Artist's Statement 

My written and performative work is concerned with the inexhaustibility of language and its forms of expression. Academically and in my art criticism, I write across disciplines including anthropology, art history, literature, philosophy, and religious studies. I also take insights from these studies for my fictional writing – an in-development series of novels, experimental fictions, and screenplays. Finally, with Danny Snelson and Mashinka Firunts as the collective Research Service, I work to combine academic scholarship with creative writing and performance.

 My writings focus primarily on what it means to be at once a private individual and a global subject, and how this dual demand has shaped modernity. This work is imbued with what I’ve been calling radical and critical pluralism, which is to a say, a pluralism dedicated to exploring and protecting the multiplicities inherent within individuals and cultures, but that refuses to embrace just any existing reality and thus remains critical.

 I am increasingly concerned with the loss of institutional outlets that can provide both intellectual and material sustenance for thinkers and cultural producers, especially after the shrinking of the public university. I have initiated several small-scale public intellectual initiatives, and am working to develop sustainable models to support critical work beyond traditional enclaves. 

Artist's Links

Artist's websites: avramalpert.com; researchservice.info