I am often frightened in New York City. It might not appear so, but honestly, I’ve turned into a half-hearted hypochondriac who subsists on a white-collar diet of cute acronyms and frequent pings from beyond my cube walls. I am agitated when I excessively sweat or am sweated on, crushed when I think of the distance between myself and my parents’ bounty (read: their palm-treeed homestead and plentiful foodstuffs), and feel put-upon when the smell of fresh piss reaches my nostrils before 9 a.m.
Phantasmagoria, a New York-based, literary event series and the brainchild of one Leland Pitts-Gonzalez, is not reminiscent of the New York that, after more than two years of living here, still unsettles my bones – rather, it is the kind of assaulting experience that presses against my whole body, and upon quiet desistance, makes me want to say, “What the fuck just happened?”
“I like doing readings, but I often feel like they’re simply another vehicle to advertise the written text. I’d like to help elevate ‘the reading’ to a more engaging art-form,” says Pitts-Gonzalez, who read a selection from his novel, The Blood Poetry, and collaborated with others, including dancer and choreographer Belinda He, to create a two-part, theatrical piece involving a medical diagnostic and several psychosis induced “visions” contorting between the chairs of a tightly-packed audience.
Held on August 8th at KGB Bar, a literary watering hole and the type of place you’d expect to witness a bloodletting, Phantasmagoria began with the curtains drawn, a single desk light, and a microphone that may or may not have actually worked.
Nick Dillenburg, the event’s unofficial, official MC had me cringing for my Californian brethren, Natalie Mitchell delivered one meeeean, Margaret Hamilton-esque cackle, and Seth Michael May proved that he is anything but spotlight-adverse, enduring acupuncture needles straight to the dome for over thirty minutes. This is the same man who, while donning a hospital gown over his trousers, allowed me to share a neighboring booth, citing that he “has no friends,” before the reading. Thank you, again.
Rachel Sherman delivered a demure rendition of her novel in progress, Your House Without You In It, and was followed by a putrid, cacophonic selection from Grace Krilanovich’s debut novel, The Orange Eats Creeps.
So what can we expect from the players of subsequent installments of Phantasmagoria? “I always feel that what is normally considered literary or “serious” fiction has to follow certain conventions: generally tasteful, socially-conscious, and reality-based,” says Pitts-Gonzalez. “However, I want to support a variety of literary styles. Personally, I’m drawn to artists who can shock me into new a form of understanding whether it’s a type of character, voice, or an idea.”
Phantasmagoria: Language & Technology of Suffering, a newfangled series of happenings that integrates dark fiction, digital art and film, and performance, is next available for your most demented viewing and listening pleasure at WORD bookstore in Brooklyn on August 29.
By Ashley Tomeck
Ashley Tomeck is a working-class girl making her dreams come true in the ‘Big City’ — partly by throwing her tiny hat into the air at every possible moment
