Changing Your Mind is a new 50-minute crowd-sourced radio collage work by Vicki Bennett. It will be broadcast on Deutschlandfunk on 14 April 2023 at 0:05 (German time).
Meditation is a means of transforming the mind and has been practised for thousands of years. It encourages concentration, and clarity, and can have a transformative effect that can lead to a new understanding of life, and be used as a creative tool.This is a crowd-sourced audio collage by Vicki Bennett, where 48 participants respond to questions about the subject of meditation and consciousness and their experiences and relationship to this.
List of participants: Abhayadevi, Akashamitra, Rahne Alexander, Tim Atkins, Vicki Bennett, Marcus Boon, William Boon, Liz Bot, Leanne Bryan, Falco Carey, Jeff Carey, Leon Clowes, Stephen Coates, Will Edmondes, Diane Farris, Jem Finer, Louise Gray, Maya Gürbüz, Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee, Phil Hallett, Kevin Hamilton, Dan Hayhurst, Mark Heath, Pea Hicks, Seth Horvitz, Peter Jaeger, Felix Kubin, Henry Lowengard, Tim Maloney, Lasse Marhaug, David McConville, Alex McKechnie, Irene Moon, Karen Oates, Kira O’Reilly, Ratnadeva, Sanghasiha, Saraka, Vic Scarborough, Nikolas Schreck, Adrian Shephard, Vanessa Sinclair, Sue Slagle, Suddhaka, David Toop, Vidyadasi, Pete Wallace, Richard Whitelaw
PEOPLE LIKE US | NEGATIVLAND | ERGO PHIZMIZ | GWILLY EDMONDEZ POREST | IRENE MOON | WOBBLY | HEARTY WHITE
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, alongside some screenings and discussions. The residency includes a preview of the new People Like Us audiovisual performance Is This The Real Life?
People Like Us
DAY 1 | 8PM HEARTY WHITE (compère) | POREST | IRENE MOON | NEGATIVLAND PEOPLE LIKE US & ERGO PHIZMIZ & GWILLY EDMONDEZ (trio) DAY 1 PASS £16 £14 ADVANCE£8 MEMBERS
HEARTY WHITE compère Our residency compère is Hearty White, a performer based in Lexington, Kentucky. His one-hour weekly radio show “Miracle Nutrition with Hearty White” has aired on WFMU from 2012 until the present. https://wfmu.org/playlists/ha
Hearty White
POREST Porest is the music and performance outlet of post-American artist and producer Mark Gergis. For decades, Porest has issued a trail of confounding agitprop sound art, post-globalized hate-pop, diabolical radio dramas, big songs and small songs. Porest’s blatant embezzlement of human syntax and cultural misunderstanding broadcasts vital mixed messages across all fields, forging carefully rearranged realities that both avoid and indulge the inherent trappings of radical art and politics. Live performances integrate Porest’s music, performance and sound into a grand total sum that can’t be unseen. Ongoing collaborations have included: Negativland (USA) Alan Bishop / Sun City Girls (USA), Aavikko (Finland), Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us (UK), among others. Porest has performed and toured worldwide, with albums released on Nashazphone (Cairo), Discrepant (UK), and in the US on the Seeland, Abduction and Resipiscent labels. In the 1990s and 2000s, Mark was co-founder of the long-running experimental California music and performance collective Mono Pause, as well as its offshoot Neung Phak. In his other life, Mark is an archivist and producer for global music releases on the Sublime Frequencies and Sham Palace labels, including compilations and documentary works such as I Remember Syria, Cambodian Cassette Archives, Saigon Rock & Soul, Choubi Choubi (Iraq), Dabke: Sounds from the Syrian Houran and his extensive work with artists Omar Souleyman (Syria) and Erikin Koray (Turkey). https://porest.bandcamp.com/
Mark Gergis (Porest)
IRENE MOON Since 1997, Scientifically Speaking with Irene Moon has been presenting The Lectography: musical lectures about insects and other arthropods in an attempt to elevate entomology as a rock genre. Performing at basement house shows and more famous music venues like the Knitting Factory and the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Irene Moon has toured the US, Europe, and Australia. She created over 30 musical volumes during her career and performed live radio broadcasts dealing with entomological topics on WFMU in New York and other radio stations. Irene Moon (a.k.a Katja C. Seltmann, Ph.D.) is the Director of the Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She brings the aesthetics from the entomology laboratory in front of alternative audiences in the form of absurd, factual presentations about insects. Her performance at Cafe Oto PLU Residency is a lounge-inspired lecture on bee biodiversity and evolution titled “Will You Bee Mind” that incorporates psychedelic imagery, pop-styled torch songs, and comedy. https://www.begoniasociety.org
Irene Moon
PEOPLE LIKE US & ERGO PHIZMIZ & GWILLY EDMONDEZ First commissioned for The Wire 40 Anniversary and now seen for the first time in expanded form, this new trio showcases a whole new AV performance dedicated to collage, technology and the cut-up. “The interplay between People Like Us, Ergo Phizmiz and Gwilly Edmondez creates a harmonious and dynamic show that captivates and enthrals. The combination of music, poetry, and performance art creates a magical and unforgettable experience for the audience.” – Tough Sell Zine
Gwilly Edmondez, People Like Us, Ergo Phizmiz
NEGATIVLAND What’s a recording? Are they safe? Are the things being played back true, or are they simply becoming familiar? You can wait for your own brain to come up with the answers, or you can go hear music in a room full of people. Don’t worry — you won’t even realize how much of it you’re going to remember. We are pleased as pugs to be participating in the People Like Us residency — whatever we end up doing is sure to only happen there, because you can never hear the same recording twice. https://negativland.com/
Negativland
DAY 2 | 8PM HEARTY WHITE (compère) | WOBBLY solo | ERGO PHIZMIZ solo PEOPLE LIKE US solo | GWILLY EDMONDEZ solo DAY 2 PASS £16 £14 ADVANCE£8 MEMBERS
HEARTY WHITE compère Our residency compère is Hearty White, a performer based in Lexington, Kentucky. His one-hour weekly radio show “Miracle Nutrition with Hearty White” has aired on WFMU from 2012 until the present. https://wfmu.org/playlists/ha
WOBBLY Jon Leidecker (aka Wobbly) is a human in the loop, improvising with people and machines that listen. His work with sampling and feedback blurs any easy distinction between his solo and collaborative work, including touring and recording with Negativland, the Thurston Moore Group, People Like Us, Jennifer Walshe, Zeena Parkins, Zoh Amba, Dieter Moebius & Tim Story, Matmos, Thomas Dimuzio, Fred Frith and Huun-Huur-Tu (among others). Lectures on the various secret histories of electronic music have been presented at Mills, Stanford, Oxford, Peabody, UC Berkeley, and MACBA. As well as playing as part of Negativland, Jon will perform a solo set for this residency. https://www.detritus.net/wobbly/news.html
Jon Leidecker (Wobbly)
ERGO PHIZMIZ Ergo Phizmiz is a composer, writer, collagist, stage director and radio playwright. Recent projects have included animated stage designs for “The Rake’s Progress” at the Royal Academy of Music and Maggio Musicale Firenze, and the huge, smash hit community pantomime “The Quantum Horse” in collaboration with Cube Microplex, Bristol. Their multiple award winning work for radio includes programmes for Bayerischer Rundfunk, Deutschlandradiokultur, BBC Radio 3, BBC 6Music, WFMU, West Deutscher Rundfunk, VPRO and Resonance FM. Recent music releases have mainly comprised the deluxe holiday leisure trilogy on Strategic Tape Reserve “Elmyr”, “Plaza Centraal” and “Owl and Monkey Haven”. Ergo is currently developing a new operatic work “Adapting Don Quixote” as a PhD at the University of Bristol. Ergo will perform a rare solo set for this residency. http://ergophizmizmusic.bandcamp.com
Ergo Phizmiz
PEOPLE LIKE US Residency host Vicki Bennett will preview her brand new audiovisual performance “Is This The Real Life?” This work explores themes of reality and perception and the relationship between image and sound. https://peoplelikeus.org
GWILLY EDMONDEZ Gwilly Edmondez emerged in the 1980s from Bridgend, South Wales, where he was a founder member of Radioactive Sparrow, once dubbed ‘the most legendary band you’ve probably never heard of.’ Gwilly practices a form of composition that disavows fixity and rehearsal, preferring an approach that dissolves the line between ‘life’ and ‘performance’ in ways that compromise neither. Having coined the term Wild Pop to describe his aesthetic as both a solo artist and as Gustav Thomas in YEAH YOU (est. 2013), his embracing the age of evaporation is manifest in a relentless autopathology oriented towards devotional sublimation. Gwilly closes Day 2 of the residency with a special dictaphone karaoke set, a real crowd pleaser. https://gwillyedmondez.bandcamp.com/
Gwilly Edmondez
DAY 3 | 2-5PM PEOPLE LIKE US & HEARTY WHITE CONVERSATION, VARIATIONS LECTURE & CHART SWEEP PERFORMANCE DAY 3 PASS £10 £8 ADVANCE£5 MEMBERS
JON LEIDECKER “VARIATIONS: A HISTORY OF SAMPLING MUSIC” Morton Feldman’s remark that “The degree to which a music’s notation is responsible for much of the composition itself is one of history’s best-kept secrets” referred to the medium of sheet music. But the comment is just as true now that the site of the musical composition has migrated from written notation to the captured recording. The creative process of modern music production is revealed to the listening audience in the form of collage and sampling music precisely through its use of familiar materials; through a demonstration of how known compositions and sounds can be transformed, the tools used by all sound engineers to construct modern popular music are made transparent. https://rwm.macba.cat/en/buscador/radio/serie/variations-9458
GWILLY EDMONDEZ SINGS “CHART SWEEP” CHART SWEEP (AKA TIME SWEEP) is a 2-part mix created by Hugo Keesing using up to 5 seconds of each and every #1 since the mid-fifties, in order, up until 1981 in Part 1 and into the early nineties in Part 2. find more info at ubu.com/sound/keesing.html Gwilly Edmondez started watching Top of the Pops when he was 3. From then on he was obsessed with pop music. he has developed an approach to music making that collides a pop sensibility (with all its showbiz delusional rhetoric) with the materials and mentalness of experimental music. ubu.com/sound/edmondez.html | https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/album/gwilly-edmondez-sings-chart-sweep
Hour 1 Vicki and Jon in conversation (recorded May 2021) Hour 2 Live Session with PLU, Wobbly and Don Joyce on Over The Edge, KPFA (2002) Hour 3 Live Session with PLU, Wobbly, Irene Moon and The Evolution Control Committee on WFMU (2002)
(L-R) Mark Porest, Jon Wobbly/Negativland, Mark Negativland, Vicki PLU and Irene Moon
People Like Us will be on the same performance bill as Negativland for the first time in 22 years at London’s Cafe Oto on 27 October 2019, performing The Horror!! An a/v concert which selects from the more scary (and funny) segments of Vicki’s work, newest and old. Also on the bill the following night will be our friend Irene Moon. https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/baba-yagas-hut-presents-negativland/ (update – 27th has sold out, tickets still available for the 28th, no PLU, but Irene Moon instead)
Stage times : Doors 7:30 Yuko – 7:50 – 8:20 People Like Us (27th) / Irene Moon (28th) – 8:40 – 9:10 Negativland – 9:30 – 10:50
On Wednesday 21 November 2018 at 8-10 pm (California time) People Like Us guested on the radio with Irene Moon doing a 2-hour fill in slot on KCSB in Santa Barbara. Listen to mp3s of the two hour show here:
From 6-10 June 2016 Vicki Bennett and John Kilduff were Artists in Residence at freeform radio station WFMU in Jersey City, NJ, USA.
NEW! Documentation Video:
This residency consisted of “Optimized!” – a week-long online a/v radio station which experimented with ideas of what radio might be in the world of high speed internet broadcasting.
The content included 26 new a/v artist commissions selected and programmed by Vicki Bennett, where people were invited to respond to the word “optimized”, John Kilduff’s live “Let’s Paint TV” daily video show which combines, painting, cooking and exercise, and an evening at the station with an in-house studio audience.
John Kilduff and Vicki Bennett Artist Residency – Expanded Radio at WFMU
People Like Us have revamped the DO or DIY radio stream, and as of Noon EDT on 3rd April 2013 it is now streaming Radio Boredcast!
Radio Boredcast is a 744-hour online radio project that celebrates all things SLOW. And fast too, actually. Crank it up to wind down and enjoy this selection of specially made radio shows by 100 different artists and some WFMU DJs too!
Click and listen to the 24/7 Radio Boredcast stream here.
(Download the little file linked to above – the stream works through iTunes so let your computer launch this application if prompted. If it doesn’t launch then find the small file that you downloaded and double-click on it)
Those of you who already have the DO or DIY stream bookmarked, it will automatically switch over to the new stream for you.
You can also listen to Radio Boredcast shows on demand here.
More on the history of Radio Boredcast here.
Wednesday 17th August 2011, 8pm – 9pm (NY time) on DO or DIY with People Like Us Irene Moon
Irene Moon and the Auk Theater love drama, insects, crime, and examinations. All of these elements make great theater and all occurred at Princess Anne High School documented in the record yearbook created to archive the 1963-1964 school year. Irene found the record in a thrift store in early 2011, but had no idea the demon she uncovered! Of course, these elements could only be discovered in the recording by reading between the lines, backmasking, and interviewing people who know a lot about many things. The new historical drama is filled with music from Nine Fingered Thug, Juules Trakker, Yellow Tears, Secret Boyfriend, Kites, Kevin Blechdom, and, naturally, Lawrence Welk.
Irene Moon is an entomologist at North Carolina State University who participates in music and theater. She has the duel focus to advance appreciation of art in the halls of science; as a means of connecting the public to entomology and increasing awareness of the art and creativity intrinsic to the scientific process.
Find out more information about Irene Moon, Auk Theater and the Begonia Society at www.begoniasociety.org
Two Specials in one edition DO or DIY with People Like Us
Wednesday, September 22nd, 7pm – 8pm DO or DIY with People Like Us
Dave Soldier
An old musician’s joke is on the order of “it takes him half an hour to play the Minute Waltz”. Today, WFMU’s favorite local classical music composer Dave Soldier visits for a live performance of his newest collaboration, with the late Frederic Chopin and living electronic musician Sean Hagerty. Soldier performs the Minute Waltz on the grand piano at Le Poisson Rouge very very slowly, lasting a half hour, while Hagerty stretches each piano note out over time. Chopin may make a surprise appearance. http://davesoldier.com/
Irene Moon
Irene Moon and a cast of characters from the Auk Theater perform a musical mystery theater about insects. Each character has an insect of choice that is suspect in a recently discovered serial murder. Information about insects is introduced as they try to unravel the “who done it.” Not all of the content is logical, but it is absolutely factual. Irene is an entomologist and musician at North Carolina State University whose present research involves the dissection of wasp heads and the representation of the muscles found within the head. She was quoted recently to say, “social bees and wasps are commonly found and easily organized. It’s the non-social beasts that fascinate and truly demonstrate how many creative methods there really are to dispose of an unfriendly caterpillar.” http://begoniasociety.org/auktheatre.php
“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.
This film is also on Vimeo.
