Stand By For Failure: A Documentary About Negativland

A SONIC WAVE WEEKLY and CLOSE UP screening
Post-screening discussion with film director Ryan Worsley and Negativland’s Mark Hosler via Skype.

Since 1959 at the age of five, David "The Weatherman" Wills has been recording and reporting on his life, self, and anything he likes (such as the weather, toilets flushing, and intercepted cell phone conversations) and broadcasting it to anyone interested. Together with childhood friends Richard Lyons and Mark Hosler they formed Negativland, which quickly became an absurd and noisy multimedia world without boundaries, ownership or privacy. Negativland's complex chaos of plunderphonics poses both serious and silly questions about the nature of sound, media, technology, control, propaganda, power and perception in the Global Village. Is what you're hearing true or simply familiar? It's media about media about media. As we are massaged into the singularity, the medium reveals that any message is all in our heads.

reviews

“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

“Few artists have logged as many hours on the battlefield of fair use, let alone questioned as persistently the associated legal constraints around intellectual property, as Negativland, whose sonic, visual and performance appropriations and parodies have challenged eyeballs, eardrums and moral standards alike since the late 1970s.”
— The Wire

“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