Negativland

Since 1980, the various Floptops known as Negativland, a multimedia collective originally from California’s Bay Area, have been creating records, CDs, video, fine art, books, radio and live performance using appropriated sounds, images, objects, and text. While their tactics and art practices have now become something a tween can do with a few clicks on their smartphone, Negativland is still interested in unusual noises and images (especially ones that are found close at hand), unusual ways to restructure such things and combine them with their own music and art, and mass media transmissions which have been sources and subjects for much of their work. Negativland covets insightful humor and wackiness from anywhere, low-tech approaches whenever possible, and vital social targets of any kind. Foregoing ideological preaching, but interested in side effects, Negativland is a subliminal cultural sampling service concerned with making art about everything we aren't supposed to notice. Negativland’s self tilted sound collage debut came out in 1980 when some of the members were still in high school. The album covers were handmade and numbered, with 15,000 one-of-a-kind covers (9000 vinyl and 6000 CD) eventually being made over the next 15 years. A vinyl re-issue is in the works. A Big 10-8 Place came out in 1983. It was the groups third record and their first to be a concept album, a format they have more or less stuck to ever since. This tape splicing extravaganza, three years in the making, came in a wrap-around sleeve with poster, bumper sticker, inspection cards, hand embossed inner sleeve, and a baggie of lawn clippings (or beauty bark in the later CD version). 1987 saw the release of their seminal (and best selling) fourth album Escape From Noise , which contained fan favorite “Time Zones,” and the track “Christianity is Stupid,“ which lead to a startling ax-murder hoax that became the subject of 1989s Helter Stupid album. 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. 1997’s Dispepsi was a high-concept collection of original music, songs, and collaged advertising that brought Negativland’s brand of thirsty cultural critique to the parched and dehydrated psyches of of young consumers everywhere. It focused on the impact of mass advertising via the idea of making a record that was about nothing but Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi (and a bit of Coke). 2002 saw the issue of Deathsentences Of The Polished And Structurally Weak. Actual wrecking yard detritus, found notes, cassettes, laundry lists, etc, formed the basis of a poignant 64-page full-color book with read-along CD soundscape. The album was a return to pure noise collage and closest in spirit to A Big 10-8 Place , but utterly unique in the Negativland canon... no words, just sounds. In 2005 they released the elaborately packaged No Business (with CD, 15,000-word essay, die-cut outer sleeve, and custom-made whoopie cushion), and debuted "Negativlandland" - a large visual art show of over 80 pieces of their "fine art" works, videos, home-made electronic devices, and a life-sized animatronic Abe Lincoln robot, at New York City's Gigantic Art Space. The exhibit traveled around the country, showing in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Minneapolis, Houston, and Richmond, VA. 2007 saw the release of Our Favorite Things , a feature-length DVD collection of Negativland’s many years of collaborative film work, and in 2008 they surprised themselves and everybody else by putting out a toe-tapping all-singing song project of one member's compositions called Negativland Presents Thigmotactic . 2014’s It's All In Your Head found the group tackling their biggest subject ever: why so many humans believe in God. This ambitious and