Coinciding with the start of the Luigi Mangione trials, Now Instant presents artist Stanya Kahn’s new short video work, Deny, Defend, Depose, a 30-minute film composed entirely of tweets posted in response to the shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO in New York City on December 4, 2024.

The screening will be preceded by an introduction from Kahn.

Deny, Defend, Depose is a short film made entirely of tweets collected since the morning of December 04, 2024, when a masked person in New York City assassinated United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson with a veterinary euthanasia pistol and a silencer, then fled on a Citibike. The shooting was captured on surveillance camera and immediately went viral. Twitter (now “X”) erupted in uncanny unison: the collective response was joy. Celebratory snark and rage-fed one-liners spat out deadly statistics and stories of failed care in the US healthcare industrial complex and the feed was flooded with giddy and outrageous hate-bonding. Intrigued by a spontaneous class war saga and remarkable mass alignments, I screen-captured tweets as the news broke, continuing for over a year as facts of the incident unfolded and anecdotes about systemic insurance abuse accumulated. I initially designed the collection to be a book and quickly realized the potential reach and apropos infotainment nature of a time-based work. (Book is hopefully still forthcoming.)

 Set to an acid/jungle sound score—Deny, Defend, Depose is at once historical document, cultural timestamp and an ebullient reflection of an astonishing blip in the zeitgeist. Edited up to the current moment, the piece is set to release early fall in the lead up to the September 8^th, 2026 opening court date of prime suspect Luigi Mangione in New York. 

With music by Cameron Outlaw, Acid Arab, Baseck, Caterina Barbieri (pending), Unknown Origin (pending) and Stanya Kahn. 

Single channel color digital video with stereo sound.

Please note: seating is limited. Box Office opens thirty minutes prior to the listed showtime. Guests may add their name to the standby list upon arrival. Online ticket sales will be honored up until 15 minutes after the scheduled showtime; at that time, any unclaimed seats will be released for in-store purchase on a first-come, first-served basis. All Sales Final.