Deny, Defend, Depose
Stanya Kahn ©2026
TRT: 30:28 minutes
Single channel color digital video with stereo sound
Music by Cameron Outlaw, Acid Arab, Baseck, Caterina Barbieri, Unknown Origin, and Stanya 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-fueled one-liners spat out deadly statistics and stories of failed care in the US healthcare system. The feed was flooded with giddy and outrageous hate-bonding and love for a new hero: Luigi Mangione.

Intrigued by a spontaneous class war saga and remarkable mass alignments, Kahn screen-captured tweets as the news broke, continuing for over a year as facts of the incident unfolded and anecdotes about deadly insurance denials accumulated. Initially designing the collection to be a book, Kahn quickly pivoted to video, realizing the potential for broader reach, collective viewing and infotainment nature of a time-based work.

Set to an acid/jungle sound score—Deny, Defend, Depose is at once historical document, cultural timestamp, and an ebullient reflection of an astonishing spike in the zeitgeist. Edited up to the current moment, the piece was set to release in the lead up to the September 8th, 2026 state trial of prime suspect Luigi Mangione in New York. With the August 14th guilty plea (a move by the defense to avoid double jeopardy,) a state hearing is now postponed to December 10th, 2026 and a federal hearing for the charge of stalking is set for December 18th, 2026.