Yes, the date there is correct. Just found this video, courtesy of Doug Wellman of Puzzling Evidence: Superstars of sample People Like Us, Wobbly, and C. Elliot Friday (Don Joyce) of Negativland join forces with projectionists Wetgate to layer lightly at the Cell Space one fine spring night to discern “what’s music?”…
Here is the finished promo trailer for our audiovisual performance Citation City. This is ONLY available as a live performance, it will not go online so do check for live dates at the url below.
Citation City is a 42 minute audiovisual performance work which sources, collages and edits 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 result is a sweeping panorama of London, a London as represented through cinema – not the real city at all, but one that exists in the collective imagination of moviegoers throughout the decades.” Filmmaker Magazine
Please note: this is now retired. However, we occasionally make edits available as stand-alone movies for cinema screening.
A time-travelling voyage through one city, assembled from hundreds of movie clips and inspired by the wanderings of Walter Benjamin. A patchwork of over 300 features either filmed or set in London, Citation City combines multiple narratives to create the story of one city in a period of enormous change. Pieced together by audiovisual artist Vicki Bennett (aka People Like Us), this beguiling, labyrinthine work takes its cue from Benjamin’s Arcades Project, an ambitious attempt to map out Paris in fragments which was cut short by the author’s death in 1940. Flatpack Film Festival
Background: Inspired by The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin, this audiovisual performance work by People Like Us is created from 1000s of clippings of text and visual media, 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 approach to editing astonished Vicki Bennett, and the similarity of their creative processes of cutting and collating extensive lists of subject matter by context.
As a side project, Vicki also invited selected sound artists to create distinct soundtracks to the work in order to produce two new films.
Performances: 9 December 2014 Cafe Oto preview http://www.cafeoto.co.uk/jennifer-walshe-sharon-gal-andie-brown-people-like-us.shtm 29 January 2015 World Premiere attransmediale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin 28 March 2015 UK Premiere at Flatpack Film Festival, Birmingham, as part of a larger WFMU and Walter Benjamin-themed programme 17 April 2015 Parede, Portugal 18 September 2015 Bristol Encounters Short Film Festival 26 September 2015Whitechapel Gallery at Walter Benjamin Now Symposium (at 5pm), London 15 October 2015 Leeds Art Gallery (private screening for students only) 24 October 2015 Monty Hall, WFMU 28 October 2015 Red Room, Baltimore 21 November 2015Brighton Cinecity Festival 12 April 2016 Sonic Protest Festival, Paris 7 May 2016 Delco Festival, Nimes 23 November 2016 Dundee Contemporary Arts March 2017 Hull UK City of Culture/ReROOTed Citation City is now retired. However we now make it available for movie screenings. October 2017Other Cinema, San Francisco (20-minute stand alone movie edit) December 2019 Dare Conference, Ghent (screening)
A portion of Citation City previewed at London’s Cafe Oto on 9 December 2014 then World Premiered in full at transmediale, Berlin on 29 January 2015. It’s UK Premiere was at Flatpack Film Festival on 28 March 2015, and London Premiere at Whitechapel Gallery on 26 September 2015 as part of the Walter Benjamin Now Symposium.
Citation City education/teaching pack PDF download: citation city teaching pack We thought it may be useful to make a document explaining the process of making this work. This pdf is intended as a companion to the audiovisual work, giving examples of the process one might undertake to create new work when sourcing from a large media database. This particular example relates to moving image and musical composition, but the methods can translate to other platforms that use composition, directing, editing, creative narratives and story telling.
Vicki Bennett/People Like Us 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 Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, The Barbican, Centro de Cultura Digital, V&A, Sydney Opera House, Royal Albert Hall, Pompidou Centre, Venice Biennale, Maxxi and Sonar, and performed radio sessions for John Peel and Mixing It. The ongoing sound art radio show ‘DO or DIY’ on WFMU has had over a million “listen again” downloads. since 2003. The People Like Us back catalogue is available for free download hosted by UbuWeb. Longer Biography Filmography Exhibitions and Editions Selected Performances and Screenings Commissions and Awards Discography https://peoplelikeus.org/2014/artist-statement-for-people-like-us/
Here’s a full length video of possibly the best performance of Notations so far.
This time around by Jason Willett, People Like Us & M.C.Schmidt
at Monty Hall, WFMU – 13 September 2014
View the rehearsal to this same show here: vimeo.com/peoplelikeus/montyrehearsal
High Zero Festival of Improvised Experimental Music
The Theatre Project, Baltimore 19 Sept 2014 John Kilduff (multitasking, live art) | Vicki Bennett (sample collage) | Bob Wagner (percussion, friction) | Compere M.C. Schmidt
Includes the auction of the painting and winner Dan Deacon! Audio mixdown from multitrack desk recording by Vicki Bennett Filming (apart from the middle section) by Peter Knight
Our paperback/pdf book The Fundamental Questions (Gregor Weichbrodt/Vicki Bennett) was read by a number of poets at the event Xing The Line on 19 August 2014 at The Apple Tree, Clerkenwell, London. We filmed the mass reading – here it is:
“The Fundamental Questions” is now also available in full for free as a pdf.
14 February – 7 March 2014 (Preview 13 February 5-7pm)
Leeds College of Art Blenheim Walk, Leeds, UK
Shutter
Shutter is a new audio-visual exhibition by film and sound collagist Vicki Bennett that enables us to peer into a parallel cinematic world that exists between the edits, when we are not looking at the screen. http://www.leeds-artexhibitions.co.uk/?p=1180 The exhibition consists of three a/v video works (one projected and two on video monitors) and nine prints. There is also an edition of 20 of two of these prints.
“The Big Sleep” [2014] Video (19 mins, 12 secs)
Sleep deficient actors drift in and out of consciousness.
“Blink” [2014] Video (1 hour, 35 mins, 39 secs)
Every frame missed while watching A Nightmare on Elm Street.
“Dreaming” [2011] Video (4 mins, 16 secs)
Nine 12×12 inch B/W and Colour Giclee Prints
VICKI BENNETT “SHUTTER”
“Shutter” is a new audio-visual exhibition that enables us to peer into a parallel cinematic world that exists between the edits, when we are not looking at the screen.
Actors aren’t seen to rest a lot in films, considering people on average sleep 8 hours a day. More often than not, feature films contain a stream of attention-grabbing imagery and noise, and if the mood does slow down there is still dialogue, music and other distractions.
In feature films we don’t see the real-time flow of everyday life, we don’t see the actors queuing, watching TV, reading a book, sleeping. Nor do we witness the mundane – we see the James Bond car chase but no stopping off to eat a panini. Reality can be brought back into film by revealing actors in their normal, uneventful moments. Actors need to sleep as well. Where do they go after a film has ended? What do we miss when we blink while watching a movie? What is it really like on the other side of the screen? This exhibition addresses these subjects and attempts to take us to these places.
Since 1991 Vicki Bennett has been working across the field of audio-visual collage, and is recognized 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 have previously shown work at Tate Modern, The Barbican, Centro de Cultura Digital, Maxxi and Sonar, and performed radio sessions for John Peel and Mixing It. In 2006 Vicki was the first artist to be given unrestricted access to the entire BBC Archive. The ongoing sound art radio show ‘DO or DIY’ on WFMU has had over a million “listen again” downloads since 2003. The People Like Us back catalogue is available for free download hosted by UbuWeb. https://peoplelikeus.org/category/biography/
Here’s an entertaining, informative (we hope) one-hour video travelogue of our recent Notations Tour.
Featuring performers Bill Orcutt, Rhodri Davies, M.C. Schmidt, Philip Jeck, Jaap Blonk, Steve Noble, Wobbly, Mark Sanders, Tomomi Adachi and Jennifer Walshe. Oh, and People Like Us. Also, tour producers Richard Whitelaw and Lee Etherington make appearances.
Thanks to those that attended Manchester NOTATIONS at Kraak on 14 Nov 2013 – here are two small edits from the evening with M.C. Schmidt, Jennifer Walshe and Wobbly. Thanks to Tusk and Sound & Music!