Negativland "Our Favorite Things"  November 6, 2010

Opening reception Sat.,  November 6, 6 to 9 PM through November 28, 2010

Please scroll down to view works from "Thigmotactic," "How Land," and Death Sentences

N E G A T I V L A N D   B I O : Since 1980, the 4 or 5 or 6 Floptops known as Negativland have been creating records, CDs, video, fine art, books, radio and live performance using appropriated sound, image and text. Mixing original materials and original music with things taken from corporately owned mass culture and the world around them, Negativland re-arranges 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. Over the years Negativland's "illegal" collage and appropriation based audio and visual works have touched on many things - pranks, media hoaxes, advertising, media literacy, the evolving art of collage, the bizarre banality of suburban existence, creative anti-corporate activism in a media saturated multi-national world, file sharing, intellectual property issues, wacky surrealism, evolving notions of art and ownership and law in a digital age, and artistic and humorous observations of mass media and mass culture. While it is true that, after being sued, Negativland became more publicly involved in advocating significant reforms of our nation's copyright laws, Negativland are artists first and activists second. All of their art and media interventions have intended to pose both serious and silly questions about the nature of sound, media, control, ownership, propaganda 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 mentioned in over 150 books (including "No Logo" by Naomi Klein, "Media Virus" by Douglas Rushkoff, and various biographies of the band U2), cited in legal journals, and they often lecture about their work here and in Europe. Since 1981, Negativland and an evolving cast of characters have operated “Over The Edge,” a weekly radio show on KPFA FM in Berkeley, California. “Over The Edge” continues to broadcast three hours of live, found sound mixing every Thursday at midnight, West Coast time, with online access. In 1995 they released a 270-page book with 72-minute CD entitled "Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2." This book documented their infamous four-year long legal battle over their 1991 release of an audio piece entitled "U2". They were the subjects of Craig Baldwin's 1995 feature documentary "Sonic Outlaws" and created the soundtrack and sound design for Harold Boihem's 1997 documentary film "The Ad And The Ego," an excellent in-depth look into the hidden agendas of the corporate ad world and the ways that we are affected by advertising. In 2004 Negativland worked with Creative Commons to write the Creative Commons Sampling License, an alternative to existing copyrights that is now in widespread use by many artists, writers, musicians, film makers, and websites. In 2005, they released the elaborately packaged "No Business" (with CD, 15,000 word essay, and custom made whoopie cushion), and debuted "Negativlandland" - a large visual art show of over 80 piece's of their "fine art" works, video, and home-made electronic devices, at New York City's Gigantic Art Space. That exhibit continues to travel and appear around the country. More recently Negativland have been touring a new performance piece called "Its’ All In Your Head FM," a two-hour-long audio cut-up mix about monotheism, the supernatural God concept, and the all-important role played by the human brain in our beliefs. Christianity and Islam are the featured religions, as Negativland asks it’s audience to contemplate some complex, serious, ridiculous, and challenging ideas about human belief in a show best described as “documentary collage.” In 2007 Negativland released "Our Favorite Things," a feature-length DVD collection of their many collaborative film and video projects, and was invited to joined the advisory board of a progressive Washington DC-based intellectual property lobbying group called digitalfreedom.org.

Thigmotactic: Various works of organic, plastic, shiny, sparkly, found and created materials that are the illustrations for a cycle of songs released on CD as "Negativland Presents Thigmotactic." The images of these works seen here are good, but still don't do justice to the dimensionality and tactile quality of the works themselves.

How Land:
These lovely 16" x 16" Giclee prints show the recently rediscovered film and background documentation representing a wealth of information regarding the early attempts of C. Elliot Friday to attract international tourism to his fabled Howland Island home. Howland Island is the headquarters of his Universal Media Netweb broadcasting network and the tropical cultural retreat of artists, scientists, and cultural eccentrics of every stripe.

Famed Friday associates include the members of Negativland, who remain under tentative contract with UMN to this day. These still images (part of the Over The Edge: Time Zones Exchange Project 2-CD set) document various artifacts recovered by Mr. Leeland Googleburger, a self-directed time travel theorist who resides in a trailer in Nevada and has devoted 60 years of his life to uncovering the mysteries behind C. Elliot Friday's impossibly long life span, his political machinations, and his unparalleled wealth. Mr. Friday, however, is now feared dead, and his tiny, mid-Pacific zone Howland Island is inexplicably missing.
 
 

Death Sentences:

These beautiful 24" x 24" Giclee prints show the personal notes and fragments found by Negativland inside of wrecked automobiles. 
 
 

When combined with technologically destroyed analog audio, these images formed the basis of the "Deathsentences of the Polished and Structurally Weak" book/CD project. Genuine auto debris, video, and these prints were also combined into
an installation that was part of the Negativlandland art shows.
 

BIG-TIME MEDIA QUOTES ABOUT NEGATIVLAND THAT SOUND RESPECTABLE AND LEGIT
 

Declared heroic by their peers for refashioning culture into what the group considers to be more honest statements, Negativland suggests that refusing to be original, in the traditional sense, is the only way to make art that has any depth within commodity capitalism...
- NEW YORK TIMES

It’s an often ignored request, but you may pay more attention to the phrase “Please remember to take all your belongings” after seeing Negativland’s eerily mesmerizing new project…
- NEWSWEEK

Negativland isn't just some group of merry pranksters; its art is about tearing apart and reassembling found images to create new ones, in an attempt to make social, political and artistic statements. Hilarious and chilling.
- THE ONION

Negativland argues persuasively that creators should be able to appropriate bits and pieces of anything and incorporate them into their work without fear of legal action.
- UTNE READER

Negativland, longtime advocates of fair use allowances for pop media collage, are perhaps America's most skilled plunderers from the detritus of 20th century commercial culture...the band's latest project is razor sharp, microscopically focused, terribly fun and a bit psychotic.
- WIRED MAGAZINE

For more than 20 years, Negativland has earned renown for manipulation of both tape and media.
- LOS ANGELES TIMES

Collage pioneers.....genre-defying, densely layered, strangely accessible.....
- WASHINGTON POST

Negativland…known for their media pranks....
- TIME MAGAZINE

A provocation and a punk-inspired commentary on our mercenary culture…eloquent and impassioned spokesmen for ideas like a “creative commons”…it’s salutary to see these smart and influential guys get a gallery show.
- ART IN AMERICA

Negativland are at it again...a parody of soft drink marketing.
- ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

Scathing and entertaining...they believe that the sheer volume of advertising is degrading to the mental and physical environment
- BUSINESS WEEK

Fearless artistes or foolhardy risk-takers....by constantly haranguing the listener with authentic advertising spiel and highlighting its transparency, they kill the messenger, kill the message and produce highly entertaining art simultaneously.
- L.A. WEEKLY

Brutally hilarious...a compelling argument for the anti-copyright movement.
- VILLAGE VOICE

Twisted genius...compelling.....parody and satire as a grass roots weapon of consumer resistance.
- ROLLING STONE

It's no "Abbey Road", but it's a pretty good listen.
- PEPSI SPOKESMEN
 
 
 
 

Art In America Review 2007:

Since 1980, the semi-anonymous California collective Negativland has created music, art, video, books and performances using appropriated sounds, images and texts. Its members are especially known for their music and their activism against intellectual property regulations, which they claim stifle creativity. The use of pre-existing material poses questions about copyright law, and their work generally serves as a provocation and a punk-inspired commentary on our mercenary culture. “Negativlandland,” their densely installed recent show, lampooned commercial galleries as theme parks: parts of the show were cheerily dubbed noisyland, eBayland, or videoland. Included in the audiovisual riot were videos, paintings, photographs, collages and assemblages, interactive installations and an iPod listening station. 
Some of the individual pieces included direct and caustic references to a landmark copyright lawsuit involving Negativland’s music. In 1991, the group released a parody album combining a U2 sample with hilarious and obscene outtakes from Casey Kasem’s radio show. Island records, representing U2, launched a very damaging lawsuit against Negativland and SST, the company that published the group’s records, leading SST to sever ties with the band. (The album cover and a book by the group documenting the affair were on view.) 
From that time on, Negativland’s members have been eloquent and impassioned spokesmen for ideas like a “creative commons” and broader protections for fair use. Negativland has also been goosing U2 ever since; here, U2 vs. Negativland iPod (version 2G), 2005, a customized version of the popular device, contains Negativland’s discography. It was created by a fan (artist Patrick Hwang) as an alternate version of the iPod U2 Special Edition, released by Apple in 2004. Further indicating Negativland’s unrepentant stance, the video No Business (all video works from a 2005 compilation) montages clips of shoplifters with a soundtrack of Ethel Merman made to sing, “There’s no business like stealing!” Superimposed on images of a boy filching a candy bar are computer graphics indicating the progress of downloading a file; as a hand grabs the boy’s collar, an error message appears: Download interrupted. 
The Mashin’ of the Christ, a montage of movies about the Savior, takes aim at the commercialization of religion: in it, the endless repetition of conventions of the genre makes the films seem absurd. Similarly poking authority in the eye, in the installation MightRight (2005), a life-size mechanized Abraham Lincoln dummy speaks rearranged audio samples from a recording made for a Disneyland attraction in 1965 and supplied to Negativland by a company insider, as indicated in a gallery handout. This “Abe,” like our current commander-in-chief, repeatedly fumbles his speech about faith, might and right. 
“Deathsentences,” a 2005 series of photographic collages of junked cars and their contents, dominated the entry and one gallery wall. Each piece was a portrait of a smashed automobile alongside a photo of its mundane, poignant or bizarre contents – from shopping lists to prison love letters. The trashed cars serve as a metaphor for the husk of the market system, taking these bits of personal expression with them to the crusher. 
It’s salutary to see these smart and influential guys get a gallery show. One wonders, though, what would happen if they were to drop the self-protectively sarcastic punk-rock attitude and infuse their work with the nuance and earnestness they bring to their discussions of intellectual property. 
- Brian Boucher 
 
 

Other Honorable Mentions:

THE STRANGER, March, 2006 
Consolidated Works shows "Negativlandland," a 25-year retrospective of the anti-corporate collective Negativland that opened last year in New York. It is a sprawling playland of sharply funny and socially critical video, installation, music, and sculpture made almost entirely of borrowed material. Longtime fans will get their Negativland-prank fix, but there are also gently affecting photographs of wrecked cars paired with personal notes taken from the junkers.
 
 

BRAINWASHED, May, 2006 
Media pranksters Negativland brings their installation "Negativlandland" to Creative Electric Studios in Minneapolis, which has previously hosted visual art shows by musicians such as Tobin Sprout and Mark Mothersbaugh. "Negativlandland" features pop political commentary, a surprisingly poignant photographic series involving crushed cars and the handwritten notes found inside them, as well as sounds and various films, including videos for some of their most infamous songs. The show runs through June 10th and is well worth checking out.
 
 

THE RAKE, June, 2006 

Negativland is celebrating its first quarter century in the music business with notoriety, empty pockets, and an art show, of all things. The collective has always lived double lives in the visual and aural worlds. Core members Mark Hosler, Richard Lyons, Don Joyce, and David Wills entertain various fascinations with video, radio mechanical experiments, and fine arts, in addition to the band’s better-known musical pursuits, media hoaxes, and ongoing efforts to make culture jamming and copyright infringement more than just publicity ploys. Hosler talked to us about Negativlandland, a traveling exhibit that takes the themes Negativland has explored in its music and makes them into a full sensory experience. 

How would you describe the Negativlandland exhibit?

The show is divided into different lands, just like Disneyland, with more than seventy pieces of art, and in every medium. There’s the Booper, which is an electronic noisemaking device built by David of Negativland, and a seven-foot-tall animatronic robot of Abraham Lincoln, and a virtual automotive wrecking yard, with things we found inside the cars, car parts, video, and a soundtrack. 

Wait—go back to the part about the robot.

A fan of ours who worked in the archives of Disneyland sent us a fifty-CD set of every individual sound component of every Disney ride that has ever existed, including the voice sessions and outtakes of the man doing the voice for Lincoln in a Disney attraction called “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln,” which debuted in 1964 at the World’s Fair and was the world’s first animatronic robot. We collaborated with Joe Griffith, a robot artist from Tampa, to make a Negativland version of this Disneyland attraction. We manipulated audio out takes from those Lincoln recordings. It’s really funny and surreal, but it’s also about imperialism and references the direction our country is going in with all of our wars to promote so-called democracy. 

So you guys are making political art now.

Well, we have a new live performance called “It’s All In Your Head FM”, and its all about why we believe in God. We wanted to talk about something that’s going on now, globally. One way of looking at what’s happening in America and Iraq is that it’s not only a war about oil, it’s also a battle for God: Who is right? And if you’re wrong, we’re going to kill you. It’s nice to do something that’s not about copyright infringement, or anti-corporatism, or any of the things we’ve been associated with previously. We wanted to pick something timely and timeless. 

Hey, speaking of copyright infringement, are you a little worried about Disney?
Not at all! Our new record [No Business], in fact, is one hundred percent appropriated—there’s nothing original on it whatsoever. There’s an image of Mickey Mouse on the cover, and Starbucks on the back. The project is about collage and appropriation, and includes an essay about these issues. Any lawyer who picked up this project would read the essay and say, “We can’t sue these guys, because the project itself is their defense.” I think—I could be wrong—it’s bulletproof. 

Sample-based songs are all over the radio now, so it seems the world has changed for sound-collage artists. Do you guys take any credit for that?

Well, when we were sued by U2’s people for our U2 record [which mixed samples of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” with an unauthorized, off-the-air rant by Casey Kasem], we really did cause enough of a stink, and embarrassed the people who went after us enough, that people in the mainstream music industry have told us that they won’t go after us anymore with lawsuits. But who knows? 

Who buys Negativland’s visual art?

So far, almost nobody! It’s hard for us to get by making records and running our own record label. It’s even harder with art. I just did a lecture tour across the state of New York, and I’ve been making more money talking about what we do than actually doing it. But we got a really nice review in Art in America, so I guess the art world has decided we’re OK.