PHACE | THE TRAVEL AGENCY IS ON FIRE

PROGRAM

Bernhard Lang
The Travel Agency is on Fire for voice, five instruments and electronics, 2021 (ÖEA)
​​Text: William S. Burroughs

Loops and samples repeatedly wander through the ear canal, distorted and doubled by electronics and effects, deformed and restructured by patches and digital algorithms, until perception shifts and a different meaning emerges from the superposition. Repetition and mutation are part of the program in the works of Bernhard Lang, powerfully supported this evening by Sarah Maria Sun, arguably one of the most outstanding vocal interpreters of our time. The Travel Agency is on Fire is based on a selection of “cut-up” experiments by William S. Burroughs on texts by a range of canonical authors, from William Shakespeare and Arthur Rimbaud to William Wordsworth and James Joyce. Burroughs selected the source texts, cut them up, and juxtaposed the fragments to select random word combinations and create new word compositions. The Travel Agency is on Fire, which has only been available in the archives since 2010, fascinates scholars and Burroughs fans alike, as it illuminates the experimental processes underlying Burroughs’ work. Musically, the cut-up strategies that Burroughs developed together with Brion Gysin and visualized in the films with Anthony Balch and Ian Sommerville are referenced in various ways: essential here is Burroughs’s maxim: “Play it back, play it back, play it all back,” which points to a change in consciousness through the overlaying and doubling of reality with samples and loops.