.” No longer a cooking lesson, and now a lesson on
radical politics in America, the bit is usually the first taste of the cooking show an audience gets, to know
that this is not your normal culinary experience.

Figure 4. Green Bay TV host learns how to protect yourself from intruders and white onions
For the Green Bay appearance, we decided to abbreviate the bit. Instead of a theater, we
shortened the bit to fit our parameters and waited for the camera to be on us to start our antics. The host
became my volunteer, and my unwitting participant rebuked me after I talked about the white onion
oppressing her, “We’re on live TV Mero,” she chided. Ratings boomed. People called into the station.
The blue state, about to vote in Paul Ryan and Scott Walker, loved us. The station kept us on for 3 hours
because we were so popular; the show in Sheboygan, Wisconsin sold out in less than 2 hours. Mero’s
self-deprecation provided a new way to make the audience at ease. The buffoon allows me entry; the
radical statement becomes an “accident.” The buffoon’s playfulness allows a certain kind of freedom.
Performed live, it allows participants to talk smack, and even find comfort through their uncomfortability.
Karimi 32
Mero Cocinero’s buffoonery by self-deprecation became an asset when I expanded from the
Cooking Show to ThePeoplesCook Project. Who better to destroy the expert model of health
communication where a health professional dispenses health information through a top-down system than
a quixotic chef? I discovered I had a Boydian anti-leader, a foil, who people would trust, allow into their
houses, someone who they believed would listen to them and then follow his wisdom because he was
silly, safe, gave them a good time and fed them.
Blank Against Blank: Playing against the Muslim Ban

I made a decision in grad school to distance myself from projects with literal food as their central
component to see how I could engage audiences without the offer of appeasing their stomachs. I ventured
towards game design (which led me to investigate how to design environments for those games and
ultimately led me to developing the concept of a game within my theory of radical Allurement). I sought
to put my ideas in a box. My first games as performance idea was an infiltration of the original game
system Cards against Humanity (CAH) entitled _____ Against _____ (Read as Blank Against Blank).
At the beginning of the process, I designed a card deck entitled Cards Against Iranians, Syrians,
Iraqis, Somalis, Yemenis, Libyans, Afghanis, Sudanese, Chadians, North Koreans, & Venezuelans
(CAISISYLASCNK&V) an expansion pack for Cards Against Humanity (CAH) that uses the game’s
system as foundation to critique President Trump’s Muslim Ban. I chose CAH for its popularity; the game
made my most anti-racist friends feel “free” to be as offensive as possible. CAH’s cards and rules set the
tone for snarkiness, irreverence. The idea of being as offensive as possible to win a black card symbolized
the veiled prejudices within the game’s system and spoke to me as source for satire.
The playtests for the game supported my hypothesis: if I challenge an audience to be as offensive
as possible towards these countries, could they do it? Their failure or success in playing the game could
lead to a healthy and balanced discussion about these issues and even lead to people across the aisle
seeing the law’s absurdity. Every time we play, players’ shock or delight leads to heated conversation and
laughter. It surprises them that the expansion pack exists.
Karimi 33

Figure 5. A look at the CAISISYLASCNK&V cards and a player having fun
I designed the deck in a box, so players could take the game home, to concretize that relationship.
This created a new situation for me. The company that created the original pack of CAH sent me a
preliminary cease-and-desist email, so now the game is banned from sale. This worked for the fabric and
food of the game. The idea that players are playing a banned game, makes them want to play it even
more. By banning CAISISYLASCNK&V, the company who owns CAH, plays the part of Donald Trump.
To bypass their threat, I instituted a way for people to become a community through purchasing the game
and I will take all the proceeds to throw a party in Los Angeles in 2019. There are two reasons for this.
This way the conversation lingers on after the initial experience, and I get to parody how the original
company does business as well – – they take their proceeds and use it for fun things to engage their
customers, and I want to throw a party and celebrate how these people are willing to have the
conversation about the Muslim Ban and refuse to be banned just like the game.

Karimi 34
French curator Fabien Danesi and Anna Milone of FLAX Foundation invited me to premiere
Blank Against Blank in the loading dock of the Ford Amphitheater in 2018. I wanted to connect the idea
of US Muslim Ban with those of France. I searched for the best vessel to get people to play and dialogue.
My answer: an interactive platform for the card deck — a game night in the loading dock— a place the
Ford never programmed in its history. The food and the fabric were the game, the premise. Potential
players saw the game’s marketing language and signs I made and felt the lure.

Figure 6. Blank Against Blank: Game night at the Ford Amphitheater!
I created three characters to greet the players. Their purpose to serve as the facilitators a la Neva
Boyd. Like Mero Cocinero, these characters had a name: Mr./Ms. Fun. Unlike my quixotic chef, these
performers were shit talkers, instigators, provocateurs of fun meant to give players permission to let loose
during gameplay. In the past, I specifically chose performers from the regions of the Muslim Ban, as well
as those from West Asian and North African countries that most Americans conflate with the countries
the U.S. government considers “terrorist.” For the Ford, I collaborated with a Palestinian American
comedian and queer Egyptian performance artist. I designed the characters’ uniform of a hat with a Farsi
numeral “3” and a green armband to signify their solidarity to play. I designed my outfit to critique the
French ban on the burkini. I wore one with shorts (because men are not allowed to wear shorts in Iran), to
Karimi 35
indicate I was the game host. I scored our actions, so we constantly could facilitate the entire room. This
made players uncomfortable, built the agonistic environment as well as upped the ante, so to speak, on the
consequences of their choices.
The night at the Ford almost 200 people played as my crew served Tehran Tacos for the players
and an Israeli DJ played Arabic, Hindi and Farsi language dance classics. The gossip of the game and
ideas spread. People explained it to each other. Took ownership. The party as platform led to even more
discussion about the issues. Players wanted to buy the game even though they didn’t own CAH. They saw
the pack as a spark for future discussion. I witnessed the systems of tactical play and radical Allurement
converge. Everything worked, and the experience inspired the Ford to use their loading dock for this type
of play again. Play and playfulness took a ban and turned it into a sanctuary of permission.
In talking about complex issues, games get us to the table. They invite people to play. When
someone says “game” or asks “wanna play?”, the imagination piques interest with images immediately.
Someone knows something is going to happen, and that they are going to be a part of it. How that reveals
itself is the mystery. The fun of it. The excitement. That’s what happened at the game night at the Ford.

Karimi 36
Game: Bling Fear. (Bling it. Bring it.)
A game to play when you need it most.
By RFKarimi

If I have your permission, please proceed to play this game with me.

1. Think of something that causes you great fear.
2. Imagine all the details of it - not too much, though. We don’t want to be paralyzed, just enough to
remember it.
3. Now add sequins to the fear you imagined. Diamonds. Spangles. Colorful textiles, ribbons. Any material
that brightens the fear. Makes the fear more diva-like.
4. Now add some music that makes you dance or smile to the imagined situation in your head.
5. Dance. If in a public place, make sure you are safe.
6. Imagine your fear now as a magical object, animal, etc., keeping all the ribbons, spangles, sequins and
other material you imagined.
7. Make it as fantastic as possible
8. Now walk around with it.
9. Talk with it. Tell it a secret.
10. Feel Swimmingly with it.
11. Now say goodbye to it as it goes to the corner of your mind. And strike Bruce Lee pose from Way of the
Dragon
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and say “Bring it” in a tone that states to anything that stops you from being incredibly fantastic,
that you mean business.
12. If time, and you did not engage with these instructions, or you find this problematic, call a friend and
talk smack about this game.
13. If time, and you did all instructions, call a friend, and share these instructions with them.

69
See clip from 1:14-1:18 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZpqDhQJhFA for inspiration.
Karimi 37
4: Calling the Kindred Spirits of Radical Allurement
Alan Kaprow seems like the most likely artist as the progenitor of radical Allurement. His initial
attempt with his happenings are to create something “closer to life.;” his call for un-art in general provides
more of the framework for radical Allurement than some of his specific pieces. Many times his scripted
environments feel very pointed – – women lick strawberry jam off cars in Household (1965) and his
request for people to soil their clothing as “one's real experiences as an infant”
70
suggest an artistic bias
towards restriction rather than participant freedom. I found Kaprow’s specific work a beginning for this
reason and sought kindred spirits for this essay that had evolved their work into more participatory
platforms. While not one artist can fit completely into any one’s theories, these artists use tactics to
engage their audiences, their concepts fall more within my definition of radical Allurement. As Kaprow,
they attempt to entice participants; unlike him, they employ more tactical play and because of the way
they use radical Allurement, they nourish the audience. Their ideas resonate beyond the initial experience.
In this regard I see a kinship with artist Adrian Piper. I infiltrate systems like she does. She
infiltrated the system of the lecture by mashing it up with a dance party in order to lure people with her
seminal work Funk Lessons. She states her intention:
the long-term goal both of the small – and the large-scale performances is to restructure people
social identities, by making accessible to them a common medium of communication – Funk
music and dance – that has been largely inaccessible to white culture and has consequently
exacerbated the xenophobic fear, hostility, and in comprehension the generally characterize the
reaction of whites to black popular culture in the society.
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Rather than live in the confrontational moment, Piper’s framing of radical Allurement makes the
audience engage in dialogue. The possibility of fun brings them in, whereby Piper uses it to challenge
white audiences. She is no longer the professor, she is now the game host, facilitating how the participants
live out their choices with each other – – their awkwardness, their ignorance. The boundaries of a dance
party keep people feeling safe, even though the music and Piper’s words may make them uncomfortable.
Piper’s design creates confrontation through fun, which creates a stronger resonance as audience members
carry their contradictions of racism beyond the initial experience.

70
Kaprow, Some Recent Happenings.
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Piper, Out of Order/Out of Sight, Vol. 1, 198.
Karimi 38
Because of the music and the party form, the conversation continues long after the party is over.
I feel an affinity with Piper’s Dance Lessons (1983) through CAISISYLASCNK&V and
ThePeoplesCook Project. Rather than create pieces to confront the Muslim Ban or the inequities and
racism of the health system that contribute to some of the causes of Type 2 Diabetes, I designed a game
night and cooking show. Creating participation allows for audience members to have to evaluate the
consequence of their own actions and become responsible for them. Should they listen to Piper lecture or
dance? Should they listen to a health message or cook and have fun?. They come to the party to dance,
play or eat, and in this way have to come to terms with their own desires, narratives, and ignorance.
Piper also creates a pedagogical component that corresponds to some of the tropes of my work
within radical Allurement. She explains, "The aim [of Funk Lessons] was to transmit and share a physical
language that everyone was then empowered to use.”
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Piper uses funk music not only to teach dance
steps, but also to disarm audiences to promote sociability and dialogue. She uses the didactic form of a
professor's lecture and fuses it with a funk dance party. The lure: a dance party with popular funk music
takes place at a university or space where it does not usually live. This event does not always take place at
the popular funk clubs in the Bay Area or other major metropolises. It happens in a university or in
artspace (New Langton Arts). The exoticness of the music in relation to the space (the fabric) contributes
to the attraction of the event as much as the music itself. Here, we see how Piper uses “estrangement” to
throw people off. They bring their own expertise, or lack of it, to the party. She is there to teach them, but
in fact, their own ignorance is part of the dialogue. “The "lessons" format during this process became
even more clearly a didactic foil for collaboration: dialogue quickly replaced pseudo-academic
lecture/demonstration, and social union replaced the audience – performer separation.”
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Dancing (food)
pulls people into the fabric of the funk lesson. Rather than give a long talk, she makes the activity fun and
removes barriers quickly.
This mirrors ThePeoplesCook Project whereby the pop-up restaurant serves as a vessel for people
to cook and eat together. The event switches from one about watching some pseudo famous chef cook for

72
Piper, 195.
73
Piper, 196.
Karimi 39
a static audience into a dynamic dialogue where audience members exchange stories about our food
system or food as medicine. Even Blank Against Blank takes a game night and transforms it into a
conversation about the issues. The platforms of Piper’s dance party or my game night or my cooking
demonstration create this social union.
I see a kinship with artist Pepón Osorio, especially in En la barberia no se llora (1994) — his
project in Hartford, Connecticut where he utilized the tactic of deliciousness to construct a barbershop to
invite community member to discuss the complications of masculinity. As he eschewed the gallery
system in the 90s to bring his art to the people, and “force downtown to come uptown”
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, he thoughtfully
thought of ways to engage communities into the issues he wanted to discuss.
I notice the parallels between our processes, as he describes for this project:
First, using a dialogic approach, he develops a set of collaborative social relations of the people
who frequently become the subjects of his artworks or work with him on its production. Second,
the artist creates the conditions for encounters across communities, across divides, and across
geographic barriers to the installations in their finished form. He invents his own “contact zones”
in order to bring diverse constituencies together in unexpected ways and unpredictable places.
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Osorio’s contact zones could be called chisme zones — places where he creates work to get
people talking together, spreading knowledge, engaging with him to discover the themes of the work and
continue the conversation beyond the artwork. The social relations become material for the artwork and
help him design an experience that best brings in the community of his work to explore masculinity.
Osorio's work overall relies on the audience’s participation; this project best exemplifies radical
Allurement because the tactics he uses to create a community-centered project which still resonates for
the neighborhood residents, who miss its presence.
In En la barberia, Osorio blings out a street-accessible barbershop that he designs to invite
players to talk about the complications of masculinity in the work and in the community. These visuals
become the rules and boundaries of the game of engagement he creates. He uses his understanding of
visual art to make the barbershop beautiful and combines that with his history of masculinity as it relates
to his culture. In this way he uses the fabric to implement the fun and the food for the community he

74
Osorio, No Crying in the Barbershop | Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico.
75
González, Pepón Osorio, 7.
Karimi 40
wishes to serve. In En la barberia he uses the Chucherias, the trinkets of his past, to be the fabric of the
piece to entice the audience to play. The barbershop chairs and other furniture become decision machines,
places where people can decide to share their stories, even the art on the wall becomes pieces of the game.
What exactly is the game everyone is playing? The silence of men game. The object of this game: undo
the silence and talk about what it means to be a man.
The barbershop itself already represents food for the neighborhood or a play sanctuary, a place
for integrated play and dialogue. Osorio's design works in tandem with the natural fabric, food and fun
and the community feels ownership of the work and the artist and misses it when it’s gone. “’The piece
enhanced the environment, but then it was removed and deflated cultural pride.’”
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Fun is not central to
his work but there is definitely playfulness, and he creates that playfulness in the objects he creates, and
how he designed the barbershop. Deliciousness is key as well, but this is not the only reason why I feel a
kindred spirit with Osorio’s work. His ability to design spaces for the material chisme that creates an
environment that communities do not want to see go away is a testament to his power as an artist and a
radical allurist. His work, especially, En la barberia, creates a standard for radical allurists to measure
their future work.
An example of this kinship: The contemporary Museum in Baltimore commissioned
ThePeoplesCook Project to engage in activities for three weeks in 2008. We created a barbecue with the
Social Practice students of the Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art (MICA). The reason: the students
could not get neighbors to cross the street and engage with them in their new East Baltimore satellite
campus. The neighbors still did not trust them and saw them as emblematic of the changes that were
going on in the neighborhood of East Baltimore. Learning about this through talking with neighbors and
the students, we created a barbecue and curated the food according to the plate method (50% vegetable,
25% protein, 25% starch on a 9-inch plate). We prepared the grill, had a picnic table set out (which they
had created in a previous project), and invited some of the neighbors who mostly declined the invitation.
I dressed as Mero Cocinero and gave one instruction to the team: if anyone wanted to help, let
them. As I danced around, trying to get people to come to the barbecue, one of the children of the area

76
González, 46.
Karimi 41
asked if he could help. Since he was partially deaf, he said in half sign language and half audible
language, he wanted to help the crazy chef. The whole crew shuddered when I gave him the fork and the
tongs. They worried about the 9-year old’s nearness to the heat. We allayed fears by just hanging out with
him, and he loved it. The other children of the area saw what was happening and wanted to join because it
looked like fun. Then more children came, and then the sisters at the AIDS hospice noticed the children
cooking and they came with their patients. Then the family members of the children showed up because
they were looking for their children and as one woman said, “they wanted to know what the children were
doing with that crazy white man.” We fed 250 people that day, and there was even a fight because we ran
out of meat,
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and people had to eat plates mostly of grilled vegetables. The next day, the young people
knocked on the window of the school and asked if the crazy chef could help them make food for their
grandmothers because they finally found vegetable recipes that they liked.
Like Osorio, to be invited back, or even missed, could be the greatest affirmation an audience can
give us. In addition to telling the story of their experience as their own, when artists like Piper and Osorio,
invite participants to go to a dance party or a barbershop, the possibility of fun is in the fabric and food of
the work, and that’s what makes it a game, we want to play well. The list of kin is new to me. I don’t have
an ancestry.com for radical Allurement, but my hope this thesis serves as the beginning of the search of
the family of radical allurists. Perhaps there’s only me, or at least there’s a group of us who can share
good practices I can borrow as I develop concepts and platforms of play and playfulness.

77
We ran out because the young people were asked to serve the meal according the Plate Method, but the adults pushed them to
give them more meat; some community members said I didn’t know how to host a party, and I offered back that some people
may be greedy. This led to a conversation about equity and resources, and why people will break the rules not to eat vegetables.
Karimi 42
Sample: Funk from Philadelphia
“Get Down, Get Funky, Get Loose,” sung by Teddy Pendergrass

When you're having fun, the time just slips away
So let's make use of the moments that we share.
Let's act like we don't care, do ya hear me?
Free like a bird in the air, come on people.
Get up, get down, get funky, get loose
Get up, get down, get funky, get loose
Whatcha come out here for? whatcha come out here for?
Do you want to party? do you want to dance?
Come on people and get down, down .
78

78
To hear the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFNUDZT7Z2E
Karimi 43
5: Concluding Thoughts on the Futures of the Tactical P.O.R.K
All this talk about radical Allurement and tactical P.O.R.K make you hungry yet? Make you want
to go to the kitchen, metaphoric or literal, and cook? Putting all these ideas together has given me a
perspective about the kind of metaphoric cook I am. My work has gone from theatrical acting to one-man
shows to filmmaking, performing cooking shows and creating ensemble based devised theater to object
making to graphic design to designing interactive experiences and now game design. All of it seems
disconnected. At times, I wanted to give up art and art making because I feel like I cannot communicate
clearly who I am, and what I am in a way that is understandable for presenters, funders, and audiences. In
this way, my artistic trajectory mirrors the life of the young artist that began all of this 31 years ago in a
theater in the suburban San Francisco Bay Area who was just trying to write a poem to deal with his
collision of cultures. It makes sense that Roberto Bedoya’s words help me bring this all together; we
come from that same town (Union City, California).
I don't think I want to build a theory based on this text, or a worldview, but I want to use new
ideas to dream up new questions. To think about consent, informed or implied, and my role as a socially
engaged artist. What does success look like for me, and how can I communicate this to future
collaborators? This is not an art world-only concern. As younger generations crave more experiences and
the experience economy gains even more steam for post-millennials, the issues of ethics, responsibility,
and consent weigh heavy on my mind.
In the class in which I am a teaching assistant, we noticed digital artists who placed products in a
non-confrontational way in popular media. Someone asked, "what was the word for that? what's the word
for someone who playfully disrupts using digital techniques?” We debated all class, thinking up new
words. I smiled. This is how I see radical Allurement. Not as a move to envelop other artists, but as a
point of departure for a new language, lexicon and ideas to describe the new ways of working as artists. In
this way, we get to name ourselves and perhaps rather than a thesis on the tactical play of Robert Karimi
future literature will be about “how we named ourselves: playful players of the art world.” This is not
only about Piper, Osorio, Burciaga and Kaprow. This is about how we all define ourselves, and the power
Karimi 44
to name our practices and our visions. In this time of intersectionality, can we all name ourselves? Can we
all grasp each other’s differences simultaneously? Or do I have to abandon these two words in order to get
us all to play together in a way that nourishes me and you? The questions remain, but I can’t wait to play
again!
Next time I write about this, perhaps I won’t put it on paper, I’ll get a 10-piece jazz/funk/cumbia
band from Chile and we’ll dance and eat and sing these ideas aloud. Or work with a group trying to
eliminate police brutality by building video games and escape rooms around the world. Or the next Arab
Spring will happen on hookahs imported to the West. These are possible futures of Tactical P.O.R.K. No
matter who comes to the table, I promise there will always be a game to play with a playful host who
guarantees fun. May we all continue to play. And play well.
Karimi 45
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract Karimi proposes a way to honor play and playfulness in socially engaged art by providing a framework for a strategy called radical Allurement, based on audience intersectional playfulness. When thinking about engaging publics, how do we create organic connections that resonates both artistic intention as well as the public’s experience? What are tactics that allow audiences to feel they are in dialogue with an artist in a deep, symbiotic way? Is there a game involved? ❧ He connects the work of Allan Kaprow, Pepón Osorio, Adrian Piper, Neva Boyd, and Bernie DeKoven to honor playfulness within his process and within the construction of the environments he design. The text serves as a way to begin a dialogue about how artists design interactive experiences

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Asset Metadata

Creator Karimi, Robert Farid (author)

Core Title Recipes of tactical play of Robert Karimi (Tactical P.O.R.K.)

School Roski School of Art and Design

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Fine Arts

Publication Date 08/06/2018

Defense Date 08/03/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag applied art,experience design,fine art,Guatemalan art,intersectionality,Iranian art,Latino art,mixed race theory,OAI-PMH Harvest,Performance,Play,playfulness,radical allurement,social practice,socially engaged art,spoken word,Theater

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Gotsis, Marientina (committee chair), Lacy, Suzanne (committee member), Moss, Karen (committee member)

Creator Email rkarimi@usc.edu,robertkarimi@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-57302

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Rights Karimi, Robert Farid

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