DO or DIY with People Like Us will return to the airwaves for 3 hours on Wednesday 19 June from 9am-Noon (NY Time) ((which is 2pm-5pm in London)). This will be filling in for Station Manager Ken. You can tune in online and on the air (if local to New York) and follow a live playlists and comments through the front page here: http://wfmu.org
People Like Us will be performing The Mirror as part of a Touch presents… event at London’s Iklectik on Saturday 22 June 2019. It will be a double bill with our friend Daniel Menche.
Daniel Menche is an abstract sound artist from Portland, Oregon. He says of his music that its “…intent is to destroy all rationalized thought processes to make room for the emotional and sensual impulses to take over… The greater the intent, the greater the intensity, and intensity is based upon the blood rising in speed and heat through our bodies.”
Culture Lab, Grand Assembly Rooms, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne
Friday 14 June 2019 from 19:00-23:00
Admission £FREE. There is no bar. But there is an off license nearby.
People Like Us will perform The Mirror at Culture Lab in Newcastle on 14 June 2019. It will be part of a bill of collage related work including the public premiere of a new film for improvising musicians and artists titled Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear with a live score by participants in two Wild Cinema workshops that will take place on Thursday 13th June (5-7pm) and Friday 14th June (12-2pm). If you want to take part in the workshops and the performance please email militantseed@hotmail.com. Details of the workshops can be found below. The concert programme also features Competition, Nellie Saunby and People Like Us performing their current live set ‘Mirror’.
WILD CINEMA
Wild Cinema is a new Wild Pop spin-off that proposes the idea of staging screenings in informal and unconventional settings (anywhere other than a cinema, basically) where people are invited to make bespoke videos for (other) people to improvise live scores (musical and/or non-) to. Wild Cinema is being launched with two 2-hour ‘workshops’ (actually onsite dry-runs with discussion) at Newcastle University which will be led by Vicki Bennett (People Like Us), benefitting from Vicki’s long-standing experience working with scoring (pre-recorded and improvised) films made to be experienced as music/film with neither leading the other in terms of concept or practical application.
This event page is thus also a call for participants in the workshops. Please contact by email to militantseed@hotmail.com if you want to take part.
Participants can either take part by making a 5-minute film or by being part of an ad hoc group that improvises the music to a 5-minute film someone else has made (or both, or all).
People taking part in the workshop will then improvise a score to the film of ‘Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear’ ‘blind’ as part of the evening concert programme.
This event is supported by the Newcastle Institute for Creative Arts Practice.
We have just made a video for our friends Big Fresh, here it is:
Big Fresh-Cosmos Song featuring Reva Russell English
From the EP Sweeps
Video by Vicki Bennett of People Like Us
© 2019 Big Fresh
Vinyl and Digital music available at www.desperatespirits.com
Review of private preview of Gone, Gone Beyond at Goldsmiths, London:
Privileged to attend an absolutely marvellous event at Goldsmiths College, a unique piece of immersive 360 degree cinema put together principally by People Like Us aka Vicki Bennett. It builds on her previous work, juxtaposing familiar film and music to unsettling effect; one such instance is a visual/soundclash of Julie Andrews singing “The hills are alive . . .” spliced with footage from Apocalypse Now and The Doors’ “The End”. But the audio and imagery builds layer upon layer to a meaningful, psychedelic cacophony, layer upon layer of the familiar; MOR, The Beatles, Kraftwerk and much, much more over an elaborate, kaleidoscopic sensurround collage of footage featuring the likes of Orson Welles, Cary Grant, Charlie Chaplin, Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, as well as dancers, dervish sequences and set pieces from avant garde-inspired Hollywood design.
The familiar and the unsettling; that’s the idea. Taking these film clips out of their original contexts, presenting them as part of a gushing continuum of dynamism, breakthrough, without resolution; because, in life, there is no resolution, no end to the story, simply this multiple, simultaneist mass of concurrent narratives, whose sheer kinetic energy, like an ever-flowing waterfall, is the real story that cinema is telling us; “endings” are mere temporary hiatuses, the definition of fiction. tl;dr; this is a meticulous, deceptively chaotic audiovisual blast like no other. And it deserves to be seen by everyone. — David Stubbs (April 2019)
Happy to say Vicki Bennett is one of the recipients of the a-n Artist Bursaries 2019 – more about this later in the year.
162 artists based throughout the UK have been awarded a share of £200,000 to fund their professional development in the latest round of a-n Artist Bursaries.
a-n Artist members were invited to apply for bursaries up to £1,500 to fund self-generated activities such as research, training, travel, community projects, learning new skills or building networks.
An ambitious, one-of-a-kind annual programme that supports artists at a crucial time in their practice, the a-n bursary programme received a record 853 applications this year.
We are pleased to announce a new audiovisual immersive cinema performance by People Like Us called The Mirror, performed (and screened in Theatrical form if in the US) from March 2018 worldwide.
The Mirror is a live a/v performance which splices together movie snippets with unique sample-based music exploring the masks that we wear represented through the lens, using parallel narratives across the screen to depict an ever-changing stream, rather than a singular, fixed being, narrative or moment in time.
“A feat of research and craft, this new work is a spellbinding inquiry into editing and juxtaposition; a collage one can unthread allowing the viewer to discover hidden stories through familiar images. The soundtrack is performed live, made up from hundreds of preexisting songs, as well as particular sounds from the original film clips.” — Flatpack Film Festival
18 March 2018 – World Premiere: Athens Greek Film Archive Foundation (as part of Shadow Libraries: UbuWeb in Athens, organised and produced by the Onassis Cultural Centre-Athens) – tickets/info
13 April 2018 – UK Premiere: Liverpool FACT – tickets
17 April 2018 – Belfast Film Festival at Crescent Arts Centre – tickets
20 April 2018 – London Cafe Oto – tickets
21 April 2018 – Birmingham Flatpack Festival – tickets
12 May 2018 – London Splice Festival, at Rich Mix – tickets
11 July 2018 – London Cafe Oto, double bill with Carl Stone – tickets
19 July 2018 – Gijón LEV Arenas Movedizas – free entry
26 July 2018 – MACBA, Barcelona – tickets
17th September 2018 – Theatrical Screening (not live) – Bryce’s Show on WFMU
19th & 20th September 2018 – Theatrical Screening (not live) – Spectacle Theater, Brooklyn – tickets
20 October 2018 – 100 Years of Copyright Festival, Berlin HKW – tickets
2 November 2018 – Spill Festival, Ipswich – tickets
10 November 2018 – Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo Norway – tickets
15 November 2018 – Brighton “Cinecity” Film Festival at Fabrica – tickets
30 November 2018 – Theatrical Screening (not live, we do not perform in concerts in the US) Recombinant Festival, Gray Area, San Francisco – tickets
9 February 2019 – Theatrical Screening (not live, we’ll not be there) – The Voix de Ville 2019 / ARTxFM annual fundraiser at Columbia Theatre, Louisville Kentucky – tickets
27 March 2019 – Musikbrauerei, Berlin – tickets
6 April 2019 – Theatrical Screening (not live) – Other Cinema, ATA, Valencia St, San Francisco – tickets
23-28, April 2019 – Theatrical Screening at AFO Olomouc, Czech Republic.
9 May 2019 – Venice Biennale at HILLARY: The Hillary Clinton Emails by Kenneth Goldsmith after the opening reception. RSVP
14 June 2019 – Newcastle Culture Lab – The Mirror and Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear
22 June 2019 – Iklectik Art Lab, London
If you are a festival organiser with a budget and are interested in booking this, please get in touch by way of our Contact Form. If you are in a country requiring a work visa to perform we can in very special circumstances make this work into a stand alone movie, but generally this is only available as a performance with the artist present and you will need to gain necessary papers for us to agree.
People Like Us will perform The Mirror at Venice Biennale on 9 May 2019 at 9.30pm after the opening reception at the following, as well as being part of the UbuWeb cinema programme:
Title: HILLARY: The Hillary Clinton Emails.
Artist: Kenneth Goldsmith.
Curators: Francesco Urbano Ragazzi.
Opening Hours: 11 am – 7 pm, closed on Monday.
Venue: Despar Teatro Italia, Campiello de l’Anconeta 1944, Cannaregio, 30121 Venezia.
From May 9th to November 24th, 2019.
Opening Reception: May 9th, 2019. From 7:30 pm to 11 pm.
Live performance by People Like Us from 9:30 pm.
Cinema program: every day from 6 pm to 7 pm, closed on Monday
Works by: Peggy Ahwesh, Johanna Bruckner, Alex Da Corte, Cheryl Donegan, Shadi Habib Allah, Bek Hyunjin, Lev Manovich, Alix Pearlstein, People Like Us, Christine Rebet, Sabrina Röthlisberger, Sara Sackner, Leah Singer, Stan VanDerBeek, Jennifer West, Jordan Wolfson.
HILLARY: The Hillary Clinton Emails is a project by The Internet Saga and Zuecca Projects
Main sponsor: Despar Aspiag Service
With the collaboration of Circuitozero, The Bauers, Dipartimento di Filosofia e Beni Culturali – Università Ca’ Foscari.
Media partner: My Art Guides, Le Confort Moderne.
Website by M-J-STUDIO
For further inquiries / RSVP: info@internetsaga.com /GO TO THE PRESS PACK
People Like Us will perform The Mirror in Berlin at Kiezsalon on Wednesday, 27th March 2019 along Warp’s Kelly Moran. Tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/digital-in-berlin-17478803114
The Mirror will screen at AFO, which is held in Olomouc, Czech Republic. The goal of the film festival is to popularise science through documentary films, lectures and workshops of filmmakers, scientists and academics. 54th edition of the festival is scheduled on 23-28, April 2019. The Mirror will screen in the Archive & Film section.
Here’s the archive of Vicki and Hearty White in Week 1 of the WFMU 2019 Fundraising Marathon. Vicki MC-ed for Hearty. Please support this wonderful radio station, who have supported People Like Us with our radio show DO or DIY with People Like Us for over 20 years now. LISTEN HERE!
We broadcast an hour-long Stuart Maconie Freak Zone Playlist for BBC 6 Music on 24 February 2019 at 00:00 (that’s Midnight Saturday night/Sunday morning) UK time. Iit will be archived on the Freak Zone Playlist page for a few weeks after.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002rct
The Mirror will be shown (theatrical format, i.e. not a performance) at Craig Baldwin’s Other Cinema in San Francisco on 6 April 2019.
