This is a short computer reading from our paperback/pdf book
The Fundamental Questions
and the LYRICS:
CITATION CITY
Citation City: a new audiovisual work by Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us 
Citation City is inspired by The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin, created from 1000s of clippings of text and visual media from 19th Century Paris, collaged using a system of “convolutes”, collated around subjects of key motifs, historical figures, social types, cultural objects from the time. By gathering and assembling such groups of similar yet unrelated, he revealed a hidden, magical encyclopaedia of affinities, a massive and labyrinthine architecture of a collective dream city. On reading Benjamin, his forward thinking approach to editing astonished Vicki, and the similarity of their creative processes of cutting and collating extensive lists of subject matter by context. Vicki is focussing on collaging and editing from 300 major feature films where content is either filmed or set in London – creating a story within a story, of the film world, living its life, through extraordinary times of change, to see what happens when these multiple narratives are combined… what will the story tell us that one story alone could never tell?
The work will be presented as a live A/V performance from November 2014, where Vicki will produce and perform a series of story lines with a soundtrack, which sources both from the movie content, as well as new sample compositions thematically related to the visual content.
Alongside the performance of the work, Vicki is also inviting selected sound artists to create distinct soundtracks to the work in order to produce a special series of films that will be published online with an information pack about the creative process. Citation City is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Vicki Bennett
Since 1991 Vicki Bennett has been making CDs, radio, and A/V multimedia under the name People Like Us. By animating and recontextualising found footage collages Vicki gives an equally witty and dark view of popular culture. People Like Us broadcasts an ongoing experimental arts radio and podcast show on WFMU, called DO or DIY, which, since it began in 2003, has had over a million “listen again” downloads. Vicki has shown work at Tate Modern, BFI, Purcell Room, ICA, Pompidou Centre, Sonar Festival, Walker Art Center, Barbican, Maxxi, Centro de Cultura Digital, the BBC and Channel 4. She has also performed radio sessions for John Peel and Mixing It. People Like Us have been commissioned by The Arts Council England, The BBC, Sound and Music, Channel 4/Animate Projects, AV Festival, Sonic Arts Network, Forma, LUX and Lovebytes amongst others. http://peoplelikeus.org/2014/artist-statement-for-people-like-us/
Citation City Convolutes
EXPECT UPDATES ON THIS PROJECT LATER IN THE YEAR
AN ART APART – film about People Like Us
Carl Abrahamsson is in the process of producing a series of films about the following artists: Kenneth Anger, Charles Gatewood, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Michael Gira, Vicki Bennett, Mark McCloud, Andrew McKenzie, Gustaf Broms, Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Angela Edwards
“Over the years, I’ve more and more realized that what I do is basically the same thing over and over, yet in new forms. That is: meeting interesting people, listening to what they have to say, and then filter that for others. Whether it’s been materialized in writing or photography, it’s a documentation mania I can’t seem to shake. And don’t want to either.
The focus, as the name implies, is on art and artists who go against the grain or in some ways stand out as integrity pioneers. As the art world and its Molochian markets become more and more commodified and drained of creative vitality, there needs to be an inspirational influx of revitalizing energy and ideas. It is my hope that these conversations with radical movers and shakers will help provide just that.”
More info here: http://www.carlabrahamsson.com/film/an-art-apart/
New book by Gregor Weichbrodt & Vicki Bennett
THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS
new book by Gregor Weichbrodt, Vicki Bennett
Paperback & pdf, 569 Pages
Buy the paperback book: http://www.lulu.com/shop/gregor-weichbrodt-and-vicki-bennett/the-fundamental-questions/paperback/product-21696219.html
You can now also purchase the book from The Wire magazine bookshop
Free downloadable pdf here or here
“I am the gambling of the fraudulent; I am the splendour of the splendid; I am victory; I am determination; I am the goodness of the good. I am a huge animal lover and love to spend time with my chinchilla and 2 pet rats.”
- from the excellent piece of mashed-up uncreative writing called “The Fundamental Questions.” From Vicki Bennett and Gregor Weichbrodt. Further confirmation that the best use of appropriation in art is with a healthy dose of humor and joy. [And it comes in a paperback, almost the same size as your pink, half-read copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.] — Kevin Hamilton
You may be familiar with the music, film, radio and stills work of People Like Us but this is the first step into this medium. Although we’ve written essays, we’ve not written a book before. And we still haven’t! This content is sourced from online, developed online over the course of a 10-day conversation with Gregor Weichbrodt after we observed that searching for answers on a particular internet website possibly reflected and paralleled deeper questions within life…
Who am I? Where do I come from? What is my purpose in Life and what happens when I die?
For centuries people have tried to come up with answers regarding the fundamental questions of life.
Then the internet was invented and these questions have finally been answered - by users.
Then the internet was invented and these questions have finally been answered - by users.
The book The Fundamental Questions captures them in an inspiring record of epic proportions where every individual verse becomes a mantra of a mind-expanding collective thought. It reminds us, that one single answer is never the answer.
Thousands of user profiles from the web were parsed, matched according to four questions and sorted in an alphabetical order.
Related item: I am that I am – A Twitterbot that combines verses from the Bhagavad Gita with user profile texts from the web. I am that I am @newmantras
Danny Snelson – Incredible Machines – We Edit Life
Danny Snelson presents a series of investigations around an essay on early computer-generated movies at Bell Labs (and the documentaries that accompany them) through the contemporary cipher presented in the digital compilation movie We Edit Life (2002) by People Like Us (Vicki Bennett).
http://vvvnt.com/media/incredible-machines
Nothing is New, Everything is Permitted!
Consequences Exhibited at Sheffield Doc/Fest
We are exhibiting a rare stand-alone version of our (usually live performance) Consequences (One Thing Leads To Another) at Sheffield Doc/Fest, 7-12 June 2014. The 40-minute musical movie is on a giant screen at Millennium Gallery from 10.00-17.00, and in the evening from 18.00-22.00 in Millennium Gallery.
Sheffield Doc/Fest: http://sheffdocfest.com/articles/167-brand-new-for-2014-the-interactive-exhibition
Millennium Gallery: http://www.museums-sheffield.org.uk/museums/millennium-gallery/exhibitions/current/doc-fest-14
“Favourite new work at the festival so far; would happily have watched it 2+ times straight through.” – Tom Vincent (co-director, Bradford International Film Festival), on twitter
Last DO or DIY of the season
This coming Monday 26th May will be the last DO or DIY of the season, and we are taking the summer schedule off (our own decision) – join us on the show’s playlist/comments board for the last show here at 7pm NY Time (midnight UK), and listen in at http://wfmu.org
Consequences at Metamorf, Trondheim
People Like Us will perform Consequences (One Thing Leads To Another) and give an artist talk at meta.morf / Here To Go Symposium in Trondheim, Norway at the end of May 2014.
Concert: 30 May 2014
Venue: Dokkhuset
Dokkparken 4, Trondheim, 7014 Norway
http://metamorf.no/?p=604
Conference: 31 May 2014
10:00 – 17:00 @ Dokkhuset
http://metamorf.no/?p=602
10:00 – Martin Palmer: HTG2014 Opening Remarks
10:15 – Carl Abrahamsson: Paul Bowles: Expat magic
10:45 – Vicki Bennett: ‘We Edit Life’ – a journey through cut and paste collage creations by audio-visual artist Vicki Bennett (aka People Like Us)
11:30 – Break
11:45 – Z’EV: The 3-Fold Ear and the Energies of Enthusiasm
12:30 – Alkistis Dimech: The Sabbatic Dance: Butoh’s interior landscape and the terrain of Witchcraft
13:00 – Lunch and book launch
14:00 – Peter Grey: Secrecy and Revelation: A New Vision of Talismanic Books
14:30 – Angela Edwards: Taking Fine Art into the Esoteric Context in Action
15:00 – Break
15:15 – Jesper Aagaard Petersen: Operatiaon Mindfuck, Viking Edition: How Fear of the Satanic and Cartoon Exoticism Fueled the Prank of the Century
16:00 – Martin Palmer: HTG2014 Closing Remarks / Q&A
Welcome Abroad free download
Our album from 2011 “Welcome Abroad“ is now available for free download at WFMU’s Free Music Archive. Originally released on CD in 2011 on Illegal Art (and still available from us), the album also features Ergo Phizmiz, Jason Willett, M.C.Schmidt, Virginia Pipe and Wobbly
Andrew Sharpley – “Black Ships” on DO or DIY with People Like Us
Andrew Sharpley – “Black Ships”
Monday 19 May 2014, 7pm
on DO or DIY with People Like Us
http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/pl
Listen online live at 7pm NY Time http://wfmu.org
This broadcast is a based on a series of translations and re-translations of a text in a not-very-good telephone translation app, going backwards and forwards between Japanese and Portuguese and at each stage rendering the result into english – kind of like Chinese Whispers, except not Chinese. Whats starts out as a tongue twister over the course of 30 re-translations (25 of which are used in the broadcast) ends up as something that sounds like a deranged terrorist, manifesto, talking of bomb blasts and prophets and visas and pain and country.
These short texts, read by my daughter Lia, are set against a backdrop of shifting electronic patterns and acoustic piano that mutates gradually over time as the texts themselves do.
The title, Black Ships (in Japanese, 黒船, kurofune, Edo Period term) was the name given to Western ships arriving in Japan in the 16th and 19th centuries.
In 1543 Portuguese initiated the first contacts, establishing a trade route linking Goa to Nagasaki. The large ships engaged in this trade had the hull painted black with pitch, and the term came to represent all western vessels. A modern day equivalent for the surprise and confusion the presence of these ships caused, would perhaps be someone in a modern city apartment trying to go to sleep with 4 big black flying saucers hovering outside their window…
With a nod of recognition to the WFMU presenter and exponent of ‘ uncreative writing’ – of which this is an example – I am dedicating it to Mr Kenneth Goldsmith.
- Andrew Sharpley, 16 May, 2014.