Kat Mustatea, a Romanian-born writer and artist, a unique voice in contemporary drama in the United States, will participate alongside writers, translators, and performers from Austria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Spain (the Basque Country), and Ukraine, in a special edition of the Night of European Literature in New York.

Authors, translators, and artists representing 11 European countries will come together in New York for the annual night of European literature on November 2. Kat Mustatea will present excerpts from her most recent hybrid digital artistic and literary project, "Voidopolis" (The MIT Press Leonardo Series, 2023). 

"Voidopolis" is the first hybrid digital artistic and literary project in The MIT Press' Leonardo series, published as a book that utilizes augmented reality and is designed to disappear. The book reimagines Dante's "Inferno" as if it were set in pandemic-devastated New York. The book's pages are intentionally perplexing and can only be deciphered through a real-time augmented reality app co-published with the book.

However, over the course of a year, the digital components gradually deteriorate, mirroring how memory breaks down reality, leaving behind blurry images and fragments of half-remembered language. Staging the work's disappearance in every copy of the book distributed worldwide transforms the private act of reading into a collective experience of loss.

The project has received the "Unclassifiable" Award for art and literature and a literary grant from the Cafe Royale Cultural Foundation and has been exhibited internationally in various digital and physical formats.

Hosted by the Ukrainian Institute of America, the program of the Night of European Literature will include multilingual readings, Q&A sessions, as well as discussions that will analyze and explore key topics of the contemporary world, including the global crises we currently face. This year's edition is organized by the EUNIC New York cluster in collaboration with PEN America, which joins the project for the first time.

The event will bring to the attention of the New York audience and readers some of the finest European writers of the moment: Kätlin Kaldmaa (Estonia), Anja Kampmann (Germany), Andrey Kurkov (Ukraine), Sanaé Lemoine (France), Kat Mustatea (Romania/US), Lore Segal (Austria), Laima Vincė Sruoginis (Lithuania), Kateřina Tučková (Czech Republic), Kirmen Uribe (Spain), Anna Frajlich-Zajac (Poland). 

The evening will be complemented by two roundtable discussions moderated by Sabir Sultan, Associate Director of the Festival of World Voices and Literary Programs at PEN America, and Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, Director of PEN America Programs. 

Further details are available here.

Kat Mustatea is a Romanian-born playwright and transmedia artist based in New York. Her works, built through language and performance, explore what it means to be human in today's society, often employing absurdity, hybridity, and computational science to seek answers. In her TED talk on artificial intelligence, she provides a unique perspective on the meaning of generative art. 

Kat is a member of ONX Studio (Onassis Foundation) and a fellow at CPH:DOX. She has previously been a TED resident and a member of NEW INC, an art and technology incubator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Her works have been featured at Ars Electronica/Linz, New Images Festival/Paris, Stanley Picker Gallery/London, New York Live Arts, and The Cube at Virginia Tech, among others. 

radu@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Romanian Cultural Institute New York)