Pleased to say we have another performance lined up (in person again!) of The Mirror, our first in a couple of years since it had to default to screenings recently.
It will be on at Index Festival 2022, in Braga, Portugal on 21 May 2022. The venue will be GNRation. More info coming up on the above website.
Cover Versions is a group show curated by brothers Anthony and Graham Dolphin exploring notions of the original and its copies, echoes, and mutations in art, film and music. An original artwork is often used as the starting point of new creative acts. It can be re-purposed, subverted and reclaimed by artists, musicians, and fans. The exhibition addresses concepts of ownership, fandom and audience, authenticity, and the economic and cultural values that site and shape them.
The exhibition features internationally acclaimed artists, musicians and film makers from the UK, the USA, Australia, Japan, and Austria with newly commissioned work alongside key examples of their established practice.
We regret to tell you that we’ve had to cancel performing at Keroxen on 4th December 2021 because of pandemic/travel related issues. We hope to be able to do this when the situation is safer and easier.
Online and Brussels Mill, Belgium 29|04|2021 – 02|05|2021
Four day festival in Brussels taking its name from radio pioneer Daphne Oram. The festival will also broadcast audio via its website regardless. Featuring talks, concerts and workshops from People Like Us, Catherine Lamb, Daphne Oram, Farida Amadou, Lucretia Dalt, Goodiepal & Pals, Áine O’Dwyer, Jessica Ekomane, Jonáš Gruska and Lukas De Clerck. Online and Brussels Mill, 29 April–2 May.
Here’s an interview conducted by Henry Andersen of Oscillation Festival Vicki Bennett about process.
People Like Us will have a special one hour audio mix broadcast on the radio, and you can watch The Mirror online via their website, for the entirety of the festival.
People Like Us and Porest were both due to perform live concerts at MAAT in Lisbon on 6 November but unfortunately because of the pandemic we will not be travelling. So instead our work will be screened in the gallery on the same date. Details above.
This is now cancelled because of the current global situation – more specifically because of the French month-long lockdown.
People Like Us will perform The Mirror at BBMix Festivalon Saturday 21 November 2020 at Carré Belle-feuille, Paris in the 3pm to 7pm portion of the festival. The festival has adjusted hours to allow for the curfew. / € 11
Tickets available in advance on the above link. Unlike most of our activities this year, we will be there in person performing it, so long as we are able at the time of travel (in accordance with the ongoing global situation). Please continue to check the festival website for updates.
We have a virtual exhibition/screening at Le Nouveau Musée National de Monaco starting today – this came about as the result of the pandemic cancellation of our performance of The Mirror. You can now watch this (and others) here for the next 2 weeks. http://4cast.fr/peoplelikeus/NMNM/
The Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, in collaboration with the Théâtre Princesse Grace, had originally invited People Like Us to interpret her live cinema performance The Mirror. The performance was to be part of the associated program of the exhibition Variations – Eugène Frey’s Light Set Projections presented by João Maria Gusmão at the Villa Paloma until August 30th. Due to the COVID 19 pandemic the performance was postponed. However the intention to disseminate and promote the artist’s work has enabled a rescheduling and made available a selection of the artist’s works which will be accessible for the duration of one week.
People Like Us’s musical collage movie The Mirror will screen for one night only at Monty Hall in this WFMU Benefit. This will be a rare theatrical screening, introduced by the artist herself. A selection of short films will precede this 40 minute screening.
”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
Documented below, both the Q&A and performance – the event moved to Radius Gallery at the last minute due to a mass power outage in Santa Cruz:
We Edit Life: An Evening with People Like Us
We Edit Life is an evening of film screenings by People Like Us including the premiere live-score performance of Notations by Blectum from Blechdom. Atheatrical screening ofThe Mirror, 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 made up from hundreds of preexisting songs, as well as particular sounds from the original film clips. This 35 minute screening will be followed by an artist Q&A.
A live performance of Notations, a film for improvising musicians and artists, Notations has been created by Vicki from hundreds of different film clips, where the content conceptually or literally portrays different kinds of ‘gestures’ or ‘instructions’ to be read by the improvising artists on stage as a visual score.
Notations has been performed in the past by an impressive international cast of improvisers, each with radically different approaches and, as each show features a different combination of artists, every performance is completely unique. This time around the performers with the film will be Kristin Erickson and Bevin Kelley, aka electronic music duo Blectum from Blechdom.
Courtesy of our friends Discrepant, our album The Mirror is now out on vinyl! Buy direct from us throughbandcamp – Click on the link below and scroll to “The Mirror Vinyl LP” in the left hand column and click on that to buy. Shipping date is expected for 18 October 2019. Includes digital album of The Mirror. Also available on CD from the same bandcamp page.
No.8 in The Wire Magazine’s releases of 2019Cover art for The Mirror by People Like Us
Tracks on the vinyl version of The Mirror: A1 The Mirror A2 Do You See What I Hear A3 Step Inside B1 Free My Prayer B2 The Other Side B3 Forever B4 Till The End of Time
Previously released on CD accompanied by “Gone, Gone Beyond”, “The Mirror” is the dreamy soundtrack of an a/v project from collage artist extraordinaire Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us. With ‘’The Mirror’’ Bennett continues her eternal disassembling of popular music by exploring how the narrative of familiar sounds/songs can change dramatically under a new context, with that context always changing, in a never-ending flow. Each song is singular. And each song is a collage of and undefined number of other songs from other artists. It sounds familiar because that has been the modus operandi of People Like Us since the early 1990s. But “The Mirror” plays with the notion of familiar, driving around a collection of famous pop songs/artists, messing around with the memory of the listener and, of course, his unique comprehension of those specific songs applied in a new context. 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. — Discrepant
Pressing Information One time pressing of 500 units Mastered by Mark Gergis Cut by Rashad Becker