Welcome to the only official site for People Like Us and Vicki Bennett
Some People Like Us films will screen at Test Dept‘s Assembly of Disturbance Festival at Red Gallery, London on the evenings of 6th and 7th October 2017.
Red Gallery
Assembly of Disturbance full program (may not include this listing but it’s happening!)
People Like Us (Vicki) and Wobbly (Jon Leidecker) paid an impromptu visit to KALX in Berkeley on 3 October 2017 to go on Carnacki‘s radio show. Here is the 3 hour conversation about Recombinant Festival, immersive media, collaborations, radio and vaporwave.
Citation City is now retired as a live performance. However, we are now making it available as a stand-alone movie to be screened at cinemas. The first screening of this type will be a special 20-minute edit made for Other Cinema in San Francisco on 7 October 2017. Also on the bill some short films, Zoom from Consequences (One Thing Leads To Another), our Matmos Ultimate Care video, and the trailer for Gone, Gone Beyond which premieres a few streets away next week at Gray Area.
http://www.othercinema.com/calendar/index.html
Vicki dropped by Hearty White‘s show Miracle Nutrition on WFMU on 7 September 2017 for a chat about… well we don’t know, but it was fun.
Show archive
Since 1991 British artist Vicki Bennett has been working across the field of audio-visual collage, repurposing pre-existing footage to craft audio and video collages with an equally dark and witty take on popular culture. She sees collage as folk art sourced from the palette of contemporary media and technology, with all of the sharing and cross-referencing incumbent to a populist form. Using collage as a compositional tool, Vicki Bennett opens up endless opportunities to experience results that are more than the sum of the parts. Embedded in her work is the premise that all is interconnected and that claiming ownership of an “original” or isolated concept is both preposterous and redundant.
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.
ALL COMMISSION ENQUIRIES OR BOOKINGS FOR GONE, GONE BEYOND ARE TO BE DONE DIRECTLY WITH US THROUGH OUR CONTACT PAGE.
Longer Biography
Filmography
Exhibitions and Editions
Selected Performances and Screenings
Commissions and Awards
People Like Us on bandcamp
People Like Us on Patreon
Discography
Working under the moniker People Like Us, artist Vicki Bennett has been creating and distributing audio-visual work across multiple platforms since 1992. Her extensive output spans CD, DVD and vinyl releases, radio broadcasts, live performances, gallery installations, 360° immersive environments and online media. Vicki treats collage as a form of contemporary folk art—rooted in mass media and technology—championing its democratic, shared nature. Central to her work is the belief that everything is interconnected, rendering the notion of artistic ownership or originality both absurd and unnecessary. Through the act of collage, she opens up expansive, unexpected outcomes that exceed the sum of their parts.
Since 2002, the majority of the People Like Us back catalogue has been freely accessible online. Vicki is an advocate of the gift economy, highlighting that for many artists, free self-distribution can generate greater reach and impact than traditional publishing channels. This approach alleviates the pressures of production costs, while ensuring long-term availability. The discography and filmography of People Like Us are generously hosted by UbuWeb.
Over her career, Vicki has produced over 50 audio recordings and more than 40 video works, released on labels including Illegal Art, Rough Trade, Soleilmoon Recordings, Discrepant, Sonic Arts Network and Touch. Her long-running radio show DO or DIY has been broadcast on New York’s fiercely independent WFMU since 2003. Her video work has been shown internationally at venues such as Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, BFI, Barbican, ICA, V&A, Centre Pompidou (Paris), Sonar (Barcelona), MAXXI (Rome), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and Centro de Cultura Digital (Mexico City). Works have also been broadcast on Channel 4 and featured in sessions for John Peel and Mixing It.
People Like Us has been commissioned by organisations including Arts Council England, Barbican, ACCA, BBC, WDR, Deutschlandradio, PRS Foundation, a-n, Great North Run, Sound and Music, Animate Projects, AV Festival, RML, Sonic Arts Network, Forma, LUX and Lovebytes.
Vicki has held seven solo exhibitions and participated in over 20 group shows across prominent international venues, including the Venice Biennale, MAXXI (Rome), HMKV (Dortmund), Hatton Gallery (Newcastle), Sheehan Gallery (Walla Walla), La Scatola Gallery (London), alt.gallery (Newcastle), Vitrine (London), Engramme (Quebec), University of Greenwich Galleries, Edinburgh Printmakers, Pallant House (Chichester), Millennium Gallery (Sheffield), and Hallwalls (New York), among others.
Her work has been discussed in numerous publications such as Sounds Like Silence – 4’33’’ Today (Spectre Books), The Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, Cutting Across Media (Duke University Press), The Fundamentals of Sonic Art and Design, Incredible Machines, Sensations of History (University of Minnesota Press), and Here To Go – Art, Counter-Culture and the Esoteric. She has also contributed to The Wire, including a feature in their “Collateral Damage” column (2012), and has entire chapters devoted to her in Kenneth Goldsmith’s Duchamp Is My Lawyer (Columbia University Press) and Carl Abrahamsson’s Different People (Trapart, 2021).
People Like Us has been reviewed or profiled in The Wire, Rolling Stone, Frieze, The Guardian, NME, Time Out, Sight & Sound, Film Comment, The Scotsman, The Independent, BBC Online, Bizarre, Record Collector, Metro, XLR8R, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Baltimore City Paper, and more. Interviews include The Observer, Filmmaker Magazine, Found Footage Magazine, Wired, a-n Magazine, RadioWeb MACBA, Sound and Music, and multiple features in The Wire.
Her radio interviews include Late Junction, Soundproof (ABC), WDR 3 Open Sounds, Cutting Up The Cut Up (BBC Radio 4), PM and Twenty Minutes (BBC Radio 3), and North by Southwest (British Council).
She has also curated a variety of events and publications, including First Person, Fourth Wall (2020), Optimized! (WFMU, 2016), Concert of Collage (Encounters Festival, 2015), Radio Boredcast (AV Festival, 2012), and Nothing is New, Everything is Permitted (2010).
Notable works include Notations, a touring film for live improvisation (TUSK/Sound and Music, 2013); two films for Channel 4’s Random Acts; Citation City (2015), an AV performance inspired by Walter Benjamin; Nothing Can Turn Into A Void, a documentary (2015); No One Is An Island (WDR, 2016); and The Mirror (2018), an AV performance and album ranked No.8 in The Wire’s Albums of the Year. Vicki also produced video content for The The’s 2018 comeback tour, and was part of the New Voices programme from Sound and Music, and received an a-n Artist Bursary in 2019. Her radio commission I Can Fly aired on WDR in 2020.
In 2020, she premiered two new works at her solo exhibition First Person, Fourth Wall, as Hallwalls Artist in Residence (HARP). The following year saw the touring of Gone, Gone Beyond, an immersive multi-screen and multi-speaker AV installation across venues including nyMusikk Oslo, SPILL Festival, ACCA Brighton, and London’s Barbican.
In 2022, she presented MIND MAPS: The Art of Vicki Bennett at Sheehan Gallery (USA) and Orfeó Lleidatà (Spain), and Gone, Gone Beyond was screened at Gray Area, San Francisco. Her 22-hour radio piece 108 aired via Radio Arts Zone, and she performed with Ergo Phizmiz and Gwilly Edmondez at The Wire‘s 40th Anniversary. She also produced a new radio work Changing Your Mind for Deutschlandradio and a mixtape for BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction. The lathe-cut vinyl Rhapsody in Glue (with Ergo Phizmiz) was released in November 2022.
In 2023, she launched a successful IndieGoGo campaign for the new live AV performance and album The Library of Babel, premiering at a three-day residency at Café OTO, London. A retrospective 2-CD set Sharity! Selected Works of People Like Us followed in April.
In 2024, People Like Us released a new album COPIA, created music videos for The The, Soft Cell and Marc Almond, and debuted a widescreen AV installation Mise en Abyme at Museu de Aveiro/Santa Joana in Portugal.
So far in 2025, People Like Us continues creating new films for Soft Cell’s live performances, adding “Torch” and “Purple Zone”, and “Ghost Rider” by Soft Cell with JG Thirlwell. Also she has made 2 films for the new Soft Pink Truth album. Vicki is also collaborating with Kevin Hamilton (University of Illinois) on a text-based media project.
ALL COMMISSION ENQUIRIES OR BOOKINGS FOR GONE, GONE BEYOND ARE TO BE MADE DIRECTLY WITH US THROUGH OUR CONTACT PAGE.
Shorter Bio – Artist Statement
Filmography
Exhibitions and Editions
Selected Performances and Screenings
Commissions and Awards
Talks, Lectures
Discography
People Like Us on bandcamp
The final DO or DIY with People Like Us on WFMU of the season will be on Monday 4 September 2017, and as has been a little bit of a tradition we will accompany it with a “best of” album length download. Listen live at 6-7pm on WFMU and join in the live playlist and comments.
We are very pleased to let you know that we have another release on the wonderful label Discrepant. Brave new old work by Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us. A journey into her early radio experiments with some dating back 20 years!
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, and after a decade working primarily with sound, has increasingly worked with film and images. She has recently produced collage and multi-screen, multi-speaker work, including 2013’s touring film and performance piece Notations, a film used as a score for improvising musicians, and Gone, Gone Beyond (2017++), a 10 screen, 8 speaker immersive cinema work for Recombinant Media Lab’s CineChamber.
Continue reading “Early Radio Works Vol. I – New Cassette Release”People Like Us have a collection of prints currently exhibiting at Nabi in Los Angeles until the end of September 2017. This is a joint exhibition with Peter Knight, and you can purchase the prints and grab some excellent Korean food while you’re at it!
Nabi
4632 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 16
Los Angeles, CA 90029
restaurantnabi AT gmail.com
(323) 986-0107
Hours:
Every Day Except Tuesday
11am – 7pm
Inside the Union Discount Swapmeet. Plenty of free parking off Santa Monica.
Metro: Vermont/Santa Monica stop
Wednesday 20 September, 2017
Doors 8:00pm
Oliver Coates: 8.15pm People Like Us: 9:15pm
Adults £10 | Students £8 | On the Door £12
People Like Us will perform at The Attenborough Centre For The Creative Arts at the University in Falmer, Brighton as part of Brighton Digital Festival.
This audiovisual concert commemorates the 25th year of People Like Us publishing work, featuring highlighted excerpts from the previous four a/v performances of People Like Us.
https://www.attenboroughcentre.com/events/878/oliver-coates-people-like-us/
Since Autumn 2003 People Like Us have been doing a weekly show on WFMU, called DO or DIY. The aim of the show is to mix highbrow with lowbrow to challenge whether there is much difference. Archived playlists of at least 200 shows from 2003 to the present day can be found at www.wfmu.org/peoplelikeus
Vicki Bennett also curated/programmed RADIO BOREDCAST in Winter 2011/Spring 2012. It was first broadcast on basic.fm and now is archived at WFMU. More recently, Vicki Bennett has programmed OPTIMIZED!, a week-long expanded radio stream on WFMU 6-10 June 2016.
Subscribe to the Podcast of DO or DIY by clicking here – it will prompt your iTunes program to open, where you will receive the podcasts.
About DO or DIY
DO or DIY is a freeform sound art radio show broadcast weekly by Vicki Bennett (project name People Like Us) on WFMU.
The philosophy behind the show is simple. That within the realms of avant-garde and experimental sound art the goalposts defining “accessible” and “inaccessible” are constantly moving. As the radar rises and dips, fragments and shards of underground creations unearth, and popular culture and artist resonate, shifting shapes accordingly with one another in reflections of changing spotlights.
The avant-garde and popular culture rely on each other’s energy. People Like Us collage both “hard to listen” works and popular listening matter, showing that in fact, beyond the restrictions of genre, genre IS the restriction and it is possible to like many kinds of art and music. The key is finding the door – DO or DIY leads the way into new and unusual realms of listening and hope to show the way in.
Each show consists of collages made of sound works from the 20th and 21st century, often layered and looped many times over, resulting in an album type effect on each show.
The pun “All Things Avant-Retard”, a rhyme with “All Things Avant-Garde” literally means All Things Forward-Backwards. Essentially by using sonic extremes and apparent opposites we find some sort of central point or balanced perspective on music and sound.
Suggested Listening: DO or DIY fill in for Ken.
New Free WFMU iPhone/iPod Touch app!
Also, if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch we are also pleased to announce that you can listen to not only the regular WFMU stream on the move at a glorious 128k, but also all of our special streams, recent DJ show archives and DJ podcasts including all of DO or DIY!
You can download the much improved updated free WFMU app right here.
Monday, July 17th, 6pm – 7pm EST
on DO or DIY with People Like Us on WFMU
http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/73648
Gwilly Edmondez is all over the place yet usually in the wrong place at the right time. As an improvisor and recording artist he tries to play as often as possible with anyone who’s game, or solo if no one is about. What he uses mostly is his voice, but is always searching for things to go with it, like samples, tapes and beats. Anything could happen, which is why Gwilly prefers to act at the very fringes of proper. He has collaborated with all sorts of people but his primary non-solo projects at the moment are YEAH YOU (with Elvin Brandhi), Kleevex (with Faye MacCalman) and Impossibility Knox (with Odie Ji Ghast and sometimes THF Drenching).