Event overview
Working under the name People Like Us, British artist Vicki Bennett works across the field of audio-visual collage, specialising in the manipulation and reworking of original sources from both the experimental and popular worlds of music, film and radio. Since her first publication in 1992, Bennett has developed an aesthetic repurposing pre-existing footage to craft audio and video collages with a dark and witty take on popular culture.
People Like Us believe in open access to archives for creative use, making work available via CD, DVD and vinyl releases, radio broadcasts, concert appearances, gallery exhibits and online streaming for 25 years. Vicki sees sampling and appropriation as folk art sourced from the palette of contemporary media and technology, with all of the sharing and cross-referencing incumbent to a populist form. Embedded in her work is the premise that all is interconnected and that claiming ownership of an “original” or isolated concept is both preposterous and redundant. People Like Us strongly believe in the power of profit through free distribution and the publicity that comes along with that. Most of the People Like Us back catalogue has been available for free online since 2002. UbuWeb generously hosts the discography and filmography of People Like Us.
‘I believe that something does not diminish by doubling it and duplicating it, and I don’t believe in the art gallery ethic of the less there is of something, the more value it has. I think that everyone should be trying to interact creatively with what’s around them, and I just want to show them one way that you can do it.’ (The Wire 2018)As a solo artist or collaborator Vicki has published more than 50 audio recordings and 35 video projects; her DO or DIY show on the NYC radio station WFMU has run since 2003; her video work has been screened at Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, the National Film Theatre/BFI, Purcell Room, the Barbican, the ICA, V&A, The Pompidou (Paris), Sonar (Barcelona), MAXXI (Rome), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and Centro de Cultura Digital (Mexico City); Nothing Can Turn Into A Void – a documentary film about People Like Us has screened in cinemas and festivals since Autumn 2015. A multiscreen, multi-speaker environment Cinechamber, a forever changing 10 screen/8 speaker surround/seamless projection work, world premiered in San Francisco in October 2017; a new live performance (and sometimes standalone movie) "The Mirror" premiered at FACT, Liverpool in Spring 2018 and now tours as a live performance (Europe), and stand-alone movie (US).
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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30 Jan 2019 | 5:30pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
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