Negativland
Negativland + SUE-C Live Double Feature: Documentary + Performance of We Can Really Feel Like We're Here
19th Street Theatre
527 N 19th St
Allentown, PA 18104
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About this concert
Doors 6:00 PM
Film starts 6:30 PM
Performance starts 8:30 PM
Presented by WMUH and Vitality Natural Healthcare Center
Legendary sound collage group Negativland and “real-time cinema” visual artist SUE-C collaborate to bring you their latest audio-visual performance about our minds, our realities, and the evolving forms of media and technology that orchestrate our perceptions: We Can Really Feel Like We’re Here.
Not only will we be screening Ryan Worsley's amazing new feature film Stand By For Failure: A Documentary About Negativland, but this will be followed by a live stage performance of Negativland with We Can Really Feel Like We’re Here, accompanied by SUE-C’s unique and immersive visuals.
👉 WE CAN REALLY FEEL LIKE WE'RE HERE
If you’re under forty-five years of age, there’s a good chance that you reference stories and life-lessons from video games more often than you do lines from films. Today’s generation gap comes in part from a schism of media consumption habits that occurred three decades ago, when gaming outpaced cinema and television as the state-of-the-art for narrative storytelling. Not only are the stories being told different — the way in which they are being told say different things about human agency, and the rules that govern the changing of the rules.
Power holds the status quo in place by pitting those who oppose it against each other. But trust between us prisoners grows when one realizes that all sales are not final, and that both sides have always been playing an Infinite Game. Join Negativland and the virtual SUE-C for a dangerous night of legacy audiovisual entertainment: We Can Really Feel Like We’re Here.
Negativland + SUE-C on NPR's Tiny Desk Concert: https://tinyurl.com/negativland-sue-c-tinydesk
“An urgent show by Negativland and artist SUE-C calls time on a tech dystopia that is as malevolent as it is stupid... to meet the terrifying contemporary moment... as the world slides incrementally into meltdown.”
- The Wire Magazine
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👉 STAND BY FOR FAILURE: A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT NEGATIVLAND
Since childhood, David “The Weatherman” Wills has recorded and reported on anything that grabs his attention. When he and friends Richard Lyons and Mark Hosler formed Negativland, it soon became a collage of sounds and visuals, both ordinary and extraordinary. The group’s work is so expansive and unique that it cannot help but push boundaries of sound, media, propaganda, and perception. (Ryan Worsley, US, 2022, 96m)
Trailer: tinyurl.com/standbyforfailure
“If you want to be inspired by individuals who dare to bust down the doors of art’s gatekeepers, then Stand By For Failure is the way to go.”
— Film Threat
“40+ years of Negativland metamedia, recontextualized into popular feature length documentary entertainment format by Ryan Worsley. You’ve seen and heard it all! But you’ve never seen and heard it like this!”
— Boing Boing
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👉 NEGATIVLAND
Since 1980, the multimedia collective known as Negativland have been creating records, CDs, video, fine art, books, radio and live performance using appropriated sounds, images, objects, and text. Mixing original materials and original music with things taken from corporately owned mass culture and the world around them, Negativland re-arrange these found bits and pieces to make them say and suggest things that they never intended to. In doing this kind of cultural archaeology and "culture jamming" (a term they coined way back in 1984), Negativland have been sued twice for copyright infringement. Their art and media interventions pose both serious and silly questions about the nature of sound, media, technology, control, ownership, propaganda, power, and perception in the United States of America. Their work is now referenced and taught in many college courses in the US, has been written about and cited in over 150 books and legal journals, and they sometimes lecture about their work in the USA and in Europe.
“Negativland have made a rewarding career out of being prodigious consumers of media who then digest it and recontextualize it, emphasizing mediated reality's crazy-making absurdity and the infinite malleability of perception and ‘truth.’”
- Dave Segal, The Stranger
"Negativland are proud subverters of culture, causing trouble while having fun."
- NPR Tiny Desk Concert
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👉 SUE-C
Sue Slagle (SUE-C) is an award-winning artist, engineer and educator whose work in “real time cinema” presents a new, imaginative perspective on live performance. Her evolution as a new media artist began in late-90s San Francisco where she was an influential member of the electronic music scene, owning the experimental record label Orthlorng Musork, organizing audio-visual cultural events and teaching the first creative coding classes in Max Software. After finishing her masters degree in engineering at UC Berkeley she moved to Oakland where she became co-owner of the Ego Park gallery and helped launch the First Friday art walks.
Her performances blend cinema and technology into an organic, improvisational and immersive act, created from live cameras, light pads and video algorithms. She has always pushed the boundaries of human-computer interaction, employing emerging technologies and inventing many of her own, both through performance and tinkering with hundreds of students in her well established teaching practice. She is currently a Video Designer at Meow Wolf.
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What fans are saying
Ray
September 12th 2022
Everything was awesome. Show was intriguing as always, great venue, great audience.
Los Angeles, CA@2220 Arts + Archives
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Negativland Biography
Negativland is an experimental music and sound collage band which originated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s. They "lifted their name" from a Neu! song.
Long-standing band member Don Joyce produces a weekly interactive radio program, Over The Edge, on listener-supported KPFA in Berkeley, California. A significant number of Negativland's recent releases have been formed from material which was developed by the band live on the show.
The core of the band is Mark Hosler, Richard Lyons, Don Joyce and David Wills (aka "The Weatherman"). Chris Grigg is a former member. Peter Conheim joined the band in 1997.
Negativland has released a number of albums ranging from pure collage to more musical affairs. These have mostly been released on their own label, Seeland Records. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they produced several recordings for SST Records, most notably Escape from Noise, Helter Stupid, and U2.
Negativland is well-known for the U2 lawsuit, which nearly destroyed them as a band.
Early history
Negativland started in Concord, California in 1979 around the core founding members of Lyons and Hosler (who were in high school at the time) and released an eponymous debut in 1980.
A number of releases followed in the early 1980s, but it wasn't until after the release of their breakthrough sample and cut-up sonic barrage Escape from Noise in 1987 that Negativland gained wider attention.
Following the somewhat unexpected success of this album, Negativland faced the prospect of going on a money-losing tour. To prevent this, they put together a phony press release claiming that their song Christianity is Stupid (featuring the sampled and edited voice of an actor portraying a commissar repeating "Christianity is stupid! Communism is good!", taken from the propaganda movie If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?) was an inspiration for a real mass-murder committed by David Brom in Rochester, Minnesota.
The resulting fallout and media frenzy, based on the humorously fabricated claims by Negativland, had the effect of pointing out the venality of the mass media. Though the story was completely unsubstantiated by any facts, the lurid combination of murder, religion, and "rock" music proved too tempting for the media to ignore. The story ran on TV news shows, newspapers, and magazines, with little to no fact-checking. Soon the world was informed of the "Killer Song" that supposedly led some kid to murder his parents with an ax.
The scandal became the foundation for their next release Helter Stupid, featuring a cover photo of a TV news "journalist" intoning the fake ax murder story, with the news station's caption "Killer Song" above his head, and a photo of the ax-murderer.
The U2 record incident
Negativland's next project was the infamous U2 record with samples from "America's Top 40" host Casey Kasem. In 1991, Negativland released a single with the title U2 displayed in very large type on the front of the packaging, and "Negativland" in a smaller typeface. An image of the Lockheed U-2 spy plane was also on the single cover.
The songs within were parodies of the well-known song, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", including kazoos and extensive sampling of the original song. The song I still haven't found what I'm looking for features a musical backing to an extended profane rant from well-known disc jockey Casey Kasem, lapsing out of his more polished and professional tone during a frustrating rehearsal, commenting, for instance: "These guys are from England and who gives a shit?" (U2's members are in fact from Ireland.)
U2's label Island Records sued Negativland claiming that the "U2" violated trademark law, and the song itself violated copyright law. Island Records also contended that the single was an attempt to deliberately confuse U2 fans, then awaiting Achtung Baby.
Funds exhausted, Negativland settled out of court. Most copies of the single were recalled and destroyed. By the mid-1990s, rap had made authorized sampling more common in mainstream music, but the single "U2", for which Negativland did not obtain clearance to use U2 samples, is still illegal to sell in the United States, but is available for free download from Negativland's official web site.
In June, 1992, R.U. Sirius, publisher of the magazine Mondo 2000 came up with an interesting idea. Publicists from U2 had contacted him regarding the possibility of interviewing Dave Evans (aka "The Edge") hoping to promote U2's impending multi-million dollar Zoo TV Tour, which featured found sounds and live sampling from mass media outlets (things for which Negativland had been known for some time). Sirius, unbeknownst to the Edge, decided to have his friends Joyce and Hosler of Negativland conduct the interview. Joyce and Hosler, fresh from Island's lawsuit, peppered the Edge with questions regarding his ideas about the use of sampling in their new tour, and the legality of using copyrighted material without permission. Midway through the interview, Joyce and Hosler revealed their identities as members of Negativland. An embarrassed the Edge reported that U2 were bothered by the sledgehammer legal approach Island Records took in their lawsuit, and furthermore that much of the legal wrangling took place without U2's knowledge: "by the time we (U2) realized what was going on it was kinda too late, and we actually did approach the record company on your (Negativland's) behalf and said, 'Look, c'mon, this is just, this is very heavy...'" Island Records reported to Negativland that U2 never authorised samples of their material; Evans response was, "that's complete bollocks, there's like, there's at least six records out there that are direct samples from our stuff."
The "U2" single (along with other related material) was re-released in 2001 on a "bootleg" album entitled These Guys Are From England and Who Gives a Shit, released on "Seelard Records" (a parody of Negativland's record label "Seeland Records"). It is thought likely that Negativland themselves were responsible for the re-release, and that U2 gave their blessing; although the Negativland website refers to this release as a bootleg, it is available from major retailers like Best Buy, Amazon, and Tower Records, as well as Negativland's own mail-order business.
Negativland are interested in intellectual property rights, and argue that their use of U2's and others' material falls under fair use. In 1995, they released a book with accompanying CD called Fair Use about copyright law in general, and the U2 incident in particular, and were the main subjects of Craig Baldwin's documentary "Sonic Outlaws", detailing the use of culture jamming to subvert the messages of more traditional media outlets. There are many other artists who push the boundaries of copyright law in a similar way to Negativland, including John Oswald, the The Evolution Control Committee, The Bran Flakes, Sir Mildred Pierce, and People Like Us.
Negativland's Mark Hosler pointed at the irony of U2 infringing copyrights on a massive scale during their Zoo TV tour by broadcasting live satellite images on stage, and getting away with it, while almost simultaneously suing Negativland, who had been doing it for a long time before it ever dawned on U2.
Chumbawamba
In 1999 Negativland collaborated with UK anarchist band Chumbawamba to produce the album the ABCs of Anarchism, which is largely based around the writings of Alexander Berkman and cut-up versions of the hit song Tubthumping, the theme tune to the children's program Teletubbies and Anarchy in the UK.
Recent developments
In 2003, members of Negativland contributed their efforts to Creative Commons, an organization devoted to providing artists with a broader range of copyright options.
In September 2005, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the band, Negativland curated an art exhibit in Manhattan's Gigantic Artspace gallery. The exhibit, Negativlandland, included a number of pieces of artwork from and inspired by Negativland recordings, video projection of music videos created by the band and others, and some artwork created specifically for the show, such as an animatronic Abraham Lincoln figure (inspired by the band's Lincoln cut-up piece God Bull) and a hands-on exhibit featuring the Booper, the audio-processing unit that band member David Wills (a.k.a. The Weatherman) assembled out of old radio parts. The show will appear in Minneapolis on May 12, 2006, at Creative Electric Studios. The band is hoping to continue to bring Negativlandland to other cities.
Discography
Albums
Negativland (1980)
Points (1981)
A Big 10-8 Place (1983)
Over the Edge Vol. 1: JAMCON'84 (1985)
Escape From Noise (1987)
Helter Stupid (1989)
Over the Edge Vol. 2: Pastor Dick: Muriel's Purse Fund (1990)
Over the Edge Vol. 3: The Weatherman's Dumb Stupid Come-Out Line (1990)
Over the Edge Vol. 4: Dick Vaughn (1990)
Free (1993)
Over the Edge Vol. 5: Crosley Bendix: The Radio Reviews (1993)
Over the Edge Vol. 6: The Willsaphone Stupid Show (1994)
Over the Edge Vol. 7: Time Zones Exchange Project (1994)
Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2 (1995)
Over the Edge Vol. 1½: The Starting Line with Dick Goodbody (1995, partial reissue)
Over the Edge Vol. 8: Sex Dirt (1995)
Dispepsi (1997)
Negativ(e)land: Live On Tour (1997)
Over the Edge Vol. 4: Dick Vaughn's Moribund Music of the '70s (2001, expanded reissue)
Deathsentences of the Polished and Structurally Weak (2002)
No Business (2005)
It's All in Your Head FM: Over the Edge Live on Stage (2006)
Singles/EPs
U2 (1991)
Guns (1992)
The Letter U and the Numeral 2 (1992)
Truth In Advertising (1997)
Happy Heroes (1998)
The ABCs of Anarchism (1999)
Bootlegs
Negativconcertland (1993)
These Guys Are From England and Who Gives a Shit (2001)
Read MoreLong-standing band member Don Joyce produces a weekly interactive radio program, Over The Edge, on listener-supported KPFA in Berkeley, California. A significant number of Negativland's recent releases have been formed from material which was developed by the band live on the show.
The core of the band is Mark Hosler, Richard Lyons, Don Joyce and David Wills (aka "The Weatherman"). Chris Grigg is a former member. Peter Conheim joined the band in 1997.
Negativland has released a number of albums ranging from pure collage to more musical affairs. These have mostly been released on their own label, Seeland Records. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they produced several recordings for SST Records, most notably Escape from Noise, Helter Stupid, and U2.
Negativland is well-known for the U2 lawsuit, which nearly destroyed them as a band.
Early history
Negativland started in Concord, California in 1979 around the core founding members of Lyons and Hosler (who were in high school at the time) and released an eponymous debut in 1980.
A number of releases followed in the early 1980s, but it wasn't until after the release of their breakthrough sample and cut-up sonic barrage Escape from Noise in 1987 that Negativland gained wider attention.
Following the somewhat unexpected success of this album, Negativland faced the prospect of going on a money-losing tour. To prevent this, they put together a phony press release claiming that their song Christianity is Stupid (featuring the sampled and edited voice of an actor portraying a commissar repeating "Christianity is stupid! Communism is good!", taken from the propaganda movie If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?) was an inspiration for a real mass-murder committed by David Brom in Rochester, Minnesota.
The resulting fallout and media frenzy, based on the humorously fabricated claims by Negativland, had the effect of pointing out the venality of the mass media. Though the story was completely unsubstantiated by any facts, the lurid combination of murder, religion, and "rock" music proved too tempting for the media to ignore. The story ran on TV news shows, newspapers, and magazines, with little to no fact-checking. Soon the world was informed of the "Killer Song" that supposedly led some kid to murder his parents with an ax.
The scandal became the foundation for their next release Helter Stupid, featuring a cover photo of a TV news "journalist" intoning the fake ax murder story, with the news station's caption "Killer Song" above his head, and a photo of the ax-murderer.
The U2 record incident
Negativland's next project was the infamous U2 record with samples from "America's Top 40" host Casey Kasem. In 1991, Negativland released a single with the title U2 displayed in very large type on the front of the packaging, and "Negativland" in a smaller typeface. An image of the Lockheed U-2 spy plane was also on the single cover.
The songs within were parodies of the well-known song, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", including kazoos and extensive sampling of the original song. The song I still haven't found what I'm looking for features a musical backing to an extended profane rant from well-known disc jockey Casey Kasem, lapsing out of his more polished and professional tone during a frustrating rehearsal, commenting, for instance: "These guys are from England and who gives a shit?" (U2's members are in fact from Ireland.)
U2's label Island Records sued Negativland claiming that the "U2" violated trademark law, and the song itself violated copyright law. Island Records also contended that the single was an attempt to deliberately confuse U2 fans, then awaiting Achtung Baby.
Funds exhausted, Negativland settled out of court. Most copies of the single were recalled and destroyed. By the mid-1990s, rap had made authorized sampling more common in mainstream music, but the single "U2", for which Negativland did not obtain clearance to use U2 samples, is still illegal to sell in the United States, but is available for free download from Negativland's official web site.
In June, 1992, R.U. Sirius, publisher of the magazine Mondo 2000 came up with an interesting idea. Publicists from U2 had contacted him regarding the possibility of interviewing Dave Evans (aka "The Edge") hoping to promote U2's impending multi-million dollar Zoo TV Tour, which featured found sounds and live sampling from mass media outlets (things for which Negativland had been known for some time). Sirius, unbeknownst to the Edge, decided to have his friends Joyce and Hosler of Negativland conduct the interview. Joyce and Hosler, fresh from Island's lawsuit, peppered the Edge with questions regarding his ideas about the use of sampling in their new tour, and the legality of using copyrighted material without permission. Midway through the interview, Joyce and Hosler revealed their identities as members of Negativland. An embarrassed the Edge reported that U2 were bothered by the sledgehammer legal approach Island Records took in their lawsuit, and furthermore that much of the legal wrangling took place without U2's knowledge: "by the time we (U2) realized what was going on it was kinda too late, and we actually did approach the record company on your (Negativland's) behalf and said, 'Look, c'mon, this is just, this is very heavy...'" Island Records reported to Negativland that U2 never authorised samples of their material; Evans response was, "that's complete bollocks, there's like, there's at least six records out there that are direct samples from our stuff."
The "U2" single (along with other related material) was re-released in 2001 on a "bootleg" album entitled These Guys Are From England and Who Gives a Shit, released on "Seelard Records" (a parody of Negativland's record label "Seeland Records"). It is thought likely that Negativland themselves were responsible for the re-release, and that U2 gave their blessing; although the Negativland website refers to this release as a bootleg, it is available from major retailers like Best Buy, Amazon, and Tower Records, as well as Negativland's own mail-order business.
Negativland are interested in intellectual property rights, and argue that their use of U2's and others' material falls under fair use. In 1995, they released a book with accompanying CD called Fair Use about copyright law in general, and the U2 incident in particular, and were the main subjects of Craig Baldwin's documentary "Sonic Outlaws", detailing the use of culture jamming to subvert the messages of more traditional media outlets. There are many other artists who push the boundaries of copyright law in a similar way to Negativland, including John Oswald, the The Evolution Control Committee, The Bran Flakes, Sir Mildred Pierce, and People Like Us.
Negativland's Mark Hosler pointed at the irony of U2 infringing copyrights on a massive scale during their Zoo TV tour by broadcasting live satellite images on stage, and getting away with it, while almost simultaneously suing Negativland, who had been doing it for a long time before it ever dawned on U2.
Chumbawamba
In 1999 Negativland collaborated with UK anarchist band Chumbawamba to produce the album the ABCs of Anarchism, which is largely based around the writings of Alexander Berkman and cut-up versions of the hit song Tubthumping, the theme tune to the children's program Teletubbies and Anarchy in the UK.
Recent developments
In 2003, members of Negativland contributed their efforts to Creative Commons, an organization devoted to providing artists with a broader range of copyright options.
In September 2005, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the band, Negativland curated an art exhibit in Manhattan's Gigantic Artspace gallery. The exhibit, Negativlandland, included a number of pieces of artwork from and inspired by Negativland recordings, video projection of music videos created by the band and others, and some artwork created specifically for the show, such as an animatronic Abraham Lincoln figure (inspired by the band's Lincoln cut-up piece God Bull) and a hands-on exhibit featuring the Booper, the audio-processing unit that band member David Wills (a.k.a. The Weatherman) assembled out of old radio parts. The show will appear in Minneapolis on May 12, 2006, at Creative Electric Studios. The band is hoping to continue to bring Negativlandland to other cities.
Discography
Albums
Negativland (1980)
Points (1981)
A Big 10-8 Place (1983)
Over the Edge Vol. 1: JAMCON'84 (1985)
Escape From Noise (1987)
Helter Stupid (1989)
Over the Edge Vol. 2: Pastor Dick: Muriel's Purse Fund (1990)
Over the Edge Vol. 3: The Weatherman's Dumb Stupid Come-Out Line (1990)
Over the Edge Vol. 4: Dick Vaughn (1990)
Free (1993)
Over the Edge Vol. 5: Crosley Bendix: The Radio Reviews (1993)
Over the Edge Vol. 6: The Willsaphone Stupid Show (1994)
Over the Edge Vol. 7: Time Zones Exchange Project (1994)
Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2 (1995)
Over the Edge Vol. 1½: The Starting Line with Dick Goodbody (1995, partial reissue)
Over the Edge Vol. 8: Sex Dirt (1995)
Dispepsi (1997)
Negativ(e)land: Live On Tour (1997)
Over the Edge Vol. 4: Dick Vaughn's Moribund Music of the '70s (2001, expanded reissue)
Deathsentences of the Polished and Structurally Weak (2002)
No Business (2005)
It's All in Your Head FM: Over the Edge Live on Stage (2006)
Singles/EPs
U2 (1991)
Guns (1992)
The Letter U and the Numeral 2 (1992)
Truth In Advertising (1997)
Happy Heroes (1998)
The ABCs of Anarchism (1999)
Bootlegs
Negativconcertland (1993)
These Guys Are From England and Who Gives a Shit (2001)
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