In 2019, Robert Farid Karimi landed a dream gig: an arts residency in Honolulu, Hawai`i, at Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design, slated for fall 2020. The initial idea was that he would take the museum out into the communities of O‘ahu with his Cooking Show, in which he plays a character called “The People’s Cook” and tours around on a lowrider bicycle food cart with stories and food for diverse populations.
A year later, it looked like the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown wouldn’t just lead to a temporary postponement of the residency but a complete cancellation; communication from the museum tapered off in the ongoing uncertainty of 2021. By November of that year, Robert realized he would need to work to revive the residency. So he traveled from Arizona, where he is an assistant professor at Arizona State University, to Hawai`i to meet with staff. He heard concerns that a food-based show felt dangerous in pandemic times and that the people of Hawai`i were asking tourists to stay away. He also heard that the museum still wanted to be a place of transformation and experimentation.
Robert understood that things had evolved at Shangri La, but so had his artistic practice. He was now weaving narratives with popular games to engage audiences in complex subjects, and he saw an opportunity to marry Shangri La’s institutional concerns with his changing artistry. In spring 2022, he pitched a completely new residency idea to the Shangri La staff: He would gamify the museum and make the place playful, with the goal of bringing joy to the people of Hawai`i and the workers at Shangri La. The staff agreed, and Robert’s residency was finally scheduled to take place for a few weeks this past May, with a game night open to the public on May 27.
Shangri La is a sprawling, beautiful property built between 1935 and 1937 by tobacco heiress and philanthropist Doris Duke, which served as her winter home. Overlooking the ocean, the design was inspired by the architecture and art Duke saw and collected while traveling throughout Asia and North Africa, as well as the landscapes of Hawai`i. Shangri La now operates as “a museum for learning about the global cultures of Islamic art and design in new and inspiring ways.” Yet many people who live in Hawai`i perceive the place as inaccessible and exclusive—an off-limits fortress above Cromwell’s beach, a favorite swimming hole. Robert wanted to engage with all of this: the space, the aesthetics, and the politics.
Robert titled his residency game recognize game / bazi recognize bazi [a series of broken games] and designed it as game performances meant to shed light on playfulness, the power of fun, generosity, and kinship at Shangri La. The title came from Robert’s love of hip-hop, where “to recognize” is to see the “me” in you or the “you” in me. Bazi is the Farsi word for game, and reflected Robert’s Iranian-Guatemalan heritage as well as much of the collection at Shangri La, which came from or was inspired by the Iranian region. The games were “broken” in the sense that they were incomplete and required play tests, audience participation, and iteration to become complete. In this way, Robert was using broken games as a metaphor for incompleteness and broken systems in our world today, and inviting the audience as players to embrace the present moment, explore our past, and imagine our future.
To handle logistics, operationalize details, and ensure that the volume of activities planned could be achieved, Robert brought with him a production manager from Arizona, Joel Villa, who was critical to the success of the residency.
While the main event of his time at Shangri La was the game night for the public, Robert intentionally brought playfulness into every aspect of the residency. He particularly wanted to honor and serve the staff at Shangri La, to whom he referred as “the first community” of his residency. He did so by making pickles and a meal he calls “The Community Burrito,” which consisted of a Persian stew that Robert and Joel made with staff, combined with the pickles, and served on a warm tortilla. Explaining that he had once been ashamed of his mother’s Guatemalan escabeche and his father’s Persian stew burrito when he was a child, he would teach the staff how to make these foods. Along the way, he shared stories, enchanting others to likewise share their tales of food and family, thus turning childhood pains into play. Robert invited the entire staff to eat outside overlooking the ocean where he distributed game recognize game T-shirts and provided an overview of the residency.
“You’re the only one who brought us together to sit for a while,” one employee said to Robert—exactly the kind of kinship he wanted to evoke with his residency.
A few days later, Robert provided another delight for the staff: a 20-foot inflatable rainbow unicorn floatie for the carefully cared-for pool at Shangri La, in which no people are allowed. “I don’t have to break the rule—I can be playful with the rule,” he explained. The unicorn transformed the glossy, Orientalist image of Shangri La into something pop, quasi-queer, and full of joy. While Joel inflated the unicorn, museum workers came running out, giggling, taking selfies, and video-calling their friends. Following the residency, the unicorn was gifted to a staff member and her family.
To immediately signal that the museum was transformed for game night, Robert designed a special portal entrance he called “What Set You Claim.” The name comes from street culture, where that question is akin to asking what gang you’re affiliated with. Karimi was a math nerd in his youth, so when he heard this phrase, he associated the word “set” with the mathematical symbol: brackets. So people entered Shangri La through 10-foot tall, shimmery blue pinstriped “brackets,” mirroring the cobalt blue found in many of the rooms of Shangri La. The people were randomly put into groups of five to pose for a photo between the brackets, creating a new “set” or kinship group.
Robert and the staff also created one-night-only green colored “Please Touch” signs, to encourage play and to contrast with the usual orange “Do Not Touch” signs prevalent throughout the museum. “I can touch that?” was heard throughout the night from guests, followed by their laughter.
Once inside the museum, participants were encouraged to seek out the “Big Bosses,” staff members wearing special hats; “The Trickster,” played by local actor Sean-Joseph Choo; and “The Game Queen,” played by local drag artist Tita Titsling. These specialty characters could reward players with “Power Up Tickets” for asking good questions or doing an act of kindness. Players were urged to get as many Power Up Tickets as possible to redeem for a prize at the end of the night.
All the games Robert created for game night had the following properties:
- They satirized the mechanics of the classic game they were based on.
- They remixed Orientalism.
- They were playful with complex issues within Muslim/West Asian communities.
- They honored and challenged the players in the room.
Blue strip lights led the players into the Qajar Gallery, which Doris Duke designed, inspired by the dynasty that ruled Iran from 1789 to 1925. In this room, Robert placed 10 laptops hosting a video game he created called Grandma Invaders, which repurposed the mechanics of Space Invaders (invented in Japan in 1978—coincidentally the same year the Iranian revolution was launched) to ask what it takes to demonize “the other.” Players were invited to choose to shoot or to protect. If players chose to shoot women, an avatar of Robert’s Iranian grandma attacked them. If players continued to kill, the game never rewarded them and instead led them to the “protect” level, where they could protect Hawai`i, women, water, and Grandma. Each time they chose to protect, they were rewarded with points, and eventually Grandma gave them cake (1 million points). This game honored today’s Zan. Zendegi. Azadi. Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran. One player shared that she works for the Board of Water Supply in Honolulu and expressed gratitude that protecting water was a part of the game.
Robert learned that Doris Duke loved playing backgammon and so he placed his game Unequal Backgammon in the heiress’s former bedroom. In Unequal Backgammon, the player with the white chips is provided with two 20-sided dice, while the player with the brown or black chips is provided with two six-sided dice. Under these circumstances, the person with the 20-sided dice is stacked to win—but players were provoked to find a way that everyone wins. As Robert put it, “If we play games of inequity, we will repeat them unless we break the game.”
Duke’s former dining room was transformed into the parlor for Robert’s game Cards Against Iranians, Syrians, Iraqis, Somalis, Yemenis, Libyans, Afghanis, Sudanese, Chadians, North Koreans, & Venezuelans (CAISIS) . He first designed his Cards Against Iranians… games in response to U.S. Executive Order 13769, titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” a.k.a. the Muslim ban. Riffing on the popularity of the game Cards Against Humanity, he wrote new black game cards with questions about the countries and the people targeted by the executive order. To activate the game, players used the original white cards from the Cards Against Humanity deck to respond to the thoughts posed on the black cards.
For the Shangri La residency, Robert created a special Cards Against Iranians etc. deck that doubled the amount to 72 black cards, a reference to the number of virgins ISIS told suicide bombers they would get in heaven. He also added Hawai`i-specific cards and linked some cards to the Iranian women’s movement. Intentionally offensive and stimulating, this game fostered conversations around nations and cultures many in the U.S. hardly knew but quickly banned. One of the players shared in a daze, “That was very interesting—reorients you. Makes you consider different perspectives. I need to learn about other cultures.”
Out on the lawn, where the reception took place, Robert placed two decks of cards on each table for a game called War War. These were regular playing cards, but one deck had the word “local” written on the backs of the cards, the other “settler.” In this version of the classic card game War, everyone turned over a card at the same time, and the person with the highest card took all the cards, but here locals intermingled with settlers. Whoever had the most cards at the end was the winner, and they were asked whether they wished to separate the local and settler decks for the next game. Players were heard talking about colonialism, foreignness, and the absurdity of war.
For a closing ritual, Robert commissioned the audience members to create a community sculpture. At the start of the night, they had each received two colorful pipe cleaners, which they wore around their wrists. Now he asked everyone to reshape their bracelets and connect them, transforming a group of 75 strangers into artists, engineers, and collaborators as they reached into their imaginations, manipulated their wires, and built a new art piece together.
When Robert announced that the evening was coming to a close, the audience groaned, wanting to play longer. Their disappointment was quickly transformed to giddiness when everyone, regardless of the number of Power Up Tickets they had accumulated, received a prize: a small orange cardstock box, designed with the game recognize game logo, with dice, marbles, blocks, shells, buttons, stickers, crayons, puff balls, googly eyes, and instructions to make one’s own game. The gift invited participants to take playfulness home with them.
The residency was an enormous experiment for both Robert and Shangri La. While Shangri La had hosted performers previously, his residency was larger in scale and scope, activating more galleries, engaging different communities, and involving staff in unique ways. Robert’s practices are rooted in a mixture of performance art, theatre, gaming, and social justice; tech riders, iterative rehearsals, and play tests followed by next-day corrections are part of his norms. Shangri La was more accustomed to installing final and completed art works or hosting performances on their courtyard.
One example where these differences in approach could have been better massaged was in the scheduling of the play test or dress rehearsal. Taking place two nights before game night for a limited three hours, the play test led to some stress for all involved as it surfaced necessary changes and adjustments which had to be accomplished in just one day. All hands were on deck at Shangri La with Robert, Joel, and local volunteers scrambling to accommodate the modifications. Shangri La and Robert had dreamed big when designing this reframed residency, and in their debrief, all noted some constructive lessons for the future.
All told, both Robert and the staff at Shangri La felt the residency accomplished its goals of bringing playfulness to the space and workers, and changing people’s perceptions of Shangri La, internally and externally.
Navid Najafi, associate curator of programs and social practice at Shangri La, said that the museum “seeks to be a convening space for conversations and ideas of local and global significance” and that its residencies “aim to co-create opportunities for cultures and communities to connect and share transformative experiences.” Robert’s work, he continued, “deeply aligns with these values, and the experiences we shared during his residency were truly unforgettable experiences for our staff and our community, bringing us collectively closer to creating a more just, equitable, and joyous future.”
After working so hard to save, reframe, and execute this unique museum gig, Robert reflected, “I’m glad I fought to keep this residency alive. During COVID, hope was hard to find. I was able to share the playful spirit that kept me going. With all the closures and changes in the arts, playfulness is key. To be able to risk and to dream my vision of a space of fun, trickster imagination gives me hope for my future, and the future way I work with spaces.” He added, “In all this talk about building safe, intimate spaces, we need to declare our need for playfulness. Playfulness nourishes us all.”
Seema Sueko (she/her) is a director and arts administrator.
