DECODER:
Ticket That Exploded

Yes, the alien invasion comes from deep space, but it has already invaded your mind…

William Burroughs’ Nova Trilogy is a both an intergalactic fever dream on addiction and a manual for  a weaponized media war that predicts and satirizes our current online life. DECODER: Ticket that Exploded reimagines the second book of Burroughs’ trilogy as a live performance of broken media hallucinations, living text cutup, and full frequency psychedelia spun from mangled audio tape. An alien presence is revealed as the sticky complicity of the inner double agent. Watch a live enacting of Burroughs’ prescient words taken to their terrible conclusions. Created and directed by Mallory Catlett/Restless NYC, DECODER is a collaboration with tape DJ and sound artist G. Lucas Crane, performer Jim Findlay, video designer Keith Skretch, interaction designer Ryan Holsopple, and Burroughs scholar Alex Wermer-Colan. Additional support from associate video designer Simon Harding.

DECODER has received commissioning support from Gibney Dance and Theatre Conspiracy; a research grant from Stony Brook University; and development support from a CultureHub Micro-Residency, Playwrights Theatre Center, Mabou Mines,  the Collapsable Hole, and a Watershed Lab residency at Mount Tremper Arts, with lead support by the National Endowment for the Arts. DECODER was created (in part) at The Watermill Center–a laboratory for the arts and humanities (2019) and is a Creative Capital project. The writing of William Burroughs is used by permission of The Wylie Agency. The full series (Soft Machine, Ticket That Exploded, and Nova Express) is being commissioned by the Chocolate Factory where it will premiere in 2020.

Learn more about G. Lucas Crane and Mallory Catlett in Residency at Pioneer Works here.

Photograph by Alex Escalante