Oscillation: Tuned Circuits

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.

https://oscillation-festival.be/

MAAT Lisbon: Porest & People Like Us exhibition

DO YOU MISS THE PRESENT?
6 November 2020 In the gallery at The Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), Lisbon
Tickets Free with museum ticket
Curator: Gonçalo F. Cardoso
Av. Brasília 1300-598 Belém, Portugal
https://www.maat.pt/index.php/en/event/do-you-miss-present

People Like Us will screen The Mirror, and Porest will screen their new film here at 7pm (UTC): https://vimeo.com/476324332

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.

Cancelled: The Mirror Paris BBMix

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 Festival on 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.

People Like Us presented by Nouveau Musée National de Monaco

28 July 2020 10:30 – 11 August 2020 18:00

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.

http://4cast.fr/peoplelikeus/NMNM/

The Mirror at WFMU

Thursday 5th March 2020, 8:00 PM EST | Doors at 7:30 PM
Monty Hall, 43 Montgomery Street, Jersey City, NJ 07302

Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-mirror-tickets-90365302051

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

Notations & The Mirror, Santa Cruz

Indexical Presents Digital Alchemy in Fall 2019
28 September 2019 at 8pm
People Like Us Theatrical Screening of “The Mirror(not a concert!) and artist Q&A | Blectum from Blechdom perform “Notations” by Vicki Bennett
https://www.indexical.org/events/2019-09-28-people-like-us-blectum-from-blechdom

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.

A theatrical screening of The 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.

https://vimeo.com/353994235


The Mirror on Vinyl!

Courtesy of our friends Discrepant, our album The Mirror is now out on vinyl!
Buy direct from us through bandcamp
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 2019
Cover 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

Touch Presents… The Mirror at Iklectik Art Lab, London

People Like Us will be performing The Mirror as part of a Touch presents… event at London’s Iklectik on Saturday 22 June 2019. It will be a double bill with our friend Daniel Menche.

TICKETS

The Mirror is a live a/v performance which splices together movie snippets with unique sample-based music exploring the masks that we wear represented through the lens, using parallel narratives across the screen to depict an ever-changing stream, rather than a singular, fixed being, narrative or moment in time.

“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

Daniel Menche is an abstract sound artist from Portland, Oregon.  He says of his music that its “…intent is to destroy all rationalized thought processes to make room for the emotional and sensual impulses to take over… The greater the intent, the greater the intensity, and intensity is based upon the blood rising in speed and heat through our bodies.”

The Mirror and Objects In The Mirror in Newcastle

Culture Lab, Grand Assembly Rooms, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne
Friday 14 June 2019 from 19:00-23:00

Admission £FREE. There is no bar. But there is an off license nearby.

People Like Us will perform The Mirror at Culture Lab in Newcastle on 14 June 2019. It will be part of a bill of collage related work including the public premiere of a new film for improvising musicians and artists titled Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear with a live score by participants in two Wild Cinema workshops that will take place on Thursday 13th June (5-7pm) and Friday 14th June (12-2pm). If you want to take part in the workshops and the performance please email militantseed@hotmail.com. Details of the workshops can be found below. The concert programme also features Competition, Nellie Saunby and People Like Us performing their current live set ‘Mirror’.

WILD CINEMA

Wild Cinema is a new Wild Pop spin-off that proposes the idea of staging screenings in informal and unconventional settings (anywhere other than a cinema, basically) where people are invited to make bespoke videos for (other) people to improvise live scores (musical and/or non-) to. Wild Cinema is being launched with two 2-hour ‘workshops’ (actually onsite dry-runs with discussion) at Newcastle University which will be led by Vicki Bennett (People Like Us), benefitting from Vicki’s long-standing experience working with scoring (pre-recorded and improvised) films made to be experienced as music/film with neither leading the other in terms of concept or practical application.

This event page is thus also a call for participants in the workshops. Please contact by email to militantseed@hotmail.com if you want to take part.

Participants can either take part by making a 5-minute film or by being part of an ad hoc group that improvises the music to a 5-minute film someone else has made (or both, or all).

People taking part in the workshop will then improvise a score to the film of ‘Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear’ ‘blind’ as part of the evening concert programme.

This event is supported by the Newcastle Institute for Creative Arts Practice.

The Mirror at Venice Biennale

People Like Us will perform The Mirror at Venice Biennale on 9 May 2019 at 9.30pm after the opening reception at the following, as well as being part of the UbuWeb cinema programme:

Title: HILLARY: The Hillary Clinton Emails.
Artist: Kenneth Goldsmith.
Curators: Francesco Urbano Ragazzi.
Opening Hours: 11 am – 7 pm, closed on Monday.
Venue: Despar Teatro Italia, Campiello de l’Anconeta 1944, Cannaregio, 30121 Venezia.
From May 9th to November 24th, 2019.

Opening Reception: May 9th, 2019. From 7:30 pm to 11 pm.
Live performance by People Like Us from 9:30 pm.

Cinema program: every day from 6 pm to 7 pm, closed on Monday
Works by: Peggy Ahwesh, Johanna Bruckner, Alex Da Corte, Cheryl Donegan, Shadi Habib Allah, Bek Hyunjin, Lev Manovich, Alix Pearlstein, People Like Us, Christine Rebet, Sabrina Röthlisberger, Sara Sackner, Leah Singer, Stan VanDerBeek, Jennifer West, Jordan Wolfson.

Breaking news: Hillary visits the exhibition 🙂 (September 2019)
Despar Teatro Italia is by day a Spar Supermarket

HILLARY: The Hillary Clinton Emails is a project by The Internet Saga and Zuecca Projects
Main sponsor: Despar
 Aspiag Service
With the collaboration of Circuitozero, The Bauers, Dipartimento di Filosofia e Beni Culturali – Università Ca’ Foscari.
Media partner: My Art Guides, Le Confort Moderne.
Website by 
M-J-STUDIO

For further inquiries / RSVP: info@internetsaga.com /GO TO THE PRESS PACK