Welcome to the only official site for People Like Us and Vicki Bennett
Since 1991 British artist Vicki Bennett has been working across the field of audio-visual collage, and is recognised as an influential and pioneering figure in the still growing area of sampling, appropriation and cutting up of found footage and archives. Working under the name People Like Us, Vicki specialises in the manipulation and reworking of original sources from both the experimental and popular worlds of music, film and radio. People Like Us believe in open access to archives for creative use. In 2006 she was the first artist to be given unrestricted access to the entire BBC Archive. People Like Us have previously shown work at, amongst others, Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, The Barbican, Centro de Cultura Digital, Maxxi and Sonar, and performed radio sessions for John Peel and Mixing It. She has an ongoing sound art radio show 'DO or DIY' on WFMU. The People Like Us back catalogue is available for free download hosted by UbuWeb. Nothing Can Turn Into A Void – a doc film about People Like Us has been screening in cinemas and festivals since Autumn 2015.
Currently, Vicki is focussing on expanding a/v work for a multiscreen and multi-speakered environment with RML Cinechamber, with 10-screen work "Gone, Gone Beyond". Also a new People Like Us live performance "The Mirror" premiered at Onassis Cultural Centre Athens in Spring 2018 and now tours worldwide. October 2018 saw the release of a new CD/online album also called The Mirror. Vicki is a participant in Sound and Music New Voices 2018 programme, a-n Artist Bursaries 2019 recipient, and will be Hallwalls Artist in Residence from 2019-2020.
Indexical Presents Digital Alchemy in Fall 2019 28 September 2019 at 8pm People Like Us Theatrical Screening of “The Mirror” (not a concert!) Blectum from Blechdom perform “Notations” DNA’s Comedy Lab: 155 S River St., Santa Cruz Tickets: $16 Adv / $20 Door
We Edit Life: An Evening with People Like Us
We Edit Life is an evening of film screenings by People Like Us including the premiere live-score performance of Notations by Blectum from Blechdom.
Atheatrical screening ofThe Mirror, 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 made up from hundreds of preexisting songs, as well as particular sounds from the original film clips. This 35 minute screening will be followed by an artist Q&A.
A live performance of Notations, a film for improvising musicians and artists, Notations has been created by Vicki from hundreds of different film clips, where the content conceptually or literally portrays different kinds of ‘gestures’ or ‘instructions’ to be read by the improvising artists on stage as a visual score.
Notations has been performed in the past by an impressive international cast of improvisers, each with radically different approaches and, as each show features a different combination of artists, every performance is completely unique. This time around the performers with the film will be Kristin Erickson and Bevin Kelley, aka electronic music duo Blectum from Blechdom.
“Hey, hey, have you ever tried… reaching out to the other side?” Gone, Gone Beyond is an immersive a/v spatial cinema work by People Like Us, which breaks the rectangle, smashing the thin screen into tiny fragments, looking beyond the frame, climbing through to see what’s behind.
Commissioned by Naut Humon, the founder of immersive theatre project CineChamber, Gone, Gone Beyond is a 10 screen/8 speaker work by Vicki Bennett with seamless wrap around projection and surround sound, where the audience sit inside. It uses edited collage sewn together in a giant patchwork. Pull on a thread and watch whole new narratives expand and unravel all at once on a 360 palette. The project has been a work in progress since 2017, and is currently just over an hour long.
The initial 47-minute film premiered in San Francisco 11-14 October 2017 at RML CineChamber Recombinant Festivalat Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. The hour-long Stage 2 is currently in production through 2018 and we are looking for partners to co-present the 47-minute and hour-long piece from 2019 onwards.
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’re pleased to tell you that Vicki Bennett will be Hallwalls Artist in Residence (HARP) at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, NY from 2019-2020. We will start making a new project for them later this year and keep you up to date once we begin. We are doing the residency remotely until Fall 2020, when we will be there to output and broadcast the completed new work.
Hallwalls Artists-in-Residence Project (HARP) is a successful multidisciplinary artists residency program, which is funded in most years (with the exceptions of 1996–97, 1997–98, and 2004–05) by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; in most years by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (for visual & media artists); and from 2008 to 2010 by the Nimoy Foundation (for visual & media artists). Some musicians in residence since 2010 (Roscoe Mitchell in 2010, Wadada Leo Smith in 2012) have been supported in addition or solely by the Jazz Presenting Program of Chamber Music America (CMA). The goal of the project is to support invited artists through professional stipends, materials and fabrication budgets, workspace, access to equipment and technical support, public presentations of their work in solo exhibitions, site-specific installations, screenings, and concerts, and interaction with local artists and communities through collaboration, lectures, master classes, workshops, and in-school residencies. Coming next year, three new HARP projects, made possible with major grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Cullen Foundation.
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 28 September 2019 – Theatrical Screening (not a concert!) at Digital Alchemy/Indexical at DNA’s Comedy Lab Santa Cruz
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.
DO or DIYwith 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’sIklectikon Saturday 22 June 2019. It will be a double bill with our friend Daniel Menche.
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
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.
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:
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.
Despar Teatro Italia is by day a Spar Supermarket
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
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.
