TICKETS ON SALE NOW!

We’re thrilled to welcome legendary multimedia collective NEGATIVLAND to Central Cinema on Saturday June 8 as they perform their latest show “We Can Really Feel Like We’re Here” (featuring video design & production by SUE-C), preceded by an exclusive screening of Ryan Worsley’s documentary STAND BY FOR FAILURE, a fitting portrait of the group’s history, art and cultural preoccupations.

This show is co-presented by our dear friends at the Pilot Light and Knoxville Community Media. Tickets including admission to both the film and performance. Doors open at 6pm, film starts at 6:45pm, live show begins at 9pm.

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Negativland + SUE-C come to Central Cinema in the Spring of 2024 with a Special LIVE Double-Feature!

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 the amazing feature film “Stand By For Failure: A Documentary About Negativland” (from Director Ryan Worsley) , but this will be followed by a live stage performance of Negativland in WE CAN REALLY FEEL LIKE WE’RE HERE accompanied by SUE-C’s unique and immersive visuals.

On Negativland:

“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

“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

On “Stand By For Failure: A Documentary About Negativland”, directed by Ryan Worsley:

“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

About 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.

About SUE-C | Sue Slagle, who goes by the stage name SUE-C, is a video and light artist working at the intersection of creative coding and live performance. For the past 18 years, she has created handmade videos and live media performances, traveling extensively in Europe and the US. Her works challenge the norms of photography, video, and technology by blending them all into an organic and improvisational live performance setting. Employing a variety of digital tools to create an experimental animation “instrument,” she synthesizes cinema from photographs, drawings, watercolors, handmade papers, fabrics and miniature lighting effects.

About STAND BY FOR FAILURE: A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT NEGATIVLAND (99m) | 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 and seeing true or simply familiar? The medium reveals that any message is all in our heads.

Showtimes