We have made a new film for improvising musicians and artists titled Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear. This is part of our project The Mirror, which initially was and is an audiovisual performance by People Like Us, and the umbrella project also includes 3 new artist commissions and this film.
This is not the first film we have made of this type. Previous to this was Notations (which included a national tour in the UK (followed by further dates internationally) with a fantastic roster of improvisers, supported by Sound and Music), as well as some collaborations where we have made the film then made sections available to other artists and musicians to respond (Gesture Piece and CCCitations).
Much like the other movies, you can enquire about performing with this movie by way of our Contact Page. Our first performance will be in Newcastle, UK in June 2019, as part of a collaboration with Newcastle University Department of Music.
Performances: 14 June 2019 – Culture Lab, Newcastle 18 July 2019 – 7th Syros International Film Festival – Overexposure
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. Currently in development is Khroma, a new 360-degree work for RML CineChamber.
So far in 2025, People Like Us continues work on Khroma, alongside creating live visuals for Soft Cell’s performances of “Torch” and “Purple Zone”. 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.
A film by Vicki Bennett [2013] Soundtracks by : Andrew Sharpley [00:06] | Matmos [01:02] | Wobbly [05:08] | Gwilly Edmondez [07:48] | Dave Soldier [09:38] | Jason Willett [11:02] | Ergo Phizmiz [13:23]
A film by Vicki Bennett [2013] Soundtracks by : Andrew Sharpley [00:06] | Matmos [01:02] | Wobbly [05:08] | Gwilly Edmondez [07:48] | Dave Soldier [09:38] | Jason Willett [11:02] | Ergo Phizmiz [13:23]
The completed film stitches back together the seven chapters with their individual soundtracks, creating new connections between apparently unrelated film sequences. The result is a fascinating and witty reinterpretation of familiar film footage, with scenes arranged in surprising and often very funny combinations.
The title of “Gesture Piece” is partly self-explanatory – within human communication it is part of our hard circuitry that for instance we use hand gestures to articulate our speech, which is essentially graphically describing/enforcing audio or spoken discourse. Even when spoken language is not present, a whole series of hand and facial gestures are available to us to communicate expressions. By making a film that both contains human gestures (hands, facial, movement) as well as gestures made by natural and mechanical occurrences we are setting up the conditions for a dialogue between the graphical elements on the films and the improvisers, both with the film as well as with each other.
Diagram of subjects – created in the development of the film by Vicki BennettStill from Gesture Piece by Vicki Bennett
Gesture Piece has a sister project, Notations – a film created for live performance by selected improvising musicians and artists. When these two projects began, they shared the same umbrella name of Gesture Piece (the live performance was tested at Tectonics Festival in Reykjavik and Tel Aviv), but as the work developed it felt natural to separate them out into different names as they became two unique and separate entities.
In the weeks leading up to the online launch of Gesture Piece, Pixel Palace’s Curator for Digital media Arts, Dominic Smith spoke to Vicki Bennett about the development of this film.
The project Gesture Piece has now flowered into two unique and separate yet related artworks. It feels natural at this stage to rename these strands accordingly.
The title of Gesture Piecenow is held by the sister project of Notations – a film with new soundtracks from 7 invited artist/musicians. These will go online in September 2013.
Gesture Piece was commissioned by Pixel Palace, the digital art programme at Tyneside Cinema (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK) and supported using public funds by Arts Council England.
Tonight – 10 June 2013, Gesture Piece* will be performed at Uganda, Jerusalem this time around by Eyvind Kang, Jessika Kenney, Robbie Avenaim, Christoph Heemann and special guests.
*Update: Gesture Piece has now changed its name to Notations – info here
Gesture Piece* will be performed by an entirely new set of improvisers at another edition of Tectonics Festival, this time on 8 June 2013 in Tel Aviv at the venue Levontin 7. The performers this time around will be Alex Drool, Assif Tsahar, Robbie Avenaim, Christoph Heemann, Eyvind Kang and Jessika Kenney.
*Please note: The film for live improvisers Gesture Piece has now changed its name to Notations
Curated by Ilan Volkov, Tectonics brings together musicians from different worlds and backgrounds for an audience that’s open and ready for new experiences and surprises. The festival will include young composers and pioneering figures, chamber music, orchestral music and electronic performances.
People Like Us are currently creating a new work entitled GESTURE PIECE*, which will premiere at Tectonics Festival in Reykjavik. This is a film created for accompaniment by live improv musicians, who in this case will be the following performers: Skúli Sverrisson, Davíð Þór Jónsson, Kristín Þóra Haraldsdóttir, Hlynur Aðils.
