404 Not Found

In Lucas Baisch’s 404 Not Found, we find ourselves at the back of a clay building that signals “stay away, stay awake.” Slack has a bad habit of holding people captive and now he’s the one shackled to a metal grate. Ro makes ends meet through drag-play for a truck-stop benefactor. She leverages her wages to travel down the neck of the Americas, making herself invisible along the way. Her cousin Cameo carries cups of water to Slack, then retreats to La Barranca, a digital landscape of his own invention where he encrypts documents for asylum-seekers—until one day, an anonymous disruptor forces him to meet at a new clay building that Cameo didn’t make. A twisting, twisted work of intricacy, density, and despair netted in kidnap, virtual utopias, upended borders, and Freddy Krueger cosplay.