In the lead-up to the venue’s closure on 24th January, we invite you to join us for this, one of a series of closing benefit events, each a takeover of IKLECTIK by a different organiser with a special lineup. All proceeds go towards supporting the future of IKLECTIK.
Lineup: GAIKA [live] Elaine Mitchener [live] Loré Lixenberg [live] David Toop x Mark Wastell [live] People Like Us [AV set: The Library Of Babel]
Thanks to The WIRE Magazine for having us write The Inner Sleeve feature in the new October 2023 issue of the magazine. We chose Marc & the Mambas “Untitled”.
CARL STONE AT 70 – THREE-DAY RESIDENCY at CAFE OTO – 13 TO 15 JULY 2023 As part of this residency People Like Us will join Carl Stone (along with Scanner) for a panel and live performance.
After the fact: here’s a clip, courtesy of Robin Rimbaud:
Cafe OTO is delighted to host a very-special 70th birthday residency with pioneering composer, Carl Stone! Featuring avant-garde electronics, forensic sampling, and live computing unveiling a strange musical language, these will be his first London performances in five years.
Dubbed the King of Sampling by the Village Voice, and one of the pioneers of live computer music. Carl Stone started originally with tape recorders and turntables in 1972. In 1986 he adapted his performance to include live computing, which he continues to this day. In addition to solo performance, he often collaborates with other musicians in ensembles that merge and blend musical reality. Pitchfork called Stone’s music “like a dance party in a room made of funhouse mirrors” and the New York Times called it “a powerful stimulant with lingering euphoric effects”.
Now in his 70th year, Carl Stone’s plan for his Cafe OTO residency will feature his solo work, plus collaborators helping him explore acoustic resonance, media bombardment, Irony, elegance, economy and wit. Guests include Robin Rimbaud (Scanner), Vicki Bennett (People Like Us), Miki Yui (Realistic Monk), Kazuhisa Uchihashi and Silvia Kastel, plus panel discussions, interviews and DJ time!
A programme of film shorts by People Like Us Q&A Vicki Bennett & Emily Bick (The Wire) Live performance to a new film score by People Like Us with Gwilly Edmondez & Ergo Phizmiz
THE WIRE 40: An Evening with People Like Us @The Cube Microplex (01/07)
Perhaps better known for her audio work, the opening night of The Wire’s 40th birthday celebrations focused on Vicki Bennett’s (aka People Like Us) films.
The evening started with an overview of the artist’s work including maximalist explosions of old industrial documentaries, tongue in cheek pop culture mashups, and recent immersive experiences. For me the extracts of longer works didn’t work so well, never having enough time to fully get into what was going on, but many of the short films were brilliant – from the hilarious mashup of The Hills Are Alive from Sound of Music and This Is The End from Apocalypse Now (The Sound of the End of Music), to the really quite moving combination of depictions of the moon in early experimental and comedy films, with music by Ergo Phizmiz (Moon). What was surprising and delightful was the lack of any cynicism – throughout, Bennett celebrated films from commercials to classics, with an obvious love of the moving image, and the people who made them.
The night really started to come alive with the Q&A with Bennett. The way she talked about her work confirmed her genuine joy in working with existing material. ‘Films want to be friends,’ she replied to questions about how she got things to fit so well together. ‘You do one thing for a long time and magic happens.’
Crowning the evening was a new work, with live performance by Bennett, Ergo Phizmiz and Gwilly Edmondez. It fulfilled the promise teased in the earlier clips, and showed the excellence of Bennett’s work when allowed the space to stretch out, by turns joyous and strange and beguiling. It seemed almost like a celebration of her own career, with clips returning to repeated motifs from earlier work; corridors and cameras, doorways and dreams. As a final encapsulation of the magic Bennett talked of we saw a satanic ritual mixed with a Dadaist poetry exercise; art as a demonic summoning, drawing something from the ether and binding it to yourself.
For this evening Bennett has put together a programme of her rarely-seen short films from the current century. The films will be followed by a discussion between the artist and Wire Deputy Editor Emily Bick, and then the premiere live performance to a new specially-made film score by PLU by the trio of Bennett, Gwilly Edmondez and Ergo Phizmiz.
Emily Bick is Deputy Editor at The Wire magazine.
Gwilly Edmondez is a performer whose primary aesthetic is Wild Pop, active both solo and in numerous collaborations. As Gustav Thomas he is one half of the duo YEAH YOU with Elvin Brandhi. Originally from Wales, he is mostly based in the North East where he has been on the staff of the music department of Newcastle University since 2004.
Ergo Phizmiz is a composer, writer, collagist, radio playwright, opera designer and director, who has created a vast body of work across media since 2000. They are currently designing moving images for The Rake’s Progress at the Royal Academy of Music, and working on the opera Adapting Don Quixote as a PhD at the University of Bristol.
The Wire 40 @ The Cube is a weekend of events marking The Wire magazine’s 40th anniversary. Other Wire 40 events are happening in London, Brighton, Manchester, Glasgow and streaming online during the month of July. See The Wire for more details.
This accompanies the artist talk that Vicki gave at Somerset Studios in London in October.
Vicki Bennett explores the processes of making audiovisual content, working with archives and found footage. Using collage as a compositional tool opens up endless opportunities to create and experience results that are more than the sum of their parts, opening doors (and windows) to let light in and move beyond limited and repetitive ways of creative thinking.
In this Somerset House Studios podcast, we revisit Vicki Bennett’s talk as part of The Wire magazine’s Music By Any Means series, which was part of Grounding Practice, a rolling programme shaped by and for creative practitioners and critical thinkers.
Part of The Wire: Music By Any Means. Grounding Practice / Somerset House Studios Audio produced by Weyland Mckenzie-Witter as part of The Creator in Residence Programme at Somerset House, supported by The Rothschild Foundation.
We have a full page review of Gone, Gone Beyond in the January 2022 edition of The Wire Magazine, a very nice write up by Louise Gray. We also had at three mentions from Wire writers in their “best of” summaries of 2021.
Review of Gone, Gone Beyond at Barbican by Louise Gray in The Wire January 2022
A series of three talks programmed by The Wire magazine looking at different strategies and systems for making music and organising sound.
Wed 20 October 2021 | 18.45 – 20.30 | In person £8 Lancaster Rooms, New Wing & Online An in person event from Somerset House. If you are unable to join us on the evening, a recording will be archived and available to view via a ticketed link.
This in person event will also be streamed live from Somerset House. If you are unable to join us on the evening, a recording will be archived and available to view via a ticketed link. Music By Any Means has been designed to show how anything can become music, from objects to actions, archives to rituals, and how anyone can make it, regardless of any previous musical experience or ability. In the process of demystifying the processes of sound organisation and music making, the series will illuminate other ways of being in the world through sound, bypassing existing orthodoxies to enable and empower new creative activity.
The talks, which will include demonstrations and performances, will be presented by O YAMA O (Rie Nakajima and Keiko Yamamoto), People Like Us (Vicki Bennett), and Elaine Mitchener; all artists who use aspects of film, theatre, performance, visual art and other practices to inform and develop new and distinctive approaches to making music and organising sound. Music By Any Means will be available to audiences both onsite and online, with each event broadcast live from Somerset House Studios.
Vicki Bennett explores the processes of making audiovisual content, working with archives and found footage.
Using collage as a compositional tool opens up endless opportunities to create and experience results that are more than the sum of their parts, opening doors (and windows) to let light in and move beyond limited and repetitive ways of creative thinking.
In this talk, Vicki Bennett discusses and demonstrates her creative process making audio-visual content, working with archives and found footage, showing how she sources and organises this material into finished works which break the rectangle, smashing the thin screen into tiny fragments, looking beyond the frame, climbing through to see what’s behind. The talk will be followed by a Q&A session.
This is on sale at The Wire’s online shop from 13 April 2021 and from selected newsagents, record and book shops from 15 April 2021. The digital edition of the issue is published online at Exact Editions and in the Wire app.
Yes, it’s true! People Like Us will be on the cover of the new edition of The Wire magazine, May 2021 edition, coming out in April. Inside you will find a career retrospective interview. If you cannot find The Wire in your local newsagents you can buy it here: https://www.thewire.co.uk/
Author and Wire contributor Ken Hollings has produced a show for BBC Radio 4 on William Burroughs’s cut ups. The show traces the history of the cut up, from its roots in the Dadaist movement through Burroughs and Brion Gysin, to tape splicing and digital editing, looking at the cut up as a satirical device.
The show “Cutting Up The Cut Up” includes interviews with Armando Iannucci, Cassetteboy, Kevin Foakes (aka DJ Food), Vicki Bennett and others. It will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 25 June at 11:30am.
‘Cutcast Up-pod’ – featuring additional material from Chris Morris and Negativland – is available here.
