A strange first hit

Negativland’s 1980 debut had handmade covers and sold 500 copies in three months, far beyond what the Bay Area group expected.

“We were shocked that people were interested in something so strange.”

Culture jamming begins

Over 46 years, the project grew into albums, books, radio, fine art and live shows built from found and original material.

A remote live experiment

At the Internet Archive in San Francisco, Hosler and Jon Leidecker will perform while David Wills joins by phone from Seattle.

Talking back to power

Hosler says the work responds to American culture, especially media, money, capitalism and control, through a warped parallel reality.

“We are always responding to and describing American culture.”

The U2 fight

A 1991 record sampling and mocking U2 led to lawsuits over copyright, trademark and defamation. Negativland settled, then used the case to argue for reform.

Radio gets preserved

In 2015, the Internet Archive helped preserve more than 4,000 hours of Over The Edge, the freeform radio program tied to Negativland since 1981.

No celebrity faces

The group avoids personality-driven promotion and keeps attention on the work, with a shifting circle of artists behind sound, video, web and design.

“We really want to direct attention to our work, not to us as personalities or individuals.”

For the oddballs

Hosler says the small audience was expected. The point was to invent work hard to label, for curious listeners who felt outside the outside.

“If critics can’t figure out how to talk about the work, maybe it means we actually are doing something a little bit different.”