Underground of Distorted Memories

Valery Oisteanu’s collection Souterrain Des Souvenirs Déformés presents itself as a surrealist cartography of contemporary New York, haunted by the specters of the historical avant-garde. An American of Romanian origin and a figure in Lower Manhattan’s underground scene, Oisteanu deploys a poetics of testimony and memory. The book opens on the immediate surroundings of the East Village and Washington Square, captured in the urgency of an urban catastrophe. The writing speaks of the collapse of architecture as well as the disappearance of the subject, a central theme of the poem, “Becoming Invisible.” The collection’s originality lies in its genealogical roots: Oisteanu revives the Dadaist and Surrealist lineage to inject it into the electronic and technological flow of the 21st century. The collection is is a collision of jarring images, tributes to departed artists, and shamanic invocations. It serves as a poetic tipping point toward a space of contemporary resistance, where Dadaist humor and Oisteanu’s Zen experience act as bulwarks against normativity and its market. Like us, let yourself go, let yourself be lulled by the poet’s cuicui.