Duchamp Is My Lawyer The Polemics, Pragmatics, and Poetics of UbuWeb Kenneth Goldsmith Columbia University Press
Really honoured to be in our good friend Kenneth Goldsmith’s book, he gave us a whole chapter. Click on the link below to find out more and purchase one. Or DOWNLOAD! Review here.
“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.
People Like Us will perform The Mirror at Venice Biennale on 9 May 2019 at 9.30pm after the opening reception at the following, as well as being part of the UbuWeb cinema programme:
Opening Reception: May 9th, 2019. From 7:30 pm to 11 pm. Live performance by People Like Us from 9:30 pm.
Cinema program: every day from 6 pm to 7 pm, closed on Monday Works by: Peggy Ahwesh, Johanna Bruckner, Alex Da Corte, Cheryl Donegan, Shadi Habib Allah, Bek Hyunjin, Lev Manovich, Alix Pearlstein, People Like Us, Christine Rebet, Sabrina Röthlisberger, Sara Sackner, Leah Singer, Stan VanDerBeek, Jennifer West, Jordan Wolfson.
Breaking news: Hillary visits the exhibition 🙂 (September 2019)
Despar Teatro Italia is by day a Spar Supermarket
HILLARY: The Hillary Clinton Emails is a project by The Internet Saga and Zuecca Projects Main sponsor: Despar Aspiag Service With the collaboration of Circuitozero, The Bauers, Dipartimento di Filosofia e Beni Culturali – Università Ca’ Foscari. Media partner: My Art Guides, Le Confort Moderne. Website by M-J-STUDIO
Happy to say Vicki Bennett is one of the recipients of the a-n Artist Bursaries 2019 – more about this later in the year.
162 artists based throughout the UK have been awarded a share of £200,000 to fund their professional development in the latest round of a-n Artist Bursaries.
a-n Artist members were invited to apply for bursaries up to £1,500 to fund self-generated activities such as research, training, travel, community projects, learning new skills or building networks.
An ambitious, one-of-a-kind annual programme that supports artists at a crucial time in their practice, the a-n bursary programme received a record 853 applications this year.
The bursaries aim to be ‘light touch’, requiring artists to complete a simple application detailing what the money will be used for and why it is crucial.
Julie Lomax, a-n CEO and bursaries selection panel member, said: “The standard this year was really high, making the selection very tough. We are thrilled to be able to support so many artists with such a diverse range of projects. Personalised development opportunities like this are vital.”
The bursaries will fund a range of new artist-initiated projects spanning themes such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence, climate change, zines, cultural history and identity. Artists also applied to attend conferences or residencies around the world, develop their socially engaged practice, and grow their networks with peers and mentors.
The selection panel also included a-n Artists Council member Binita Walia, independent curator Lucy Day and successful 2018 bursary recipient Owen Parry.
Parry said: “It was a privilege to be part of the selection process and see all the different projects artists want to fund. As an artist with experience of funding from this bursary programme, I could directly contribute to the process of selecting individuals that were most likely to benefit.”
We broadcast an hour-long Stuart Maconie Freak Zone Playlistfor BBC 6 Music on 24 February 2019 at 00:00 (that’s Midnight Saturday night/Sunday morning) UK time. Iit will be archived on the Freak Zone Playlist page for a few weeks after.
On Saturday 19 January 2019 22:15 (UK) on BBC RADIO 3 Vicki will be guesting on Hear and Now, presented by Robert Worby. She will be talking about her work, then the show will air a recording of the full 35 minute People Like Us concert The Mirror, which was performed at London’s Cafe Oto in Summer 2018. Broadcast then archived for a few weeks: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00022k6
Vicki and Anne Hilde Neset on Late Junction playing a track from The Mirror, then two favourite sounds – from Tati’s PlayTime and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks SE3E08 (radio station scene)
We’re pleased to announce that we are being supported by Sound and Music for two years as one of the artists in New Voices 2018:
Sound and Music is delighted to announce the 15 composers and creative artists who will be its 2018 New Voices, and the first group to go through this brand new artist development programme.
New Voices 2018 are: Alex Ho, Andy Ingamells, Bex Burch, Daniel McBride, David Austin Grey, Edmund Hunt, Eska Mtungwazi, Eunseog Lee, Gugak Sounds, Johnny Hunter, Liz Johnson, Marcus Joseph, Stuart Brown, Supriya Nagarajan and Vicki Bennett.
Congratulations to our New Voices 2018! These fifteen are creating work across a very broad range of musical genres but they share a deep commitment to critical engagement with their practice. All fifteen New Voices want to make changes to, and effect development within, their work. They are learners who cultivate their craft and we hope to be worthy of the trust they have placed in us to work alongside them.
New Voices is Sound and Music’s major Composer Development programme, lasting 18 months with an annual intake. It draws on the models from our previous Embedded, Portfolio and Pathways programmes, and on the partnerships and expertise nurtured through these schemes. Find out more here.
Tom Comitta recently published the book Airport Novella, which he states was influenced by the People Like Us a/v piece “DrivingFlyingRisingFalling.” We can see the influence and know that our collation approach is very similar to a lot of writers, which in turn inspires us in the direction of wanting to work more with text as a primary output.
