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

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.

People Like Us interview in The Wire about radio

The collage artist also known as People Like Us talks about her beginnings in experimental radio broadcasting in the second instalment of The Wire’s oral histories series.

Vicki Bennett’s People Like Us began life as a three hour radio show on Brighton’s Festival Radio in 1990 called Gobstopper. She went on to release around 20 solo albums based on her radio sound collages, but after a decade working primarily with sound, has increasingly worked with film and images. She has recently produced collage and split screen work, including 2013’s touring film and performance piece Notations, a film used as a score for improvising musicians.

An advocate of open digital distribution, Bennett’s entire back catalogue is available for download via UbuWeb, and she is also the host of long-running radio show DO or DIY on WFMU. She has collaborated extensively with Ergo Phizmiz, Negativland’s Don Joyce, Wobbly and Kenneth Goldsmith, and many others.

Listen to the interview here:
http://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/in-conversation/oral-histories_vicki-bennett

Or download the file as an mp3:
http://www.thewire.co.uk/download//2014/05/02/The_Wire_Oral_Histories_-_Vicki_Bennett_aka_People_Like_Us_.mp3