Welcome to the only official site for People Like Us and Vicki Bennett
We’re very pleased to let you know that we’ll be returning to perform at Open Ears Festival in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.
Friday 3 June 2022
10:00PM at THEMUSEUM, 10 King Street West, Kitchener, ON N2G 1A3
All info you need is here: https://openears.ca/
We are very pleased to announce that Gone, Gone Beyond will be screening in it’s home town San Francisco in May 2022 at Gray Area. We say it’s the “home town” because although we live in London, the piece was originally commissioned by Recombinant Media Labs for CineChamber, the structure which we then built a replica of in 2021 and have existing in the UK.
TICKETS: https://grayarea.org/gonegonebeyond/
All press inquiries should go to Gray Area, and if you have questions for People Like Us or Gone, Gone Beyond you can directly ask us.
Gone, Gone Beyond will screen at 6.30pm and 8.30pm each night.
On the 25th there will be an artist talk followed by one screening – tickets can be bought combined or separately: https://grayarea.org/event/vicki-bennett/
SCREENING DATES:
12, 13, 14, 19, 20 & 21 May 2022 (two screenings per night)
—- these screenings will be introduced by Naut Humon, original commissioner of Gone, Gone Beyond and creator of the CineChamber that houses our work.
25, 26 & 27 May 2022 (two screenings per night)
—- we will be present for these screenings and therefore will introduce the the 26th/27th, and it will be an artist presentation on the 25th.
All screenings are at Gray Area, Grand Theater, 2665 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110 | info@grayarea.org | 415.843.1423
Covid policy: Full vaccination (no booster) | Masks strongly encouraged but not required
A theatrical screening of The Mirror by People Like Us will be part of Cover Versions, a group exhibition in Sunderland, UK:
A Group Exhibition Curated by Anthony & Graham Dolphin
4 April – 1 May 2022
Abject Gallery, 27 Fawcett Street, Sunderland, SR1 1RE, UK
Preview: 1 April 18:00–22:00
Opening times: Wednesday – Saturday 11:00–16:00
Sheehan Gallery, Walla Walla, USA | 1 February – 8 April 2022
Free and open to the public, located in Olin Hall on Whitman College campus.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Friday 12-5 PM, Saturday-Sunday 12-4 PM, or by appointment. whitman.edu/sheehan
This solo exhibition of Vicki Bennett (aka People Like Us) follows a 30 year journey into immersive media, covering music, radio, text-based art and moving image. Showcasing hundreds of hours of audiovisual collage, both solo and with collaborators. To coincide with the exhibition is a visit from the artist with a series of screenings, artist presentations and radio collaborations in March 2022 on site.
Thursday 3 March 2022
Film Screening of Nothing Can Turn into a Void with Q & A
Kimball Auditorium | 5.30 PM (note the change of time)
Friday 4 March 2022
Performance by Negativland + Sue-C | Theatrical Film Screening of The Mirror by People Like Us | + support
Young Ballroom | 7 PM
Saturday 5 March 2022
People Like Us & Negativland on the Radio (on the air, no public audience)
KWCW 90.5 | 8 – 10:30 PM Listen Live
DO or DIY with People Like Us will fill in for Station Manager Ken on WFMU on 22nd December 2021. NY time 9am to Noon, that’s 2pm to 5pm UK Time. Listen live locally on the radio in the tri-state area of NY, or online at WFMU.org
Follow our live accuplaylist and comments while the show is on.
We regret to tell you that we’ve had to cancel performing at Keroxen on 4th December 2021 because of pandemic/travel related issues. We hope to be able to do this when the situation is safer and easier.
“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 (Vicki Bennett), which breaks the rectangle, smashing the thin screen into tiny fragments, looking beyond the frame, climbing through to see what’s behind.
The initial work was commissioned by Naut Humon, the founder of immersive theatre project RML CineChamber, Gone, Gone Beyond is a 10 screen / 6 or 8 speaker piece, with seamless wrap around projection and surround sound where the audience sit inside. It comprises of movie and musical compositions, animated and sample-based/musique concrète collage juxtaposed with content filmed/recorded by the artist, all sewn together in a giant patchwork. Pull on a thread and watch whole new narratives expand and unravel all at once on a 360º palette. The project has been a work in progress since 2017, and showed for the first time in Autumn 2021 in feature length format.
The work’s title and underlying concepts come from the Heart Sutra, a key Buddhist text, describing how all phenomena are empty in form yet ultimately interconnected. The last lines of the Heart Sutra say ‘gate gate pāragate pārasamgate bodhi svāhā’, which means “gone, gone beyond, gone beyond that a bit more, and then beyond that a bit further”. This reflects perfectly the action of going beyond the frame to where there are no edges to the narrative – just emptiness.
In this 360º format, time and space becomes elasticated, with the use of collaged video furthering the reflection on how information comes to us as fragments and that nothing is fixed. A new narrative-thread is woven in the mind of each viewer every time the work is seen, limited only to that exact time and space – just as the Heart Sutra reminds us that the only constant is change, and everything is related with no fixed source.
The initial in-process tester movie screened in San Francisco in October 2017 at RML’s own Recombinant Festival at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. Since then the work has been in development, with a private screening event in April 2019 Goldsmiths SIML for potential partners. The work will screen at nyMusikk, Oslo; SPILL Festival, Ipswich; Attenborough Centre (ACCA), Brighton; and London Barbican, in Autumn 2021. Version 2 of GGB screened in San Francisco’s Gray Area in May 2022 to great critical acclaim.
PAST:
SAN FRANCISCO Gray Area
12-27 May 2022 https://grayarea.org/gonegonebeyond/
OSLO Black Box Teater present KinoKammer with nyMusikk
13-16 October 2021 https://blackbox.no/en/e5115e56-702e-41a2-badb-cb21d1626082/
IPSWICH DanceEast as part of SPILL FESTIVAL
28-30 October 2021 https://www.danceeast.co.uk/performances/gone-gone-beyond-au21/
BRIGHTON Attenborough Centre (ACCA)
4-6 November 2021 https://www.attenboroughcentre.com/events/4028/gone-gone-beyond/
LONDON Barbican Centre
10-13 November 2021 https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2021/event/people-like-us-gone-gone-beyond
A series of three talks programmed by The Wire magazine looking at different strategies and systems for making music and organising sound.
Wed 20 October 2021 | 18.45 – 20.30 | In person £8
Lancaster Rooms, New Wing & Online
An in person event from Somerset House. If you are unable to join us on the evening, a recording will be archived and available to view via a ticketed link.
https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/vicki-bennett-opening-doors
This in person event will also be streamed live from Somerset House. If you are unable to join us on the evening, a recording will be archived and available to view via a ticketed link. Music By Any Means has been designed to show how anything can become music, from objects to actions, archives to rituals, and how anyone can make it, regardless of any previous musical experience or ability. In the process of demystifying the processes of sound organisation and music making, the series will illuminate other ways of being in the world through sound, bypassing existing orthodoxies to enable and empower new creative activity.
The talks, which will include demonstrations and performances, will be presented by O YAMA O (Rie Nakajima and Keiko Yamamoto), People Like Us (Vicki Bennett), and Elaine Mitchener; all artists who use aspects of film, theatre, performance, visual art and other practices to inform and develop new and distinctive approaches to making music and organising sound. Music By Any Means will be available to audiences both onsite and online, with each event broadcast live from Somerset House Studios.
Vicki Bennett explores the processes of making audiovisual content, working with archives and found footage.
Using collage as a compositional tool opens up endless opportunities to create and experience results that are more than the sum of their parts, opening doors (and windows) to let light in and move beyond limited and repetitive ways of creative thinking.
In this talk, Vicki Bennett discusses and demonstrates her creative process making audio-visual content, working with archives and found footage, showing how she sources and organises this material into finished works which break the rectangle, smashing the thin screen into tiny fragments, looking beyond the frame, climbing through to see what’s behind. The talk will be followed by a Q&A session.
People Like Us will guest on Jon Wright‘s show on BBC Radio Suffolk on Monday 12 July 2021 – in a segment called SPILL Spins – selecting 4 significant tracks and talking about them. We will be on after 7pm (UK time). “SPILL” is SPILL Festival, who are partnering with the BBC on this project, pending an announcement very soon!
LISTEN : https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09m8qmm
Afterwards it will post as a stand alone programme up for 30 days.
LISTEN HERE:
bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p09p5hlb
CAFE OTO, LONDON
TUESDAY 16 NOVEMBER 2021, 7.30PM
£16 DOOR | £14 ADVANCE | £8 MEMBERS
An evening hosted by Vicki Bennett (People Like Us), featuring live performances from Porest, Gwilly Edmondez, Irene Moon, Ergo Phizmiz and People Like Us.
Get tickets well in advance here because Cafe OTO gigs are selling out quickly.
https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/30-years-of-people-like-us/
The People Like Us radio show DO or DIY returns to WFMU for the 2021 Summer Schedule starting Monday 7 June, every Monday night right through to September – 7pm EDT (that’s midnight Monday evening UK). https://wfmu.org/peoplelikeus
20 May 2021 11.59PM PST (that’s 8AM UK 21 May): PLU interviewed by Jon Leidecker on Over The Edge on KPFA radio: https://kpfa.org/program/over-the-edge/
Hour 1 Vicki and Jon in conversation (recorded May 2021)
Hour 2 Live Session with PLU, Wobbly and Don Joyce on Over The Edge, KPFA (2002) Hour 3 Live Session with PLU, Wobbly, Irene Moon and The Evolution Control Committee on WFMU (2002)
