Negativland Documentary and Live Performance

A brand new documentary, followed by a live performance by Negativland, with video design & production by Sue-C.

Early in the career of Bay Area experimental musicians Negativland, Mark Hosler recalls declaring, “Let’s just pretend we’re a band.” Using the safe familiar concept of “a band” as cover for their culture-jamming mayhem, the multimedia collective went on to test the limits of composition, sound, and copyright laws, while gathering more members and ardent fans along the way.

ABOUT THE FILM: Filmmaker and frequent Negativland collaborator, Ryan Worsley has amplified, expanded, and recontextualized sounds and images from the band’s 40-plus year career into a documentary that breaks free of the typical Behind the Music narrative. Pulling from a wealth of recordings, home movies, performances, news reports, interviews, and intercepted radio signals, Stand By for Failure is a riptide collage of media about media about media.

ABOUT THE LIVE PERFOMANCE: After the movie, 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 as we head into our next election — titled WE CAN REALLY FEEL LIKE WE’RE HERE.

Directed by Ryan Worsley