Tag: film

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People Like Us play Vancouver New Music Festival 2009

People Like Us have been working on a brand new live set entitled “Genre:Collage”, which will be given a world premiere at Vancouver New Music Festival 2009. Other dates are being lines up for Genre:Collage in these coming weeks, including WFMU Record Fair in October (which will be free once in the fair), BFI Southbank in London, and also Linz, Austria – both in December 2009.

VANCOUVER NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL 2009
COPYRIGHT/COPYLEFT

A festival of sonic collagism, and the art of sampled and repurposed sounds and images.

21 – 24 October 2009
Show starts 8pm each night
Free Artist Chats at 7pm each night
Negative Landscapes: free symposium on 24 October 2009, 2:30pm
Scotiabank Dance Centre
677 Davie Street
Tickets $20 regular, $15 students/seniors each night; available at Zulu Records (1972 West 4th Avenue), Scratch Records (726 Richards Street), through Tickets Tonight (www.ticketstonight.ca; 604.684.2787; surcharges apply) and at the door.
Passes for all four nights $60 and $40, available only through Vancouver New Music (604.633.0861) and at the door.

Wednesday 21 October 2009
Andrew O’Connor and Doug Horne
Jackson 2bears
John Oswald

Thursday 22 October 2009
Eric Hedekar
DJ Tapes
Chris Cutler
People Like Us

Friday 23 October 2009
Sonarchy
Holzkopf
Scanner
David Shea

Saturday 24 October 2009
Mark Hosler
Uri Caine
plus free symposium

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Parade

A new large scale AV work by Vicki Bennett entitled “Parade” will be exhibited at Hit The Ground at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. There will also be two photographic montages by Vicki Bennett exhibited as part of the exhibition.

Download Parade at UbuWeb:
http://www.ubu.com/film/plu_parade.html

A word from the artist…

While viewing and sourcing content from the Great North Run film archive, it occurred to me that the huge crowds that come to spectate this event are as important as the participator.

I arranged film frame layers across the screen so that they strayed outwards in the direction of the natural panning of the original shots – much more in accordance with the natural gaze of the spectator, revealing a unique panoramic view of the content. The irregular angles and shifting perspectives bring to mind Cubist photomontage and Cubist/Vorticist painting/collage, with the added dimension of the moving image naturally taking this to another level.

Given that this is a celebration of human achievement, and as a nod of appreciation to the Cubist influence within this work, it seemed appropriate to use “Parade” by Erik Satie as the musical backdrop.

Video interview with Vicki Bennett about the film

Parade has been screened at:
March 2011 – Ambulante Festival, Mexico
July-Oct 2010 – In The Long Run: 30 Years of Great Running – Great North Museum: Hancock, UK
September–November 2009 – Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK
Hatton Gallery 16 September – 14 November 2009, 10am – 5pm (Sun 2pm – 5pm)

The Hatton Gallery is based within the grounds of Newcastle University. The nearest Metro station is Haymarket. The Hatton Gallery, The Quadrangle, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne. NE1 1RU Telephone 0191 222 6059

Click here for a map of the Hatton Gallery.

Part of The Bupa Great North Run Cultural Programme.

Background on the project – commission announcement from 2008:

To celebrate the silver anniversary of the BUPA Great North Run in 2005, the Great North Run Cultural Programme was established, which featured the film broken time by Jane and Louise Wilson. As part of the legacy of this film and part of an ongoing commitment to exploring the relationship between sport and art through, an annual award – Great North Run Moving Image Commission – was born.

Supported by Arts Council England, this major commission awards an experienced artist or film-maker £30,000 to create a new work which responds to and captures the spirit of one of the world’s top sporting events and we’re delighted to be able to announce the winner of Moving Image Commission for 2009 is British Artist Vicki Bennett.
Vicki will be working with archive footage of the Bupa Great North Run to create a new vision of the landscape and the route of the world’s largest half-marathon to be screened as part of the 2009 Bupa Great North Run Cultural Programme.

Gallery booklet (pdf)
Hatton Gallery guide
Reviews
Chronicle (online), Newcastle
Art Rabbit (online)
Hatton Gallery (online)
Images shot in the gallery
Photo credits for below: Colin Davison

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The Inaugural Poem Remix

People Like Us and many others have remixed The Inaugural Poem, because we felt that the first one needed improving. Take a look at and listen to the entire project, initiated by Kenny G at WFMU, thanks!

Download at UbuWeb

Kenny G’s Inaugural Poem Remix show on WFMU.
The Inaugural Poem Remix project on the Poetry Foundation website .
People Like Us “An Induction Is A Draft Is A Gust Of Air”.
People Like Us “Adjournment-Poem”.

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Documentation of the People Like Us Retrospective at alt.gallery

Documentation of the People Like Us Retrospective at alt.gallery
alt.gallery (entry via alt.vinyl) 61/62 Thornton Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4AW.
http://www.altgallery.org/
16 May-12 July 2008

alt.gallery is pleased to announce the first retrospective exhibition of work by People Like Us (aka Vicki Bennett).
ARTIST INFO
For the past seventeen years 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. The exhibition will focus on the concept of collage, showing an edited selection of her work, including twenty album releases, numerous singles and remixes, live sets, seven films and over a hundred and fifty radio shows. 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 Center 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.
MEMORY STICKS

Every week during the exhibition a different collection of special downloads from the People Like Us archive will be available from the gallery, bring your memory stick along for a free take away!
ESSAY BY DR DREW DANIEL
A specially commissioned essay by Dr. Drew Daniel of Matmos accompanies the exhibition. Download pdf here. Drew’s essay can also be linked to here

Download a larger version of this flyer here
Download the poster (featured top right) here
The exhibition also included a framed essay by Rick Prelinger on The Virtues of Preexisting Material. Here is an excerpt:
On the Virtues of Preexisting Material
© Rick Prelinger 2007
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License
1 Why add to the population of orphaned works?
2 Don’t presume that new work improves on old
3 Honor our ancestors by recycling their wisdom
4 The ideology of originality is arrogant and wasteful
5 Dregs are the sweetest drink
6 And leftovers were spared for a reason
7 Actors don’t get a fair shake the first time around, let’s give them another
8 The pleasure of recognition warms us on cold nights and cools us in hot summers
9 We approach the future by typically roundabout means
10 We hope the future is listening, and the past hopes we are too
11 What’s gone is irretrievable, but might also predict the future
12 Access to what’s already happened is cheaper than access to what’s happening now
13 Archives are justified by use
14 Make a quilt not an advertisement
Download a pdf of the full text here, or link to the essay here.


The exhibition will also launch a new CD curated by Vicki Bennett for Sonic Arts Network called ‘Smiling Through My Teeth’, a compilation of humorous music and sound art.

SPECIAL EVENTS
People Like Us Special on WFMU
Thursday 15 May, 11pm-midnight (UK time) www.wfmu.org/playlists/ER – To celebrate the exhibition opening Ergo Phizmiz hosts a People Like Us Special on his show ‘Phuj Phactory’ on WFMU, both on terrestrial radio and live internet stream.
People Like Us Talk and Screening
Friday 16 May, 7:30pm
Star and Shadow Cinema, Stepney Bank, Newcastle
Vicki Bennett presents a selection of films by People Like Us.
The Late Shows: Smiling Through My Teeth CD Launch
Saturday 17 May, 7pm-11pm
alt.gallery
www.altgallery.org

The Late Shows form part of NewcastleGateshead’s world-class festivals and events programme. www.thelateshows.org.uk

Many thanks to Rebecca Shatwell for inviting us to do this retrospective, it was great fun to work together. Rebecca is now director of AV Festival.

Continue reading “Documentation of the People Like Us Retrospective at alt.gallery”

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Skew Gardens

Download at UbuWeb

“The ‘garden’ was a first attempt to sanitise and control nature. Once there was the wilderness, now there is the urban jungle.” This is the first film that Vicki Bennett has made using collage techniques but without found footage. This was shot on location at Kew Gardens, the City of London and at Irene Moon laboratories.
skew gardens
This film is also on Vimeo.

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Live Excerpts film download

People Like Us have been performing live audio-visual sets since 1996 (for a selected list of venues see here). This started as a fairly crude set up with minidiscs and scratch-video cut up VHS tapes, and swiftly moved on to computer animated and composited collages, very parallel, at least in the mind of People Like Us, to the accompanying music. Here are five live excerpts, made between 2002 and 2007. This set is almost retired – only brought out on special occasions, and a new live A/V set will be available and touring from Winter 2009.

Download from UbuWeb
live excerpts

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Work, Rest & Play at Millennium Galleries, Sheffield

Earlier this year Vicki completed a 3-screen A/V piece called Work, Rest & Play; for Lovebytes, and we now can tell you that it will be presented by Lovebytes with Millennium Galleries from 7th November 2007 to 15th February 2008 in the foyer of Millennium Galleries in Sheffield. After this point we want to make it available for film festival distribution, like previous works.

People Like Us – “Work, Rest & Play” [2007]


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Trying Things Out – film download

People Like Us “Trying Things Out” 2007 Also at UbuWeb

During 2006-7 Vicki Bennett was one of the two artists awarded an Interact Artist Residency with BBC New Media, supported by Arts Council England and the Creative Archive Licence Group.

Vicki spent 4 months with “access all areas” to the BBC’s million strong archive. The result was a short film using imagery collaged from a number of documentaries made between 1951 and 1980 – featuring footage shot at The Festival Of Britain, also other footage portraying optimistic outlooks on post-war Britain. She tells the story, through layers of A/V collage, of how the artist can bring about positive change in culture. By juggling layers of imagery and context, much like a puppeteer, the film portrays the playfulness of the artist/director, moving images and scenery around with surprising results – “Trying Things Out”. It is partly autobiographical in that it reflects, by use of footage of people playing with machines and effecting imagery, that access to film archives can inspire new work, creating new dialogues where otherwise there may have been none. Sadly, both groups who had the vision to be setting up such forward-thinking projects (The Creative Archive and Interdisciplinary Arts – Arts Council England) were axed shortly before the completion of this film. May this film travel to all the places that these organisations would have liked, and thank you, Paul Gerhardt and Tony White.

trying things out

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Work, Rest & Play – a musical film by People Like Us

People Like Us – Work, Rest & Play (2007) is a video triptych exploring the themes of labour, leisure and industriousness.


Download at UbuWeb
story without end

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Resemblage – short film

Resemblage (2004) was created as a result of an invitation from the LUX archive to make a film derived exclusively from their film collection. We chose films by artists Alan Berliner, Lawrence Jordan, People Like Us, Semiconductor and Stan Vanderbeek.

Download at UbuWeb
resemblage