Cover Versions is a group show curated by brothers Anthony and Graham Dolphin exploring notions of the original and its copies, echoes, and mutations in art, film and music. An original artwork is often used as the starting point of new creative acts. It can be re-purposed, subverted and reclaimed by artists, musicians, and fans. The exhibition addresses concepts of ownership, fandom and audience, authenticity, and the economic and cultural values that site and shape them.
The exhibition features internationally acclaimed artists, musicians and film makers from the UK, the USA, Australia, Japan, and Austria with newly commissioned work alongside key examples of their established practice.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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)
Online and Brussels Mill, Belgium 29|04|2021 – 02|05|2021
Four day festival in Brussels taking its name from radio pioneer Daphne Oram. The festival will also broadcast audio via its website regardless. Featuring talks, concerts and workshops from People Like Us, Catherine Lamb, Daphne Oram, Farida Amadou, Lucretia Dalt, Goodiepal & Pals, Áine O’Dwyer, Jessica Ekomane, Jonáš Gruska and Lukas De Clerck. Online and Brussels Mill, 29 April–2 May.
Here’s an interview conducted by Henry Andersen of Oscillation Festival Vicki Bennett about process.
People Like Us will have a special one hour audio mix broadcast on the radio, and you can watch The Mirror online via their website, for the entirety of the festival.
People Like Us host Aloha Fridays Friday, January 1st, 2021, 11am – 2pm on Aloha Fridays radio show (on Sheena’s Jungle Room Stream) Live Playlist: https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/99690 Join People Like Us who are hosting Aloha Fridays radio show for one week only… playing three hours of NICE THINGS on WFMU’s alt stream Sheena’s Jungle Room.
