People Like Us will present Genre Collage at the Harbour Festival at Bristol Arnolfini on Saturday 31st July at 5.15pm, all the details are here. The start time may be subject to slight change so please arrive early.
People Like Us to play at MACBA Barcelona
UPDATE…
This concert has now been rescheduled for Thursday 22nd July at MACBA, Barcelona. It was previously postponed due to Volcanic Ash displacement! Please scroll down for the Variations program information on the MACBA site.
Variations Concert Program
Here’s a press feature on the season.
MACBA
Artist Talk by People Like Us at AV Festival 2010
Here is a presentation from Vicki Bennett – at AV Festival 2010.
Recycled Film Symposium: 08 Vicki Bennett (People Like Us) from AV Festival.
People Like Us play De La Warr Pavilion
People Like Us will play Genre Collage at Bexhill’s classic De La Warr Pavilion on Thursday 3rd June 2010 at 8pm. We will be on the bill with Mira Calix.
WE REPEAT…! We are on at 8pm. Please get there in time.
De La Warr Pavilion
Tickets: £10
Booking & Information
Or call: 01424 229 111
Parade to be in group exhibition
In The Long Run: 30 Years of Great Running
By Claire Leona Apps, Vicki Bennett, Suky Best, Ravi Deepres and Michael Baig-Clifford, Graham Dolphin, James Edwards, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Julian Germain, Jane and Louise Wilson
Exhibition
Starts: 17th July 2010
Ends: 17th October 2010
Great North Museum: Hancock
Barras Bridge
Newcastle upon Tyne
Tyne and Wear
NE2 4PT
0191 222 6765
Celebrating the 30th staging of the Bupa Great North Run, this major new exhibition explores the history and significance of this enormously popular event.
In The Long Run looks at significant role this event has played in reflecting and shaping the region’s cultural identity.
As well as the well known stories of elite runners, In The Long Run will also explore the huge organisational effort behind the Bupa Great North Run, documenting the event’s community spirit and creating a powerful piece of social history.
Alongside interactive exhibits, memorabilia and star objects, In The Long Run will present artwork from the archives of Bupa Great North Run Culture, with paintings, films, photographs and drawings by Jane and Louise Wilson, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Julian Germain, Graham Dolphin and Vicki Bennett, among many others.
A programme of special events and guest lectures, as well as a special Late Show the night before this year’s Bupa Great North Run, will be announced soon.
Free download of Perpetuum Mobile with bonus film!
We are very pleased to announce that we are now giving a download of our album Perpetuum Mobile (by People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz) away for free! This is still available as a CD with beautiful packaging, from our shop but if you like your mp3s then here they are… http://www.ubu.com/sound/plu_perpetuum-mobile.html
Here’s the artwork
Free film “Ghosts Before Breakfast” to go with Perpetuum Mobile
Also, “Ghosts Before Breakfast” from Perpetuum Mobile has a film to go with it! We are making it available for the first time ever now.
“Ghosts Before Breakfast” Hans Richter (1928) / People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz (2007) from Vicki WFMU on Vimeo.
Here’s the press release for this wonderful offering by People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz:
“Perpetuum Mobile” is the result of a uniquely schizophrenic “open source” compositional process: the UK’s finest collage composers Ergo Phizmiz and People Like Us (aka Vicki Bennett) uploaded files to a shared server, downloaded and processed each other’s work, and flung the resulting fragments back at each other. The result is an interpenetrating audio-collage so intricate that neither party can recall who did what to whom. So far, so avant-garde; but what makes this record different is that Ergo and Vicki then wrote and sang their own vocals on top of their Frankenstein creation. Here you will find slyly absurdist lyrics replete with monkeys, carousels, trousers, apple trees, tinkling bells, dogs, sausages, whiskey, and cannibalism. No matter how fraught with trauma, these ballads and ditties are sung with a straight face and mixed front and center, and the results feel like 1930s British music hall standards from an alternate universe: half Ivor Cutler, half George Formby. The astonishing thing is that for all this jiggery-pokery, “Perpetuum Mobile” makes for an exhilarating, remarkably fresh pop album. It works. On “Ghosts Before Breakfast” Ergo and Vicki proudly declare that they’ve got “quite a selection of pastry”, and if the profusion of cuckoo clocks, gunshots, horn farts, string vamps, and digital malfeasance which go hurtling through this opening track is any indication, that’s no idle boast. For sheer cornucopia of sonic raw materials, this track’s avalanche of information sets the tone for the overflowing, manic record that follows. There’s far too much to fully parse, but among the highlights: “Beyond Perpetuum” pushes off from the Comedian Harmonists’ take on the 19th century compositional craze for “moto perpetuo” runs of continuous notes at a rapid tempo, and folds found piano, voice and strings into an interlocking array of M.C. Escher harmonic stairways. “Air Hostess” is detourned lounge pop that stitches together Nelson Riddle’s “Ya Ya” theme to “Lolita”, “Walk Right In”, light operettas, organ, bachelor pad cha cha and mambo, and nervously twitching shards of Louis Armstrong. “Pierrot’s Persecution Mania” bravely explores the possibilities of a Montparnasse-via-Dixieland hybrid of can-can and bluegrass, with ridiculous canned strings colliding with jew’s harp boings, while “Soggy Style” rides banjo twangs, a digital bossa nova breakdown, and the “whooo-ooes” nicked from Terry Stafford’s “Suspicion”. Living up to the perpetual motion of its title and cock-a-hoop cover art, this is a frantically energetic music whose layered repetitions become cumulatively more disorienting and preposterous as they loop back. “Perpetuum Mobile” goes beyond the stealth-oldies nostalgia of the mashup scene and the “culture-jamming” rhetoric of plunderphonics, and shows Mr. Ergo and Ms. Vicki to be a potent, if Surrealist, songwriting team, and together they braid oddly affecting vocals and their trademark stolen audio into twenty-first century pop. Like the perpetual motion machines for which it is named, this collaboration will run and run and run and run and run and run and run… – Drew Daniel
AV Festival update
A last minute addition if you are at AV Festival in Newcastle – People Like Us will be speaking at today’s Recycled Film Symposium.
Another last minute addition – Craig Baldwin will be joining us to introduce in his special way Nothing Is New, Everything Is Permitted.
Here is the presentation from Vicki Bennett, creator of Genre Collage – at AV Festival 2010.
iPod download in our shop
It has occurred to us how nice films look when viewed on an iPod Touch or iPhone, especially of course ours! So we have made all the People Like Us films we can find (nearly 2.5 hours worth) into files that will fit onto that lovely little screen, and zipped them up, ready for you to purchase through Paypal at an extremely reasonable price.
Firstly make the purchase by Paypal, and then we will email you a weblink to two zipped folders, which you can download. Please note, the total size of these combined zips are 487MB, and once unzipped they contain multiple small mp4s, the right size for your iPod/iPhone. ONLY make the purchase if you have access to broadband! We cannot provide these files individually.
Once your iPod or iPhone is connected to your computer and iTunes is open, all you need to do is drag the films into the relevant iTunes folder, in the same way you would add any other media from within your computer.
Here is the list of films contained within:
Buy here!
SOLD OUT
Parade is now up on UbuWeb and Vimeo
Our film “Parade” from earlier 2009 is now posted for viewing and download on UbuWeb. View and download the film from UbuWeb here:
http://www.ubu.com/film/plu_parade.html
Parade is also on Vimeo.
Parade [2009] from Vicki WFMU on Vimeo.
Background information on Parade here http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2009/parade.html
More films by People Like Us on UbuWeb here http://www.ubu.com/film/plu.html
Exclusive on LUX website
The LUX website is now showing an exclusive video excerpt of our new live performance GENRE COLLAGE.
Take a look here:
http://lux.org.uk/blog/new-vicki-bennett-people-us-genre-collage-set
Genre Collage
“GENRE COLLAGE” by VICKI BENNETT
The new A/V performance by PEOPLE LIKE US (created March-October 2009)
Media: Music and Moving Image
Length: 45 minutes
By combining compositing techniques, audio/music collage, and animation, People Like Us (in collaboration with Tim Maloney) examine the concept of “genre”. By manipulating patterns, syntax, moods, narrative elements, recurring icons, characters and film stars held within selected movie genres/sub-genres (i.e. action, adventure, comedy, crime/gangster, drama, epics/historical, horror, musicals, science fiction, war and westerns), we are creating a humorous, surrealistic, yet informative take on the content held within. The sound is partially taken from the films and partly from music holding corresponding messages, mood and lyrical content. The moving parts are cut around and collaged into each scene, complete with the source’s accompanying audio and added contextual musical collage.
People Like Us – The Sound Of The End Of Music [2010]
Since 1991 British artist Vicki Bennett has been an influential figure in the field of audio visual collage, through her innovative sampling, appropriating and cutting up of found footage and archives. Using collage as her main form of expression, she creates audio recordings, films and radio shows that communicate a humorous, dark and often surreal view on life. These collages mix, manipulate and rework original sources from both the experimental and popular worlds of music, film, television and radio. People Like Us believe in open access to archives for creative use, and have made work using footage from the Prelinger Archives, The Internet Archive, and A/V Geeks. 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, Sydney Opera House, Pompidou left 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” hits since 2003. The People Like Us back catalogue is available for free download hosted by UbuWeb.
This work replaces my previous live performance, which you can now only watch and download at UbuWeb.
We are taking bookings for this concert, which can be performed in cinemas, auditoriums and concert halls. If you are funded festival organiser or curator get in touch through the Contact link on the front page of our site.
Here is a presentation from Vicki Bennett, creator of Genre Collage – at AV Festival 2010.
Recycled Film Symposium: 08 Vicki Bennett (People Like Us) from AV Festival.
Genre Collage has been screened at:
October 2011 – Almost Cinema, Ghent Film Festival, Belgium
June 2011 – The Sage, Gateshead, UK
May 2011 – Auditorium of Rome, Italy
May 2011 – Mapping Festival, Geneva, Switzerland
May 2011 – Online on Ken Freedman’s Show, WFMU.org
April 2011 – Open Ears, Kitchener, Canada
March 2011 – Ambulante Festival, Mexico
February 2011 – Transmediale, Berlin
January 2011 – Art’s Birthday Party/Swedish Radio, Stockholm
November 2010 – The British Film Festival, Kiev, Ukraine
September 2010 – Press Play Film Festival, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne
August 2010 – Vintage Goodwood Festival, UK
August 2010 – Genre Collage in the Ukraine (Lviv and Sevastapol) presented by Forma and the British Council
July 2010 – Bristol Arnolfini in conjunction with Encounters Film Festival, UK
June 2010 – De La Warr Pavilion, UK
June 2010 – tv.dk – cable TV in Copenhagen, Denmark
May 2010 – Liverpool Sound City, in conjunction with Sound and Music, UK
April 2010 – Baltimore Transmodern 2010
April 2010 – Issue Project Room, Brooklyn
March 2010 – AV Festival, Newcastle, UK
December 2009 – BFI Southbank, London
December 2009 – Grand Café Zum Rothen Krebsen (IFEK Institut für erweiterte Kunst), Linz, Austria
November 2009 – NEW NEW! 2009 – Fleda, Brno, Czech Republic
October 2009 – WFMU Record Fair, NYC
October 2009 – Vancouver New Music Festival, Canada
| Here are some stills from Genre Collage. Click on images below to download a larger version. Please note: the film stills are from the original QuickTime movies, and therefore the maximum original size you get them is the size that they will always be, in 72dpi resolution. We have resampled the originals in Photoshop to make “higher resolution” images. If you need it to be a different dpi then do go to Photoshop and resample the image as such yourself. | ||
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Article on Genre Collage in Film Comment, January 2010
Download the magazine version here
