Stand By for Failure: A Documentary About Negativland

Director: Ryan Worsley

Starring: David ‘Weatherman’ Wills, Don Joyce, Ian Allen, Mark Hosler, Richard Lyons

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.

Live video Q&A with Negativland members to follow the screening.