Before There Was TikTok There Was Negativland

Courtesy of Negativland

An incomplete selection of the post-postmodern woes and talkin' internet anxiety blues Austin Film Society audiences can expect to see/hear addressed at Sunday's concert-type thing by Negativland:

1) The social media algorithms that shuttle ignorant Americans down grease-slicked chutes of nefarious quasi-truth

2) The targeted advertisements that megacorporations reverse engineer from unauthorized AI data sweeps (remember: In seven purchases, Amazon knows if you're straight or gay!)

3) Most malignant of all, the hate-fueled, meme-wielding, post-ideology prankster terrorists who stalk the dark web like Old West bandits in Joker makeup

Though our culture may always be bombarded by mass media messages that ensconce the very same societal rot they attempt to obscure, students of Negativland's nearly half-century career could always take faith: The legendary sample-based collective would be right there to righteously reappropriate whatever sinister static dominated the day's airwaves. Be it through their rigorously archived Bay Area radio program Over the Edge or cult favorite albums like Helter Stupid, the group's playfully anarchic sound collages – though they prefer the term "culture jams" – of local TV news hysteria, FM radio payola, and celebrity soda endorsements have in many cases outlived the technological mediums they mocked. To the point where today's new crop of info-mining, irony-poisoned, reality-bending enemies look ... kind of like Negativland.

"Donald Trump is a culture jammer," founding member Mark Hosler told me over Zoom, the idyllic evening view off his Appalachian porch looking several planes of reality removed from the digital dystopia he laments. "We never predicted that what Negativland does could one day be used for dark, narcissistic evil."

"Our sort of satire used to mean punching up, but now it's just lashing out. We're trying to separate ourselves out from what cultural jamming has become," added 2011 group inductee Jon Leidecker. "That's a bit of a trick, but ultimately this is just the means of expression that makes the most sense to us."

That goes both ways. For anyone encountering Negativland for the first time in 2022, the group's once definitionally experimental methods probably seem pretty commonplace, which is just how Leidecker and Hosler like it. "Oh, sure, in the Eighties maybe it was weird to take media clips and loop them and play them out of context ..." Hosler started.

"Kids on TikTok are doing the same thing – making avant-garde art without realizing it," added Leidecker. "Now that there's no longer any sense we're being transgressive by appropriating things, we hope it's the ideas we're dealing with that engage people."

That's not to suggest left-minded audiences should arrive at Sunday's show dressed in their choir robes, prepared for an evening of agreeable, surprise-free political preaching. Negativland shows have been almost entirely improvised affairs going back to their earliest concerts in the Eighties. As difficult as it is to imagine material so rigorously conceptual and musically mechanical being "jammed," jam is just what these knob-twirling nihilists do – a spontaneity that even extends to the abstract visual accompaniment. Everything on the big screen will be a 100% real-time response by live cinema artist Sue-C. (As an aside, the group notes that although they used to perform at the Alamo Drafthouse for their Austin dates, the company's semirecent "change in ethics and ideologies" pushed them to the independently minded Austin Film Society.)

"There's a level of energy and danger that really builds community," explained Hosler, gesturing to how Negativland's live show helps separate their culture jamming from the hollow, cowardly prodding of faceless internet goons. "We take this sort of rarefied thing people might do in their bedrooms and do it out in front of a bunch of people."

"It's not all for the lulz," agreed Leidecker. "Because there is a reality that we have to agree on at the end of the day."

AFS Cinema presents Negativland: It’s Normal for Some Things to Come to Your Attention. Sun., July 24, 4:30pm. AFS Cinema, 6406 N. I-35 #3100, austinfilm.org.