WELCOME TO THE NEGATIVLAND FORKLIFTERS CLUB Good Hello Forklifters. In this announcement you will find–
1. THE MASHIN' OF THE CHRIST - NEGATIVLAND'S VAULT IS CRACKED, JESUS ESCAPES In April 2004 a hacker broke through Negativland's UMN mainframe firewall and stole the final version of Negativland's top-sacred for-internal-use-only "The Mashin' of the Christ" video project. Negativland prayed that their in-house project would not make it into the hands of the unsuspecting public, but we all know how hard it is to stop those "peer to peer" criminals from illegally sharing the property of others. And what exactly did these hackers steal from Negativland? They stole "The Mashin' of the Christ," Negativland's top-secret-not-for-viewing video response to the number one film in America. Negativland had been amusing themselves by decrypting, downloading and mashing up the most violent religious film ever made along with over 27 other Hollywood portrayals of Jesus to create their own never-to-to-be seen vision of the last moments of Christ's life, all in four minutes and 14 seconds. Is Christianity still stupid? Is Communism still good? Negativland had hoped that no one would ever find out for sure. But that hope was dashed on Easter Sunday, 2004, when the video project was stolen from Negativland's hard drive, and then, just last week, released onto P2P networks worldwide. Negativland's friends and lawyers who had seen "The Mashin' of the Christ" had strongly advised against a public release ever occurring (the "anti-circumvention" provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act says that doing this sort of decryption to make collage is illegal), but since God is said to see all secrets, only the public is left to be surprised by this unauthorized birth from Negativland. Voracious pirating of this work has spread across the Net and in the last few days high-resolution versions of "Mashin'" have even been appearing on P2P networks disguised as a complete copy of "The Passion of the Christ." Until personal or legal threats suggest otherwise, a link to the P2P networks where this video can be found is on Negativland's website, http://www.negativland.com
2. A SNEAK PREVIEW OF THE NEXT NEGATIVLAND PROJECT New on Negativland's website are excerpts from a forthcoming full length Negativland CD/book project called "NO BUSINESS." You can download "DOWNLOADING" and one other new track from this upcoming release. "NO BUSINESS" will contain a 14,000 word essay, a computer playable video, and 37 minutes of audio that are all about, and examples of, Negativland's current take on issues of file-sharing, downloading, appropriation, and the supposed collapse of the music business, circa 2004. Negativland will be looking at the ways things have changed in the last decade and the ways things are still the same. While the completed project wont be available from them for a number of months, Negativland felt that these two tracks, both made from 100% appropriated material, were timely enough in their content that they wanted to get them out to the public right away.
3. THE SPAM LETTERS BOOK (coming in May 2004 from No Starch Press) From frequent Negativland collaborator and satellite member (DJ Dr.) Jonathan Land comes a 200+ page collection of hilarious and entertaining correspondence with the people who send you mass junk e-mailings (a.k.a. SPAM). THE SPAM LETTERS taunts, prods, attacks, mocks and parodies the faceless salespeople in your electronic inbox. If you hate SPAM, you'll love THE SPAM LETTERS. For more details go to - http://www.thespamletters.com
4. NEGATIVLAND vs. REM vs. U2? (for fringe culture historians only) In a curious, bizarre, confrontational, hilarious, and ultimately enlightening encounter, founding Negativland member Mark Hosler came face to face with the man who brought Negativland's "U2" single to the attention of U2 way back in 1991, thus resulting in the now infamous lawsuit that dragged on for four years and turned into Negativland's book ("Fair Use: The Story Of The Katter U And The Numeral 2") and a feature movie (Craig Baldwin's "Sonic Outlaws"). A bit of background - Negativland has always been aware that the actual copy of the "U2 " single that ended up in the hands of Island Records was originally purchased in Athens Georgia (see the bottom of page nine in Negativland "Fair Use" book). The lawsuit against Negativland from U2's record label landed on Negativland and SST's doorstep only 10 days after the release of the single, but who in Athens, Georgia would be so close to U2 that they could get them a copy fast enough for a lawsuit to have appeared so quickly? After some detective work in the 1990's Negativland tracked it down to the only store in Athens who could have possibly carried the single - Wuxtry Records. And the owner of Wuxtry had the most likely answer for them: it was Bertis Downs, the manager of Athens rock superstars R.E.M., close buddy of U2 and their manager Paul McGuiness, and that he very much intended for Negativland to get in trouble for their record. When a member of Negativland bumped into Michael Stipe a few years later Stipe was asked directly if he knew about this connection. "No," said Stipe, "our manager would never do such a thing. Impossible!" But Negativland still suspected otherwise. While speaking at a recent conference on copyright issues at Duke University in April 2004, Mark discovered that Mr. Downs, R.E.M.'s manager, was very possibly in attendance. And so, in front of 150 copyright attorneys, law professors, musicians and filmmakers, Mark asked if he was in the audience. He was. And the ensuing exchange is caught on a video which you can see here- http://www.law.duke.edu/framed/ Look for "Afternoon Part 2" to find it (though the entire part one of the panel discussion is also excellent). Mark goes slightly ballistic in his emotional exchange with Bertis at about 14 minutes into the video, the amused and confused audience thinks it's all an elaborate put-on, and Bertis Downs replies are not clearly audible, but Bertis stands his ground. He lets Mark know that, yes, he was indeed the guy who let U2's manager know of the existence of the single, and that it was U2's manager who then requested that Down send them a copy so they could hear it. Negativland always figured that U2 and their manager were not telling the truth about their having no involvement in Island Records bringing the lawsuit against Negativland over the single, and this bit of news confirmed that suspicion. It was indeed U2 themselves who first heard the single and then alerted Island Records business affairs department to the existence of the record which then resulted in the lawsuit. Mr. Downs, who actually seemed like a very nice guy for a big time rock band manager, went on to say that no malice on his part was ever intended, that he no idea that sending the perplexing single along to U2 would ever have resulted in such a draconian response, that he was just doing a favor for their manager who asked to hear it, that the whole incident was somewhat embarrassing to him, and that had Negativland made a single called "R.E.M.", he was 100% sure that it would have resulted in no legal action whatsoever. As souvenir pictures were snapped (go here to see them, and note the barely visible “U2” LP cover and “Fair Use” book on the table), he even told Mark that he used Negativland's "Fair Use" book in a music management class he teaches at the University of Georgia, in Athens! You may find Downs story a bit hard to believe, but Negativland is convinced that it's all true and find's a certain amount of closure and laying to rest of this piece of the "U2" lawsuit puzzle.
|
1. THE MASHIN' OF THE CHRIST: NEGATIVLAND'S VAULT IS CRACKED, JESUS ESCAPES