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.
OVER THE EDGE : “WWW Radio” broadcasting on KPFA People Like Us & Negativland on KWCW (with a prelude in the radio show featuring special guest Blevin Blectum) 17 March 2022 | KPFA.ORG | MIDNIGHT-3AM (PT)
Show archived here
A week long residency at Whitman College’s Sheehan Gallery brought Vicki and Negativland & Sue-C to Walla Walla, Washington. It all ended with college radio: a two and half hour long chartsweeping riot broadcasted live from the studios of KWCW containing Vicki, Mark, Wobbly and eventually, one receptacle guest calling in to sing. 98% of that broadcast you’ll hear on Over The Edge tonight, largely as it happened.
People Like Us have just created the official video for a brand new remix by DJ Food of The The‘s Global Eyes, which was performed live at the Royal Albert Hall in 2018.
You can purchase The Comeback Special in various media formats on The The’s website.
Strictly Kev and his DJ Food Project have been with the record label, Ninja Tune, for over 25 years. He has DJed the world over and mixed hundreds of hours of radio using his 30+ years of experience and vast record collection. His 2012 album, The Search Engine, featured Matt Johnson covering ‘GIANT’ from Soul Mining and he opened for the band during some of The Comeback Special tour in 2018.
Fourth Wall United Kingdom 2020, 15:11 Min. Regie: Vicki Bennett
#Fourth Wall# is a new site specific wide screen movie and reflects upon the illusion of separateness. The title addresses the experience of illusory duality constructed by the mind, which is replicated through the lens of the camera, the stage, and the surface of the page, movie or computer screen. Through the viewing, cutting and editing of hundreds of pre-existing movies, Vicki searches for multiple and parallel narratives and collages these together to create a flowing stream of consciousness, attempting to breakdown this wall and reveal what she perceives as a greater reality and oneness beyond relativity.
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
This accompanies the artist talk that Vicki gave at Somerset Studios in London in October.
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 Somerset House Studios podcast, we revisit Vicki Bennett’s talk as part of The Wire magazine’s Music By Any Means series, which was part of Grounding Practice, a rolling programme shaped by and for creative practitioners and critical thinkers.
Part of The Wire: Music By Any Means. Grounding Practice / Somerset House Studios Audio produced by Weyland Mckenzie-Witter as part of The Creator in Residence Programme at Somerset House, supported by The Rothschild Foundation.
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 have a full page review of Gone, Gone Beyond in the January 2022 edition of The Wire Magazine, a very nice write up by Louise Gray. We also had at three mentions from Wire writers in their “best of” summaries of 2021.
Review of Gone, Gone Beyond at Barbican by Louise Gray in The Wire January 2022
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.
