Negativland: In Conversation

Fri 26 Jan, 2024, 3pm

Free

NYU Brooklyn, 370 Jay St, Room #325, Brooklyn, NY 11201

Friday, January 26th at 3pm, join ISSUE in collaboration with NYU Tandon School of Engineering for a special artist talk with Negativland, moderated by NYU’s Academic Director of Integrated Design & Media, Scott Fitzgerald. The discussion will focus on their work and the ethics of appropriation, fair use, and AI from the 1990s to the present. This event will follow ISSUE’s 2024 Winter Season Opening on the evening of Thursday, January 25th with Negativland and VALISE at First Unitarian Congregational Society, featuring video by real-time cinema visual artist SUE-C.

The IDM x ONX Speaker Series is free with RSVP to the general public. Non-NYU visitors must have a photo ID and will receive an email pass the day of the event.

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.

Scott Fitzgerald is an artist and educator whose work examines the interdependence of culture and emerging technology. His installation, video, and experiential work has been exhibited and installed throughout the USA, Europe, Middle East, and China. He regularly runs workshops on using technology in the arts and was the head of documentation for the open source Arduino platform. He is a partner in Lightband Studio.

Founded in 2003, ISSUE Project Room is a pioneering nonprofit performance center, presenting projects by interdisciplinary artists that expand the boundaries of artistic practice and stimulate critical dialogue in the broader community. ISSUE serves as a leading cultural incubator, facilitating the commission and premiere of innovative new works.

The 23/24 Integrated Design & Media Lecture Series features talks and workshops from transdisciplinary artists and designers working in a range of media and technology. It is generously sponsored by the Onassis ONX Studio.

ONX Studio is an accelerator for a global community of member artists who create immersive XR and AI works. This hybrid experimentation, production and exhibition space is located in the Olympic Tower in Midtown Manhattan and was founded in 2020 in partnership between the Onassis Foundation and NEW INC. ONX Studio now exists as a project of Onassis Culture, working in partnership with organizations in New York, including New York University’s Tandon School, Games for Change, NEW INC, Rhizome, and MAX, as well as with global institutions such as IDFA, CPH:DOX, DiMoDA, and others. Offering development funding, state-of-the-art facilities, advocacy, and community for an international community of artists from a broad range of disciplines, ONX Studio has become an influential hub and manifestation of the dynamism of a new global interdisciplinary artistic ecosystem.

ISSUE Project Room programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Additional support for ISSUE Project Room's 2024 season is provided by Metabolic Studio.

ISSUE Project Room acknowledges generous in-kind support from The Tillary Hotel, Brooklyn.