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 is Hallwalls Artist in Residence from 2019-2020.
DO or DIY with People Like Us will return to the radio for three hours on Wednesday 19 August 2020, filling in for Ken Freedman from 9-Noon NY Time, that’s 2-5pm UK. Tune in at http://wfmu.org and join us on the live playlist/comments at https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/95740
People Like Us (Vicki Bennett)First Person, Fourth Wall A Hallwalls Artists-in-Residence Project (HARP) Friday, 11 September – Friday, 23 October 2020 https://www.hallwalls.org/visual/6216.html
HALLWALLS CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER, 341 DELAWARE AVE.BUFFALO, NY 14202 Gallery hours: Tuesday-Friday 11am-6pm | Saturday 11am-2pm Curated by Carolyn Tennant |Radio content Programmed by Vicki Bennett
This multi-tiered project features an onsite new film and 6 channel audio collage work in the Hallwalls gallery, a virtual film retrospective, and a series of online micro-commissions programmed by the artist, where collaborators across the field of visual, audio and textual art respond to the subjects of first person / the fourth wall. The retrospective screening features archive and new content from Vicki Bennett’s 30 years of creating work under the name People Like Us. To coincide with the exhibition is a new second edition of her artist’s book The Fundamental Questions co-authored with Gregor Weichbrodt, available exclusively in house at Hallwalls, all made possible in part with a major grant to HARP (Hallwalls Artists-in-Residence Project) from the Multidisciplinary program of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a federal agency, with additional support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Visual Art Program of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), M&T Bank, and Erie County.
The commissions and elements from the onsite exhibition are archived at WFMU from 11 September 2020, alongside visual elements on the accompanying web pages, which will be linked to with QR codes in the accompanying gallery brochure.