An extended, taking-a-line-for-a-walk remix of People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz “In the Waking”, created for one of the opening concerts of King’s Place, London in the late 2000s. The song, a lullaby of a summer place, was created through the Codpaste podcast sessions which led to the collaborative album “Rhapsody in Glue”, and was later released as a 7″ on Touch. This unreleased version lets the song twirl off into a gentle polyphonic fantasia.
People Like Us has made a brand new 22 HOUR radio piece for Radio Art Zone, a radio art project by Radio ARA and Mobile Radio for the European Capital of Culture Esch2022
“Well, you know how I adjusted to that problem of the radio in the environment – very much as the primitive people adjusted to the animals which frightened them, and which probably as you say, were intrusions, they drew pictures of them on their caves. And so I simply made a piece using radios. Now, whenever I hear radios, even a single one, not just twelve at a time…I think, well, they’re just playing my piece!” – John Cage (and Morton Feldman in Conversation, WBAI, NYC (1967))
In Buddhism, according to Bhante Gunaratana this number is reached by multiplying the senses smell, touch, taste, hearing, sight, and consciousness by whether they are painful, pleasant or neutral, and then again by whether these are internally generated or externally occurring, and yet again by past, present and future, finally we get 108 feelings. 6 × 3 × 2 × 3 = 108.
Radio Art Zone is a 100-day radio art station for Esch2022, which will be broadcast in the south of Luxembourg by Radio ARA on 87.8 FM. It will also be live-streamed for a worldwide audience and transmitted by a network of international partners.
The Radio Art Zone schedule consists of two daily programmes: newly-commissioned 22-hour radio productions created by more than 100 international and local artists, and 2-hour live shows from kitchens in the community.
Radio Art Zone is on air from 18th June — 25th September 2022
A programme of film shorts by People Like Us Q&A Vicki Bennett & Emily Bick (The Wire) Live performance to a new film score by People Like Us with Gwilly Edmondez & Ergo Phizmiz
THE WIRE 40: An Evening with People Like Us @The Cube Microplex (01/07)
Perhaps better known for her audio work, the opening night of The Wire’s 40th birthday celebrations focused on Vicki Bennett’s (aka People Like Us) films.
The evening started with an overview of the artist’s work including maximalist explosions of old industrial documentaries, tongue in cheek pop culture mashups, and recent immersive experiences. For me the extracts of longer works didn’t work so well, never having enough time to fully get into what was going on, but many of the short films were brilliant – from the hilarious mashup of The Hills Are Alive from Sound of Music and This Is The End from Apocalypse Now (The Sound of the End of Music), to the really quite moving combination of depictions of the moon in early experimental and comedy films, with music by Ergo Phizmiz (Moon). What was surprising and delightful was the lack of any cynicism – throughout, Bennett celebrated films from commercials to classics, with an obvious love of the moving image, and the people who made them.
The night really started to come alive with the Q&A with Bennett. The way she talked about her work confirmed her genuine joy in working with existing material. ‘Films want to be friends,’ she replied to questions about how she got things to fit so well together. ‘You do one thing for a long time and magic happens.’
Crowning the evening was a new work, with live performance by Bennett, Ergo Phizmiz and Gwilly Edmondez. It fulfilled the promise teased in the earlier clips, and showed the excellence of Bennett’s work when allowed the space to stretch out, by turns joyous and strange and beguiling. It seemed almost like a celebration of her own career, with clips returning to repeated motifs from earlier work; corridors and cameras, doorways and dreams. As a final encapsulation of the magic Bennett talked of we saw a satanic ritual mixed with a Dadaist poetry exercise; art as a demonic summoning, drawing something from the ether and binding it to yourself.
For this evening Bennett has put together a programme of her rarely-seen short films from the current century. The films will be followed by a discussion between the artist and Wire Deputy Editor Emily Bick, and then the premiere live performance to a new specially-made film score by PLU by the trio of Bennett, Gwilly Edmondez and Ergo Phizmiz.
Emily Bick is Deputy Editor at The Wire magazine.
Gwilly Edmondez is a performer whose primary aesthetic is Wild Pop, active both solo and in numerous collaborations. As Gustav Thomas he is one half of the duo YEAH YOU with Elvin Brandhi. Originally from Wales, he is mostly based in the North East where he has been on the staff of the music department of Newcastle University since 2004.
Ergo Phizmiz is a composer, writer, collagist, radio playwright, opera designer and director, who has created a vast body of work across media since 2000. They are currently designing moving images for The Rake’s Progress at the Royal Academy of Music, and working on the opera Adapting Don Quixote as a PhD at the University of Bristol.
The Wire 40 @ The Cube is a weekend of events marking The Wire magazine’s 40th anniversary. Other Wire 40 events are happening in London, Brighton, Manchester, Glasgow and streaming online during the month of July. See The Wire for more details.
Free Money | Eve of Sunshine Limited Edition 100 copies (no digital-only downloads, but digital download comes with vinyl purchase) Heaven’s Lathe HL14 Release date | 01/07/2022 6pm
People Like Us are releasing a single on Graham Duff’s label Heaven’s Lathe. Heaven’s Lathe is dedicated to bringing out the highest quality lathe cut seven inch singles, featuring both influential artists and emerging performers in a sweep of genres. From June 2021, Heaven’s Lathe will be releasing a new limited edition single each month. Each release is a strictly limited to an edition of 100. All singles are lathe cut on either black or transparent vinyl. Heaven’s Lathe artists are curated by writer, broadcaster and DJ Graham Duff. All lathe cutting and engineering by Michael Lawrence (Bladud Flies!). Designed by Lauren Winton (Bladud Flies!). limited edition – order it here:
Pleased to say we have another performance lined up (in person again!) of The Mirror, our first in a couple of years since it had to default to screenings recently.
It will be on at Index Festival 2022, in Braga, Portugal on 21 May 2022. The venue will be GNRation. More info coming up on the above website.
On 7 May 2022 on Film Close-Ups on KALX 90.7FM Berkeley, 5:30pm-6:30pm (California time), People Like Us is in conversation with Gregory Scharpen about Gone, Gone Beyond, which begins a few weeks of screening at Gray Area in San Francisco in May. https://www.kalx.berkeley.edu/
Join us for this special showing of Gone, Gone Beyond and go behind the screen with creator Vicki Bennett (People Join us for an Artist Talk followed by a special showing of Gone, Gone Beyond with creator Vicki Bennett (People Like Us)!
6:30PM Doors open | 7:00PM Presentation by Vicki Bennett | 8:00PM Screening of Gone, Gone Beyond
$10 Presentation only $30 Presentation + screening
Proof of vaccination is required for all attendees over the age of 12 years old. Read more.
Using collage as a compositional tool opens up endless opportunities to experience results that are more than the sum of the parts, opening doors (and windows) to let light in from outside of our own limited and sometimes repetitive ways of thinking. Since 2016 Vicki Bennett has been creating “Gone, Gone Beyond” for RML CineChamber, an immersive 360 surround cinema environment, is now an hour long.
In this presentation Vicki tells us about her creative process, expanding her aesthetics from 2D to 3D to create audiovisual content which breaks the rectangle, smashing the thin screen into tiny fragments, looking beyond the frame, climbing through to see what’s behind.
This special screening is part of a limited run showing of Gone, Gone Beyond, an immersive audio-visual spatial cinema work by People Like Us (aka Vicki Bennett). This is Gone, Gone, Beyond‘s US premiere, following its European debut tour last fall with screenings at nyMusikk in Oslo, the Barbican in London, and more. See showtimes
