People Like Us, the project of artist Vicki Bennett, announces the release of “COPIA” on June 7, 2024. This album marks the first new musical material since “The Mirror” in 2018, delving into the profound realms of existential collage and sampling, celebrating these forms as expressions of timeless connectivity.
The title “COPIA,” meaning ‘abundance’ and ‘copy,’ reflects the essence of collage and sampling — art crafted not in isolation, but as a connective thread through time and space, linking ideas across generations in a seamless tapestry. By reconfiguring preexisting sounds and images, Bennett highlights the non-dual nature of creation — where distinctions between past, present, and future possibilities blur, revealing a shared foundation beneath. The album marks a return to not just solo works but collaborations with notable artists.
Drawing from the new People Like Us live AV performance, “The Library of Babel,” sampling and edited sound collage, electronic music, combined with Ergo Phizmiz’s lyrics and melodies, “COPIA” weaves and recombines a timeless blend of diverse elements that transcends traditional musical boundaries. This creative process unfolded through the exchange of multitracks across both water and ether. Collaborating with the voices, instruments and editing timelines of Matmos, Hearty White, Gwilly Edmondez, Lottie Bowater, Buttress O’Kneel, Douglas Benford, Irene Moon, Jon Leidecker, and Matt Warwick, the work evolved exquisite corpse-style.
“COPIA” will be available on Bandcamp as both a physical CD and digital download. Accompanying the release, live performances of “The Library of Babel” will continue both in the UK and abroad in the coming months, including potential live collaborations with Ergo Phizmiz and Gwilly Edmondez.
“Bennett has proven herself an alchemist of popular music, able to push her source material into fresh and engaging places. Where some artists hack existing instruments and technologies to create their new sounds, Bennett has circuit-bent the songs themselves.” – Spenser Tomson, The Wire Magazine
“Listening to “Copia” is like hearing music for the first time, as if the concept was completely new. You keep creating art that feels like that first shock-of-the-new you get when you step off a plane after you’ve landed in a new country. Something that wasn’t known, or knowable, somehow appears.” – Charles Powne, Soleilmoon
About People Like Us
Since 1991, People Like Us has been at the forefront of audio-visual collage, opening up endless opportunities to experience results that are more than the sum of the parts. Embedded in her work is the premise that all is interconnected and that claiming ownership of an “original” or isolated concept is both preposterous and redundant. Vicki Bennett’s project serves as a modern-day continuation of the collage tradition, highlighting the interconnectedness of all artistic creation.
For further information, promotional materials, or to arrange an interview, please contact us.
We’ve made an edit of the video that we shot of our Cafe OTO residency, here it is.
edit by Vicki
Thanks to those of you who managed to attend the event, and all of you who’ve helped fund my IndieGoGo campaign this year, along with our Patreons who help us on a day-to-day basis to pay for our rather steep usage of computer-related electricity power, and Café OTO for being totally brilliant. And of course, my friends, the artists, my inspiration!
Now we will return to making more of our solo performance The Library of Babel (which you see an excerpt of in the above video), continuing to make a new album.
PEOPLE LIKE US Cafe OTO ARTIST RESIDENCY 27 / 28 / 29 OCTOBER 2023
PEOPLE LIKE US | MAGGIE NICOLS | ERGO PHIZMIZ | GWILLY EDMONDEZ | POREST | IRENE MOON | ERIK BUNGER | HEARTY WHITE
Vicki edit of our residency!
Cafe OTO is proud to announce a new artist residency, featuring multimedia artist Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us. Vicki has collaborated with a wide range of artists and musicians; some are joining us for this 3-Day residency, both solo and in collaboration. The residency includes a preview of the new People Like Us audiovisual performance The Library of Babel.
People Like Us are on the radio on Thursday 26 December 2019 with Hearty White for a very special joint show with special guests Gwilly Edmondez, Ergo Phizmiz and Caterina Robertson (aka The Reason).
Tune in on from 7-8pm NY Time (that is Midnight-1 Thursday evening in the UK) on WFMU. Playlist and subsequent archive of the show here: https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/90406
15 September 2019, 7pm at 21C Museum Hotel, Lexington, Kentucky The Mirror will screen in it’s theatrical form (ie a stand alone movie, not performance) in Lexington, KY, and although we will not be present our good friend Hearty White will be there to introduce the film. facebook event
Our project The Mirror consists of an a/v performance (and sometimes stand alone movie), an album release, a film for improvisers, and 3 new artist commissions where they to respond to The Mirror with a new piece of work. All three artist responses by Dina Kelberman, Porest (Mark Gergis) and Hearty White are now available, so we’re putting them all together online here:
Description: When I thought about the word “reflections” this is what my brain showed me. Something about reflects, reflex, reflection symmetry, shapes, walls, and now that i think about it it’s probably a lot to do with sitting in a tiny room full of corners all day every day. Also laptop symmetry. These might all just be portraits of my laptop.
Bio: Dina Kelberman is an interdisciplinary artist recently transplanted from Baltimore, MD to Los Angeles CA. Kelberman has created original web-based pieces for the New Museum and The Marina Abramovic Institute and has participated in numerous design and photography biennials. Her work has been written about in The New York Times, Art21, NPR, Known and Strange Things (Cole, 2016) and most recently The Focal Press Companion to the Constructed Image in Contemporary Photography (Routledge, 2018) and Olia Liliana’s “An Infinite Seance 3”. In 2018 she was invited to speak at the UbuWeb conference in Athens and the Post-Photography Prototyping Biennial in London. She is currently ranked 5th in the world for Most Lines in Tetris for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
We’re pleased to release the last our 3 artist commissions made in response to The Mirror.
The first was by Dina Kelberman, the second was a 50-minute new audio piece by Porest (Mark Gergis)and now we’re presenting a brand new 50-minute audio work by HEARTY WHITE. You can listen here and download at bandcamp.
(Please note, this is a piece of audio by Hearty White, and the link embed above lists it as People Like Us purely because it’s on our bandcamp page)
Bio: Hearty White lives and doesn’t work in Lexington, KY, birthplace of Richard Hell. His radio non-career spans decades. He loves you in theory. Listen to Hearty White’s WFMU radio show: wfmu.org/playlists/HA
People Like Us take over the airwaves for an hour from 3.30pm-4.30pm (UK time) on Resonance FM on Saturday 28 April 2018 on the Splice Festival Festival Radio Show. This coincides with our forthcoming performance at Splice Festival (12 May 2018).
The WFMU Fundraising Marathon 2018starts today, Sunday 4 March and runs for two weeks. People Like Us has had a radio show on WFMU since 2003 and been played on the station for waaay longer than that. WFMU has supported People Like Us immensely, artistically and gifted us with lots of new friends. It makes our world a much richer place. Two of these friends we will co-host with this coming week. Tune in and please pledge. It’s a great two weeks of the year. The marathon is also great fun. Lots of co-hosting, and lots of marathon prizes to be had. Tune in, and involve yourself.
The Mirror is created by first navigating hundreds of preexisting feature length movies, searching for conceptual/actual subject matter pertaining to reflection and projection. The initial idea was to depict the camera as a torch that shines light down dark corridors and as an eye that watches people when they are alone, and then through navigating all the footage to see what new stories emerge. The selected source material was then edited into thousands of snippets which are labelled and the descriptions examined to find similarities and crossovers that might be emerging in descriptions/storylines. A conceptually related soundtrack was then composed in relation to edits on the movie timeline, also created by editing and recombining from sections of hundreds of preexisting songs, as well as sounds from the movies. This is an exercise in editing and juxtaposition, also an investigation, an “operation” working with the premise that if you cut into something and isolate it from its “finished” guise you discover new stories and information relevant to the present and future. Published material is often seen as “finished”, the end of the story, not available for comment, a sealed up museum-like product, isolated on an island, away from ideas and reflections. By use of collage, one can unthread, rewind and redirect content to discover what other stories may be hidden, allowing an active dialogue both with the external content, and also challenge the routine ways in which we may be limiting our own creativity by our own fixed (isolated) ways of thinking. Recombining these hundreds of movie storylines into new combinations can create results that are more than the sum of the parts and beyond our usual pattern of creating stories alone, we are carving new pathways for our minds to (re)explore. — Vicki Bennett
For more information on the working methods and philosophical approach of People Like Us please read: ++ This conversation between Vicki Bennett and Peter Jaeger conducted over the course of Summer 2015. It was published in filling Station Issue 63. Download as a pdf. ++ This conversation between Vicki Bennett and Kenneth Goldsmith in Found Footage Magazine. Buy your copy here. ++ The Mirror can be considered a sister project to our 360 a/v Cinechamber installation “Gone, Gone Beyond”, which you can read about here. ++ Read an interview about “Gone, Gone Beyond” conducted by Hearty White here.
We are pleased to announce a new audiovisual immersive cinema performance by People Like Us called The Mirror, performed (and screened in Theatrical form if in the US) from March 2018 worldwide.
“A feat of research and craft, this new work is a spellbinding inquiry into editing and juxtaposition; a collage one can unthread allowing the viewer to discover hidden stories through familiar images. The soundtrack is performed live, made up from hundreds of preexisting songs, as well as particular sounds from the original film clips.” — Flatpack Film Festival
”With The Mirror Bennett has proven herself an alchemist of popular music, able to push her source material into fresh and engaging places.” — The Wire
”Because of the use of familiar pop sounds, “The Mirror” is often grandiose. Like an epic film only with highs, never letting the listener down or letting him doubt the power of pop. Even, of course, when the coordinates are twisted, mixed, over or underrepresented. Each moment feels like something that could only happen in a parallel universe. Although that may sound naïve, it’s just a lost thought of reaction to the beautiful collages of People Like Us in “The Mirror”. This mirror doesn’t reflect an image of ourselves or an image of pop. But an image on the way memories drift and are being constant rebuilt. An unfinished collage.” — Boomkat
“Bennett celebrates the song stylists, the crooners, the sirens and interpreters of melody, and all the psychedelic in-between. The songs she pulls from seem to stem between 30’s ballroom and 70’s soft disco, here presented like being in a deep REM-state, dreaming of being at the drive-in, in warped Panavision. Essential.” toneshift.net
3/4 March 2023 – The Mirror at TUSK NORTH, Newcastle 18 February 2023 – The Mirror at Electric Spring Festival, University of Huddersfield 29 November 2022 – The Mirror at Ubu@50 at Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb 26 November 2022 – The Mirror at BBMix Festival, Paris 19 November 2022 – The Mirror at Keroxen, Santa Cruz, Tenerife, Spain 5 November 2022 – The Mirror at Intangible Festival, Lleida, Spain 20 October 2022 – The Mirror at Stimul Festival, Prague 9 July – 4 September 2022 – Theatrical screening at Cover Versions curated by Anthony and Graham Dolphin, Exeter Phoenix 3 June 2022 – Open Ears Festival, Kitchener, Canada 21 May 2022 – Live again! At Index Festival, Braga, Portugal April – May 2022 – theatrical screening at Cover Versions curated by Anthony and Graham Dolphin, The Athenaeum, Sunderland Feb – April 2022 – part of gallery exhibition MIND MAPS: The Art of Vicki Bennett – solo exhibition Walla Walla USA 4 December 2021 – Keroxen, Tenerife (postponed – pandemic) 29 April – 2 May 2021 – Online screening of The Mirror, Oscillation Festival, Brussels 21 November 2020 – BBMix Festival 2020, Paris (postponed – pandemic) 6 November 2020 – MAAT, Lisbon – virtual performance of The Mirror 28 July 2020 – 4 August 2020 – Virtual screening (pandemic rescheduling), Le Nouveau Musée National de Monaco 5 March 2020 – Theatrical Screening (not a concert) WFMU Benefit, Monty Hall, Jersey City 28 September 2019 – Theatrical Screening (not a concert), Radius Gallery Santa Cruz, CA 15 September 2019 – Theatrical Screening (not a concert), 21C Museum Hotel, Lexington, KY (introduced by Hearty White) 22 June 2019 – Iklectik Art Lab, London 14 June 2019 – The Mirror and Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, Culture Lab, Newcastle 9 May 2019 – Venice Biennale at HILLARY: The Hillary Clinton Emails by Kenneth Goldsmith after the opening reception 23 – 28, April 2019 –Theatrical Screening, AFO Olomouc, Czech Republic 6 April 2019 – Theatrical Screening (not live), Other Cinema, ATA, Valencia St, San Francisco 27 March 2019 – Musikbrauerei, Berlin 9 February 2019 – Theatrical Screening (not live) – The Voix de Ville 2019 / ARTxFM, Columbia Theatre, Louisville Kentucky 30 November 2018 – Theatrical Screening (not live, we do not perform in concerts in the US) Recombinant Festival, Gray Area, San Francisco 15 November 2018 – Cinecity Film Festival, Fabrica, Brighton 10 November 2018 – Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo Norway 2 November 2018 – Spill Festival, Ipswich 20 October 2018 – 100 Years of Copyright Festival, HKW, Berlin 19 & 20 September 2018 – Theatrical Screening (not live) – Spectacle Theater, Brooklyn 17 September 2018 – Theatrical Screening (not live) – Bryce’s Show on WFMU 26 July 2018 – MACBA, Barcelona 19 July 2018 – LEV Festival, Arenas Movedizas, Gijón 11 July 2018 – Cafe OTO, London 12 May 2018 – Splice Festival, Rich Mix, London 21 April 2018 – Flatpack Festival, Birmingham 20 April 2018 – Cafe OTO, London 17 April 2018 – Belfast Film Festival, Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast 13 April 2018 – UK Premiere: FACT, Liverpool 18 March 2018 – World Premiere: Athens Greek Film Archive Foundation (as part of Shadow Libraries: UbuWeb in Athens, organised and produced by the Onassis Cultural Centre-Athens)
If you are a festival organiser with a budget and are interested in booking this or anything else, please get in touch by way of our Contact Form. If you are in a country requiring a work visa to perform we can in very special circumstances make this work into a theatrical screening, but generally this is only available as a performance with the artist present and you will need to gain necessary papers for us to agree.
Publicity photo for both the concert and the album – credit Joe Gerhardt
3 artist commissions : we have commissioned new works by artists responding to The Mirror: Reflectsby Dina Kelberman (December 2018) Abject Mirrorby Porest (Mark Gergis) (January 2019) The Mirrorby Hearty White (January 2019) (view all three on one url)
New Film for Improvising Musicians and Artists – titled Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear. 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). 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.
No.8 in The Wire Magazine’s releases of 2019MACBA, BarcelonaMACBA, Barcelonaat Splice Festival 2018 – photo by Martyna KubrakSplice Festival 2018 – photo by Martyna KubrakWe have expanded 10 minutes of The Mirror to be a 360 surround sound and video work
Graham Duff – The Mirror a reflection upon the work and surrounding subject matter Interview in The Wire Magazine in a phone conversation with Emily Bick of The Wire Magazine, Vicki Bennett reflects on The Mirror, Gone, Gone Beyond, and working with preexisting footage.
