Artist Biography


Working under the moniker People Like Us, artist Vicki Bennett has been creating and distributing audio-visual work across multiple platforms since 1992. Her extensive output spans CD, DVD and vinyl releases, radio broadcasts, live performances, gallery installations, 360° immersive environments and online media. Vicki treats collage as a form of contemporary folk art—rooted in mass media and technology—championing its democratic, shared nature. Central to her work is the belief that everything is interconnected, rendering the notion of artistic ownership or originality both absurd and unnecessary. Through the act of collage, she opens up expansive, unexpected outcomes that exceed the sum of their parts.

Since 2002, the majority of the People Like Us back catalogue has been freely accessible online. Vicki is an advocate of the gift economy, highlighting that for many artists, free self-distribution can generate greater reach and impact than traditional publishing channels. This approach alleviates the pressures of production costs, while ensuring long-term availability. The discography and filmography of People Like Us are generously hosted by UbuWeb.

Over her career, Vicki has produced over 50 audio recordings and more than 40 video works, released on labels including Illegal Art, Rough Trade, Soleilmoon Recordings, Discrepant, Sonic Arts Network and Touch. Her long-running radio show DO or DIY has been broadcast on New York’s fiercely independent WFMU since 2003. Her video work has been shown internationally at venues such as Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, BFI, Barbican, ICA, V&A, Centre Pompidou (Paris), Sonar (Barcelona), MAXXI (Rome), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and Centro de Cultura Digital (Mexico City). Works have also been broadcast on Channel 4 and featured in sessions for John Peel and Mixing It.

People Like Us has been commissioned by organisations including Arts Council England, Barbican, ACCA, BBC, WDR, Deutschlandradio, PRS Foundation, a-n, Great North Run, Sound and Music, Animate Projects, AV Festival, RML, Sonic Arts Network, Forma, LUX and Lovebytes.

Vicki has held seven solo exhibitions and participated in over 20 group shows across prominent international venues, including the Venice Biennale, MAXXI (Rome), HMKV (Dortmund), Hatton Gallery (Newcastle), Sheehan Gallery (Walla Walla), La Scatola Gallery (London), alt.gallery (Newcastle), Vitrine (London), Engramme (Quebec), University of Greenwich Galleries, Edinburgh Printmakers, Pallant House (Chichester), Millennium Gallery (Sheffield), and Hallwalls (New York), among others.

Her work has been discussed in numerous publications such as Sounds Like Silence – 4’33’’ Today (Spectre Books), The Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, Cutting Across Media (Duke University Press), The Fundamentals of Sonic Art and Design, Incredible Machines, Sensations of History (University of Minnesota Press), and Here To Go – Art, Counter-Culture and the Esoteric. She has also contributed to The Wire, including a feature in their “Collateral Damage” column (2012), and has entire chapters devoted to her in Kenneth Goldsmith’s Duchamp Is My Lawyer (Columbia University Press) and Carl Abrahamsson’s Different People (Trapart, 2021).

People Like Us has been reviewed or profiled in The Wire, Rolling Stone, Frieze, The Guardian, NME, Time Out, Sight & Sound, Film Comment, The Scotsman, The Independent, BBC Online, Bizarre, Record Collector, Metro, XLR8R, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Baltimore City Paper, and more. Interviews include The Observer, Filmmaker Magazine, Found Footage Magazine, Wired, a-n Magazine, RadioWeb MACBA, Sound and Music, and multiple features in The Wire.

Her radio interviews include Late Junction, Soundproof (ABC), WDR 3 Open Sounds, Cutting Up The Cut Up (BBC Radio 4), PM and Twenty Minutes (BBC Radio 3), and North by Southwest (British Council).

She has also curated a variety of events and publications, including First Person, Fourth Wall (2020), Optimized! (WFMU, 2016), Concert of Collage (Encounters Festival, 2015), Radio Boredcast (AV Festival, 2012), and Nothing is New, Everything is Permitted (2010).

Notable works include Notations, a touring film for live improvisation (TUSK/Sound and Music, 2013); two films for Channel 4’s Random Acts; Citation City (2015), an AV performance inspired by Walter Benjamin; Nothing Can Turn Into A Void, a documentary (2015); No One Is An Island (WDR, 2016); and The Mirror (2018), an AV performance and album ranked No.8 in The Wire’s Albums of the Year. Vicki also produced video content for The The’s 2018 comeback tour, and was part of the New Voices programme from Sound and Music, and received an a-n Artist Bursary in 2019. Her radio commission I Can Fly aired on WDR in 2020.

In 2020, she premiered two new works at her solo exhibition First Person, Fourth Wall, as Hallwalls Artist in Residence (HARP). The following year saw the touring of Gone, Gone Beyond, an immersive multi-screen and multi-speaker AV installation across venues including nyMusikk Oslo, SPILL Festival, ACCA Brighton, and London’s Barbican.

In 2022, she presented MIND MAPS: The Art of Vicki Bennett at Sheehan Gallery (USA) and Orfeó Lleidatà (Spain), and Gone, Gone Beyond was screened at Gray Area, San Francisco. Her 22-hour radio piece 108 aired via Radio Arts Zone, and she performed with Ergo Phizmiz and Gwilly Edmondez at The Wire‘s 40th Anniversary. She also produced a new radio work Changing Your Mind for Deutschlandradio and a mixtape for BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction. The lathe-cut vinyl Rhapsody in Glue (with Ergo Phizmiz) was released in November 2022.

In 2023, she launched a successful IndieGoGo campaign for the new live AV performance and album The Library of Babel, premiering at a three-day residency at Café OTO, London. A retrospective 2-CD set Sharity! Selected Works of People Like Us followed in April.

In 2024, People Like Us released a new album COPIA, created music videos for The The, Soft Cell and Marc Almond, and debuted a widescreen AV installation Mise en Abyme at Museu de Aveiro/Santa Joana in Portugal. Currently in development is Khroma, a new 360-degree work for RML CineChamber.

So far in 2025, People Like Us continues work on Khroma, alongside creating live visuals for Soft Cell’s performances of “Torch” and “Purple Zone”. Vicki is also collaborating with Kevin Hamilton (University of Illinois) on a text-based media project.

ALL COMMISSION ENQUIRIES OR BOOKINGS FOR GONE, GONE BEYOND ARE TO BE MADE DIRECTLY WITH US THROUGH OUR CONTACT PAGE.

Shorter Bio – Artist Statement
Filmography
Exhibitions and Editions
Selected Performances and Screenings
Commissions and Awards
Talks, Lectures
Discography
People Like Us on bandcamp

Citation City at Encounters Short Film Festival

ENCOUNTERS

PEOPLE LIKE US PRESENT an evening of film:
CONCERT OF COLLAGE : CITATION CITY
and selected short collage/cut up films curated by Vicki Bennett

at WATERSHED CINEMA 3, BRISTOL
18 September 2015

21:45 – 23:45
£5 / £4.50 CONC.
2hr

Tickets: http://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/6803/concert-of-collage/

Join us for the performance of Citation City – a time-travelling voyage through one city, assembled from hundreds of movie clips and inspired by the wanderings of Walter Benjamin.

People Like Us’ ‘Citation City’ sources, collage and edits 300 major feature films where content is either filmed or set in London – creating a story within a story, of the film world, living its life, through extraordinary times of change, to see what happens when these multiple narratives are combined… what will the story tell us that one story alone could never tell?

https://peoplelikeus.org/citationcity

Prior to this performance we will be screening a series of clips using the art of collage selected by People Like Us, from filmmakers including Bryce Kretschmann and John Oswald.

CCCitations – a Citation City project

CCCitations is an offshoot of Citation City, an audiovisual performance by People Like Us.

Four artists, Jon Leidecker, Jason Willett, Gwilly Edmondez and Andrew Sharpley were given source material from Vicki Bennett’s Citation City a/v project and asked to make new work, interpreting the footage in a unique way.


Soundtrack: Gwilly Edmondez 00:01
Soundtrack: Jason Willett 02:47
Soundtrack: Jon Leidecker 05:23
Film: Vicki Bennett


Film and Video: Andrew Sharpley – using source material given by Vicki Bennett

About Citation City

Citation City sources, collage and edits 300 major feature films where content is either filmed or set in London – creating a story within a story, of the film world, living its life, through extraordinary times of change, to see what happens when these multiple narratives are combined… what will the story tell us that one story alone could never tell?

Inspired by The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin, this audiovisual work is created from 1000s of clippings of text and visual media, collaged using a system of “convolutes”, collated around subjects of key motifs, historical figures, social types, cultural objects from the time. By gathering and assembling such groups of similar yet unrelated, he revealed a hidden, magical encyclopaedia of affinities, a massive and labyrinthine architecture of a collective dream city. On reading Benjamin, his approach to editing astonished Vicki Bennett, and the similarity of their creative processes of cutting and collating extensive lists of subject matter by context.

In the live performance a series of story lines (convolutes) sit side by side with a soundtrack sourced both from the movie content, as well as new sample compositions thematically related to the visual content.

The result is a sweeping panorama of London, a London as represented through cinema – not the real city at all, but one that exists in the collective imagination of moviegoers throughout the decades. Filmmaker Magazine

Citation City UK Premiere at Flatpack Film Festival

CITATION CITY UK Premieres at Flatpack Film Festival in Birmingham.
http://flatpackfestival.org.uk/event/citation-city/
28 March 11-12.30am: Arcades walk with Esther Leslie (city centre)
28 March 3-4.45pm: Citation City UK Premiere + Esther Leslie talk (Flatpack Palais at the Bond, Digbeth)

Tickets £8.00 | £6.00
Venue Flatpack Palais @ The Bond, 180-182 Fazeley St. , Birmingham, B5 5SE
+ Google Map Website: http://www.thebondco.net/

A time-travelling voyage through one city, assembled from hundreds of movie clips and inspired by the wanderings of Walter Benjamin.A patchwork of over 300 features either filmed or set in London, Citation City combines multiple narratives to create the story of one city in a period of enormous change. Pieced together by audiovisual artist Vicki Bennett (aka People Like Us), this beguiling, labyrinthine work takes its cue from Benjamin’s Arcades Project, an ambitious attempt to map out Paris in fragments which was cut short by the author’s death in 1940.

Continue reading “Citation City UK Premiere at Flatpack Film Festival”

Citation City World Premiere @transmediale Berlin 2015

The a/v performance “Citation City” that we have been working on for the past 10 months is now finished! It will premiere at transmediale, Berlin https://peoplelikeus.org/citationcity

CITATION CITY World Premiere, transmediale Berlin
Thursday 29 January from 9pm
Performance at Auditorium, HKW
Part of a double bill with a live network data performance “Pirate Cinema” by Nicolas Maigret and Brendan Howell.

Tickets: http://www.transmediale.de/content/the-pirate-cinema-and-citation-city

Background on Citation City at https://peoplelikeus.org/citationcity

Citation-City-Dictionary

CITATION CITY

Update (2018) :
The soundtrack is now available for sale as a digital download:
https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/album/citation-city-ost

citation city banner

Citation City is a 42 minute audiovisual performance work which sources, collages and edits 300 major feature films where content is either filmed or set in London – creating a story within a story, of the film world, living its life, through extraordinary times of change, to see what happens when these multiple narratives are combined… what will the story tell us that one story alone could never tell?

“The result is a sweeping panorama of London, a London as represented through cinema – not the real city at all, but one that exists in the collective imagination of moviegoers throughout the decades.” Filmmaker Magazine

Please note: this is now retired.  However, we occasionally make edits available as stand-alone movies for cinema screening.

A time-travelling voyage through one city, assembled from hundreds of movie clips and inspired by the wanderings of Walter Benjamin. A patchwork of over 300 features either filmed or set in London, Citation City combines multiple narratives to create the story of one city in a period of enormous change. Pieced together by audiovisual artist Vicki Bennett (aka People Like Us), this beguiling, labyrinthine work takes its cue from Benjamin’s Arcades Project, an ambitious attempt to map out Paris in fragments which was cut short by the author’s death in 1940. Flatpack Film Festival

Interview with Kenneth Goldsmith in Found Footage magazine about Citation City
Interview with Peter Jaeger in filling Station Issue 63 featuring Citation City

Background:
Inspired by The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin, this audiovisual performance work by People Like Us is created from 1000s of clippings of text and visual media, collaged using a system of “convolutes”, collated around subjects of key motifs, historical figures, social types, cultural objects from the time. By gathering and assembling such groups of similar yet unrelated, he revealed a hidden, magical encyclopaedia of affinities, a massive and labyrinthine architecture of a collective dream city. On reading Benjamin, his approach to editing astonished Vicki Bennett, and the similarity of their creative processes of cutting and collating extensive lists of subject matter by context.

As a side project, Vicki also invited selected sound artists to create distinct soundtracks to the work in order to produce two new films.

Performances:
9 December 2014 Cafe Oto preview http://www.cafeoto.co.uk/jennifer-walshe-sharon-gal-andie-brown-people-like-us.shtm
29 January 2015 World Premiere at transmediale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
28 March 2015 UK Premiere at Flatpack Film Festival, Birmingham, as part of a larger WFMU and Walter Benjamin-themed programme
17 April 2015 Parede, Portugal
18 September 2015 Bristol Encounters Short Film Festival
26 September 2015 Whitechapel Gallery at Walter Benjamin Now Symposium (at 5pm), London
15 October 2015 Leeds Art Gallery (private screening for students only)
24 October 2015 Monty Hall, WFMU
28 October 2015 Red Room, Baltimore
21 November 2015 Brighton Cinecity Festival
12 April 2016 Sonic Protest Festival, Paris
7 May 2016 Delco Festival, Nimes
23 November 2016 Dundee Contemporary Arts
March 2017 Hull UK City of Culture/ReROOTed
Citation City is now retired. However we now make it available for movie screenings.
October 2017
Other Cinema, San Francisco (20-minute stand alone movie edit)
December 2019 Dare Conference, Ghent (screening)

Vicki’s working process

A portion of Citation City previewed at London’s Cafe Oto on 9 December 2014 then World Premiered in full at transmediale, Berlin on 29 January 2015.  It’s UK Premiere was at Flatpack Film Festival on 28 March 2015, and London Premiere at Whitechapel Gallery on 26 September 2015 as part of the Walter Benjamin Now Symposium.

Citation City notes on the carpet
Vicki’s working process

Citation City education/teaching pack
PDF download: citation city teaching pack
We thought it may be useful to make a document explaining the process of making this work. This pdf is intended as a companion to the audiovisual work, giving examples of the process one might undertake to create new work when sourcing from a large media database. This particular example relates to moving image and musical composition, but the methods can translate to other platforms that use composition, directing, editing, creative narratives and story telling.

citationcityflooraug2014
SELECTION: Layout in paper form of descriptions of selected film content and possible subject headings (convolutes/citations) – August 2014

Press and articles:
Interview in Filmmaker Magazine (January 2015)
InEnArt Magazine (January 2015)

Vicki’s working process
The first stage after selecting footage is to type out descriptions of hundreds of segments then cut them out, and make arrangements of subjects, content, "convolutes"
The first stage after selecting footage is to type out descriptions of hundreds of segments then cut them out, and make arrangements of subjects, content, “convolutes”
Citation-City-Dictionary
Citation City
Vicki’s working process

Vicki Bennett/People Like Us
Since 1991 British artist Vicki Bennett has been working across the field of audio-visual collage, and is recognised as an influential and pioneering figure in the still growing area of sampling, appropriation and cutting up of found footage and archives.  Working under the name People Like Us, Vicki specialises in the manipulation and reworking of original sources from both the experimental and popular worlds of music, film and radio. People Like Us believe in open access to archives for creative use. In 2006 she was the first artist to be given unrestricted access to the entire BBC Archive. People Like Us have previously shown work at Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, The Barbican, Centro de Cultura Digital, V&A, Sydney Opera House, Royal Albert Hall, Pompidou Centre, Venice Biennale, Maxxi and Sonar, and performed radio sessions for John Peel and Mixing It. The ongoing sound art radio show ‘DO or DIY’ on WFMU has had over a million “listen again” downloads. since 2003. The People Like Us back catalogue is available for free download hosted by UbuWeb.
Longer Biography
Filmography
Exhibitions and Editions
Selected Performances and Screenings
Commissions and Awards
Discography
https://peoplelikeus.org/2014/artist-statement-for-people-like-us/

Press Image
Continue reading “CITATION CITY”