People Like Us, biography
Biography
Since 1991 Vicki Bennett has been making CDs, radio, and A/V multimedia under the name People Like Us. By animating and recontextualising found footage collages Vicki gives an equally witty and dark view of popular culture with a surrealistic edge. People Like Us broadcasts an ongoing experimental arts radio and podcast show on WFMU, called "DO or DIY", which, since it began in 2003, has had over three quarters of a million Realplayer hits.
Vicki has shown work at, amongst others, Tate Modern, The National Film Theatre, Purcell Room, The ICA, Sydney Opera House, Pompidou Centre, Sonar in Barcelona, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the BBC and Channel 4. She has also performed radio sessions for the BBC's John Peel, Mixing It, and also CBC, KPFA and many more in the US. There have been features in The Observer, The Wire, NME, BBC website and Bizarre Magazine. People Like Us have been commissioned by The Arts Council England, The BBC, Sonic Arts Network, Forma, LUX and Lovebytes amongst others.
The almost entire People Like Us back catalogue is also available for free download, which has been generously hosted by UbuWeb in conjunction with PennSound, and also WFMU. PLU has been released on labels such as Tigerbeat6, Soleilmoon, Sonic Arts Network, Touch, Staalplaat and For Us Records (Rough Trade), both solo, and also collaborating with Matmos, Ergo Phizmiz, Wobbly, members of Negativland and Christian Marclay.
Spring 2008 saw a Retrospective of People Like Us at alt.gallery and a PLU curated CD entitled Smiling Through My Teeth, with Sonic Arts Network. The June 2008 edition of The Wire featured a 4 page interview, and the July edition featured a review of Smiling Through My Teeth.
In 2009, Vicki completed the Great North Run Moving Image Commission 2009, and a new live A/V set "Genre Collage" premiered in October 2009 at Vancouver New Music Festival. The UK premiere was performed at BFI Southbank in December 2009.
In Spring 2010 Vicki Bennett curated "Nothing Is New, Everything Is Permitted" at AV Festival. In June 2010 People Like Us released the album "Music for the Fire" with Wobbly on the Illegal Art label, and will be recording a solo album for Illegal Art later in the year. The WFMU radio show DO or DIY resumed broadcasting this summer.
Edinburgh Printmakers just commissioned a People Like Us picture disc LP, essay and print currently on show in "Prints of Darkness" as part of Edinburgh Art Festival from July 2010. She is working on a new commission for Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival.
Press Quotes:
"... a freeform, unfolding imaginary landscape that is liberally peppered with slapstick." - Phil England, The Wire
"Bennett has continued to impress us with her technical ability and her wonderful sense of the ridiculous." - Olli Siebelt, BBC
"... beautiful, compelling, funny, crazy stuff. I listen to [People Like Us] while sitting at my drawing board." - Matt Groening
"... it is that delirious adventure to tune in Disney cartoons while we administered a strong dose of amphetamines, LSD, and any other lysergic cocktail." - J. Carlos Vellamueva, Rolling Stone (Mexico)
"... after prolonged exposure to the alchemical work of Vicki Bennett, we see and hear our own everyday world as one big joke which is already cut to pieces. You'll laugh, you'll cry." - Drew Daniel, Matmos
"... warped-out easy easy-listening goddess and sample abuser extraordinaire." - Ben Willmott, NME
"Bennett has taken Eisenstein's montage collisions and refashioned them as bumper cars at a seaside carnival." - Jim Supanick, Film Society of Lincoln Center
Artist statement for People Like Us
Since 1991 British artist Vicki Bennett has been an influential figure in the field of audio visual collage, through her innovative sampling, appropriating and cutting up of found footage and archives. Using collage as her main form of expression, she creates audio recordings, films and radio shows that communicate a humorous, dark and often surreal view on life. These collages mix, manipulate and rework original sources from both the experimental and popular worlds of music, film, television and radio. People Like Us believe in open access to archives for creative use, and have made work using footage from the Prelinger Archives, The Internet Archive, and A/V Geeks. 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, Sydney Opera House, Pompidou Centre 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 three quarters of a million hits since 2003. The People Like Us back catalogue is available for free download hosted by UbuWeb.
Artist statement for People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz
People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz
Over the past five years the collaboration of People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz has produced two full length albums, a podcast series, a live soundtrack to Christian Marclay's “Screenplay”, a 7” single on Touch, and a 10” EP. Their work has been disseminated internationally to widespread critical acclaim, straddling the absurd with the accessible, filtering experimental and avant-garde techniques through the looking-glass of humorous pop music. They have come to resemble something akin to the Morecambe & Wise of the avant-garde...
Individually both artists have produced a vast body of work that collectively spans hundreds of hours, across film, theatre, albums, radio and live performance. Most recently People Like Us released the album “Music For The Fire” in collaboration with Wobbly on the Illegal Art label (with a new solo record due later in the year). Ergo's most recent productions are the new album “Things to Do and Make” on Care in the Community Recordings, and the contemporary opera about radio, magic and death “The Mourning Show”.
People Like Us website - http://www.peoplelikeus.org
Ergo Phizmiz website - http://www.ergophizmiz.net
"... a freeform, unfolding imaginary landscape that is liberally peppered with slapstick." - Phil England, The Wire
"Bennett has taken Eisenstein's montage collisions and refashioned them as bumper cars at a seaside carnival." - Jim Supanick, Film Society of Lincoln Center
“Genuinely astonishing” - Boomkat
“Hilarious, but also fascinating...audacious, kaleidoscopic pop assemblages” - Brainwashed
“Beautiful, compelling, funny, crazy stuff” - Matt Groening
Essay by Drew Daniel
Just What Is It That Makes People Like Us So Different, So Appealing?
Just What Is It That Makes People Like Us So Different, So Appealing?
Drew Daniel
From "Beware the Whim Reaper" (1995) to "Abridged Too Far" (2004), Vicki Bennett has a way with execrable puns. Confronted with the task of theorizing about what informs and unites the bewildering multiplicity of her life's work creating painstaking, hilarious and disturbing assemblages out of sound, language and moving image as People Like Us, the title of hers that catches me by the throat is an oldie but a goodie: "Pompous Circumstance". Wit's last minute detour off the golden road to cliché, puns take a piece of shared culture and suddenly tweek it into a personal shape, creating something new by revealing what was already there. Inverting Alexander Pope's formula for poetry ("what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed"), puns reveal a latent possibility within the given: what oft was expressed but never, until now, brought to thought. Puns are a kind of "black art" that throws received values into reverse: if good puns are bad, then the worst are the best. Ideally, you should be groaning and laughing at the same time. Fair is foul and foul is fair.
Risking a descent into pompous circumstances indeed, the occasion of this retrospective exhibition reverses Vicki's direction of flow and prompts us to take her sound and video work seriously, and asks us to try to place her work in the context of an ongoing sea-change in how creativity is understood. Pompously put, the artistic re-use of found material confronts us anew with the enigma of creation. Up-ended by indirection, we can only half-see the artist at work in the capricious decision to smash and grab. Looking at the results when the glue has dried and the files have been rendered, can we do any more than catch the shadow of a hand in mid-flight as it grasps and folds a found form, clicks "Crop", hits "Save"? Trying to catch up, we might ask some simple questions: why isolate and preserve these fragments? Why this piece, placed exactly here? Why this element and not others? Is this a work of love and preservation for what is disappearing, or an act of mockery at the expense of the found? Are we meant to recall the vanished whole, or to see this isolated quanta of material as newly self supporting?
Faced with mounting evidence of collage's omnipresence and the increasing banalization of cutting and pasting as components of every form of content-management software, it may hurt more now than ever before to return to the old, awkward question: is this creative?
Yodeling in the valley, the fragment oscillates between emotional pitches. When T. S. Eliot wrote "These fragments I have shored against my ruin," he figured modernist fragmentation as a melancholic funeral rite, a minor key lament at cultural collapse sung against the headwind of history. The irony is that his flimsy barricade of found fragments of popular songs and overheard conversations and quotations proved surprisingly durable; far from a last gasp, it was a breathtakingly successful demonstration of the energies of a new, combinatorial poetics. Jump-cut from Eliot to Dada. Like the public torture of the corpses of suicides in medieval Europe (designed to purge the village of an evil selfishness through a gratuitously "meaningless" display of cruelty), Dada snippetry started as a hostile surgical intervention into a moribund and self-canceling society. The marginal chancers at the Cabaret Voltaire may have thought that their cut-ups of official rhetoric were the final harrowing of necrotic ideological tissue, but Dada collage inadvertently accomplished a revivifying transfusion into the post-war artistic bloodstream. Avant-garde art practices of mangling and attacking and distorting the detritus of mass culture birthed a portable technique of collage that proved all too adaptable to the posterboard and the advertisement and the radio jingle and the TV spot and the viral web campaign. Such are the ironies of what John Ashbery termed "acceptance culture"; the smothering bosom of official sanction muffles the howl of critique with a pillow of puff pieces. For further evidence, consult the PLU track title: "Cushions can Kill".
Jump-cut to Richard Hamilton. Post-war fragmentation accelerated the centrifugal separation of the positive and negative powers unleashed by cutting up and reassembling culture into both an atomic optimism and an atomic pessimism. If anything could be harvested, shattered into fragments and then recreated for the sake of new art, then the entire archive (sound, image, word) was a standing reserve waiting to be taken by force. Unfortunately, thanks to the accelerating technology of nuclear warfare, this was also true of our own bodies: we were all going to be split apart and reconfigured against our will, and soon. William S. Burroughs' nostrum "Cut into the present and the future leaks out" figures both the Pandora's box of potentiality for recombination initiated by a self-consciously mature cut-up aesthetic and the radioactive fallout of anxiety and fear unleashed by a society which had cut into matter itself at its most basic level. We are still living with the results, as lurid narrative scenarios of the endlessly imminent total war choke present reality with a toxic cloud of futurity. Bennett revisits these fantasized bomb-sites and loops them, literally, in the "fort/da" game she plays with animated renderings of atomic explosions that wallpaper the backgrounds of the tank-faced, bighaired women in her video piece "We Edit Life". Caught in the headlights of these macabre and hilarious people, with each improbable spit curl and passing facial tic replayed and looped into a digital tableaux vivant, we are embarrassed for them and yet find ourselves withering slightly under their artificially steady maternal gaze. In Bennett's work, the past isn't suddenly modernized by digital tools, but seems instead rendered even more saturated with the creepy alterity of its very pastness: the syrupy orchestral swells, campfire sing alongs, and outmoded fashions and forced smiles that she assembles and recombines aren't so much preserved from the ravages of time as they are powerfully fermented in them.
The ability to cut up and transform found material would seem to constitute the ultimate post-modern runaround from older models of artistic expression as a self-revelation. Trading character and depth for a jigsaw surface, collage can seem like a cheap shot detour from being answerable for the self within the work. And yet there is something weirdly self-exposing about the cumulative results of Bennett's excursions into the mass media archives; the obsessive return to certain images and sounds across decades of work grants them a weirdly personal quality, the fetishistic investment of a cargo cult of one that recognizes the deity of Rod McKuen and Dolly Parton. If it's so funny, why does it make us feel so awkward? Bennett's work registers a hot flush of manic exhilaration in the sheer powertrip of her sure technological command over her source material, but it pills the sugar with a certain lingering aftertaste of despair at the failure of the aspirations within the material she collects. If the surreal humor of her work at its lightest suggests the comic English anarchism of Monty Python or Richard Hamilton, the quotidian grimness of her work at its darkest suggests the mordant English miserabilism of Philip Larkin or Mike Leigh. Far from proposing a utopian or psychedelic "other world" of festivity in which to escape from the drabness of the everyday, after prolonged exposure to the alchemical work of Vicki Bennett, we see and hear our own everyday world as one big joke which is already cut to pieces. You'll laugh, you'll cry.
Works Cited
William S. Burroughs & Brion Gysin The Third Mind New York: Viking Press, 1978.
T. S. Eliot "What the Thunder Said" The Waste Land and Other Poems. London: Faber and Faber, 1972.
Alexander Pope "An Essay on Criticism" Collected Poems. London: Tuttle Publishing, 1991.
This essay was commissioned by alt.gallery to coincide with "People Like Us: We Edit Life" - a Retrospective of the work of People Like Us, which ran in the gallery from 16 May-12 July 2008. Documentation can be found on the gallery site and here:
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2008/documentation_of_the_people_like_us_retrospecitve_at_altgallery.html
Discography
This is by no means the full list, but it's what we remember!
"Another Kind of Humor Another Kind of Murder" (split with Abraxas) World Serpent (CD/LP) 1992
"Lowest Common Dominator" Staalplaat (CD) 1994
"It’s Terrorific!" Staalplaat (DAT) 1994
"Guide To Broadcasting" Staalplaat (3"CD) 1994
"Beware The Whim Reaper" Staalplaat(CD) 1996
"Jumble Massive" Soleilmoon Recordings (LP) 1996
"File Under Easy Listening/File Under Sleazy Listening" (split with Sniper) Kleptones 1 (LP) 1996
"Lassie House" Staalplaat (10" Picture Disc) 1997
"Blundersonix/Special Mix" (split with TFU) Kleptones(LP) 1997
"People Like Us and Sniper Play The Three DJs of The Apocalypse" (with Sniper) Kleptones (LP) 1997
"Hate People Like You" Staalplaat (CD) 1997
"People Like Us Meet The Jet Black Hair People In Concert" Audioview (CD) 1999
"Hate People Like Us" (remix of PLU by Coil, Negativland, Death in June, Barbed, Christoph Heemann, Bruce Gilbert, Stock, Hausen & Walkman, Rehberg & Bauer, Mika Vainio, Boyd Rice, Dummy Run, Farmer's Manual and Sons of Silence. 2CD features additionally Cyclobe, Req1, V/VM, Sniper, Mr Rotorvator, Felix Kubin, Xper. Xr, Venoz [TKS], Katy Brown and Dr P Li Khan. There was an additional remix by Andy Votel/Badly Drawn Boy, excluded for legal reasons. Caciocavallo/CAD1 (CD) and Staalplaat (2CD) 1999 2CD
"Thermos Explorer" Hot Air (CD) 2000
"A Fistful of Knuckles" Caciocavallo (CD) 2000
"Swing Largo/Going Out Of My Town" Klang Galerie (7") 2001
"Home-Roam-Play/Work-All-Day" (split 12" with remix by Matmos) Wicked Witch Records (12") 2001 recalled due to faulty pressing
"Recyclopaedia Britannica" Mess Media/Mess (CD) April 2002
"Preserved Cowgirl" Asphodel - remix of Tipsy (CD) August 2002
"Stifled Love" - Mess Media/Mess 2 (12") October 2002
7" single - Rough Trade label For Us Records October 2002
"Volatile Media" Lovebytes label (DVD) March 2003
"Wide Open Spaces" Tigerbeat6 label (CD) collaboration with Matmos and Wobbly May 2003
"Nothing Special" Mess03 (CD) collaboration with Kenny G June 2003
"A Call For Silence" - (CD) Sonic Arts Network February 2004
"Abridged Too Far" - (mp3) online album at Ubuweb. August 2004
"Windpipe Moods" - (CD) Mukow October 2004
"Story Without End" - (DVD) Sonic Arts Network October 2005
"Fom Fom" - (CD) - track for Chicks On Speed's compilation Girl Monster - Chicks on Speed Records Summer 2006
"All Together Now" - (CD) - self released August 2006
"Honeysuckle Boulevard" - (10") - self released collaboration with Ergo Phizmiz January 2007
"Perpetuum Mobile - (CD) - Soleilmoon Recordings April 2007
"On The Rooftops Of London" - (CDS) - self released May 2007
"Rhapsody In Glue" - (online album) - PLURGO1 - bleep.com May 2008
"Smiling Through My Teeth" - (CD) - Sonic Arts Network May 2008
"Withers In The Waking" - (7") Touch October 2008
"Le Xerox et l'Infini" - (cassette) Tapeworm June 2009
"Music For The Fire" - (CD) - Illegal Art June 2010
"This Is Light Music" - (LP) - Edinburgh Printmakers/Prints Of Darkness exhibit - August 2010
solo CD on Illegal Art - late 2010
Press cuttings and more
Review of Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in Record Collector (August 2010)
Review of Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in Sentireascoltare (July 2010)
Review of Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in Skug (July 2010)
Review of Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in RifRaf (July 2010)
Review of Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in Go Mag (July 2010)
Review of Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in Magic (July 2010)
Preview of the People Like Us exhibit at Edinburgh Printmakers Prints of DarknessThe List (June 2010)
Review of Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in Playground (June 2010)
Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in Huw Stephens' Radio show BBC Radio 1 (June 2010)
Review of Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in Limewire Music Blog (June 2010)
Review of Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in MusicOMH (June 2010)
Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in Stuart Maconie's Radio show BBC Radio 6 (June 2010)
Review of Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in My Old Kentucky Blog (June 2010)
Review of Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in Polychromic (June 2010)
Review of Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in Beyond The Noize (June 2010)
Review of Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in aaamusic (June 2010)
Review of Music For The Fire (People Like Us & Wobbly) in Little Village Mag by Kembrew McLeod (May 2010)
Music For The Fire gets Radio 1 airplay (May 2010)
Article on the Recycled Film Symposium at AV Festival in axisweb (May 2010) Axisweb website
Review of Genre Collage in Baltimore City Paper (April 2010)
Review of MACBA's Variations program, which Genre Collage is a part of (February 2010)
Review of Genre Collage in Film Comment magazine (January 2010)
People Like Us co-curate an evening at AV Festival (March 2010)
Nothing Is New, Everything Is Permitted - People Like Us play at AV Festival (March 2010)
BBC News - about People Like Us Baudrillard cassette (January 2010)
BBC News Front page (January 2010)
BFI Southbank (December 2009)
Straight.com (October 2009)
Alienated In Vancouver (October 2009)
Jean Baudrillard Le Xerox et l'Infini - Hard Format (August 2009)
Jean Baudrillard Le Xerox et l'Infini - Aquarius Records (August 2009)
Time Out - Critics Choice (August 2009)
Withers In The Waking review - Heathen Harvest (July 2009)
Interview in Crawdaddy (July 2009)
Rhapsody in Glue - Liability (March 2009)
Withers In The Waking review - Record Collector (January 2009)
Withers In The Waking review - Norman Records (December 2008)
Interview with People Like Us - Blow Up (December 2008)
Withers In The Waking review - Aquarius (December 2008)
Withers In The Waking review - Boomkat (December 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - Bad Alchemy (November 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - Hair Entertainment (October 2008)
Rhapsody In Glue review - Goute Mes Disques (November 2008)
DO or DIY chart - The Wire (October 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - Orkus (November 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - Rumore (October 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review - Blow Up (September 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - Westzeit (October 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - Ox (October 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - Le Son Du Grisli (September 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - Sound Projector (May 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - Frieze magazine (September 2008)
Rhapsody In Glue review - Pop News (September 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - Octopus Record Of The Week (September 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - Rock Delux(September 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - D Side(September 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - Titel Magazine (September 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - Schlendrian (September 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - Vital Weekly 162 (September 2008)
Mention in the Guardian (UK) - Click That Dial! (August 11 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review - O Dominio Dos Deuses (July 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue/Smiling Through My Teeth Review - Incendiary Mag (July 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review - Octopus (July 2008)
Smiling Through My Teeth review - The Wire (August 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review - Skug (July 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review - D-Side (July 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review - Choices Cologne (July 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review - The Wire (July 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review - Titel-Magazin / CD of the Week (June 2008)
People Like Us interview part 1 - The Wire (June 2008)
People Like Us interview part 2 - The Wire (June 2008)
People Like Us interview part 3 - The Wire (June 2008)
People Like Us interview part 4 - The Wire (June 2008)
People Like Us interview part 5 - The Wire (June 2008)
Perpetuum Mobile - Music For Maniacs (October 2007)
Perpetuum Mobile - Geiger (September 2007)
Perpetuum Mobile - Bad Alchemy (August 2007)
Perpetuum Mobile - Brainwashed (June 2007)
Perpetuum Mobile - RifRaf (June 2007)
Perpetuum Mobile - Rolling Stone (Mexico!!) June 2007
Perpetuum Mobile - Review in Norman Records June 2007
Perpetuum Mobile - Review in Jumbo June 2007
Perpetuum Mobile - Review in Loop June 2007
Perpetuum Mobile - Review in Boomkat June 2007
Perpetuum Mobile - Review in Cologne Choices June 2007
Story Without End - Review in Jazzthetik July 2006
Story Without End - Review in Trax Magazine June 2006
Interview with People Like Us in The Observer 6 November 2006 - here, here & here
Story Without End - Review in Black Jan 2006
Story Without End - Review and Interview April 2006
Story Without End - Review in Cinemania May 2006
Story Without End - Review in The Wire May 2006
Story Without End - Review by Kevin Hamilton February 2006
Story Without End - Blow Up February 2006
Story Without End - Rock Delux Magazine February 2006
Story Without End - Magic Magazine February 2006
Story Without End - Debug Magazine January 2006
Story Without End - Intro Magazine February 2006
Story Without End - Sonic Seducer Magazine February 2006
Story Without End - D Side Magazine January 2006
Story Without End - Go Magazine January 2006
Story Without End - Bad Alchemy Magazine January 2006
Story Without End - Clone Magazine January 2006
Story Without End - Metro Magazine Summer 2005
"The Remote Controller" won second prize in the Backup Festival in Weimar 2004
Worked on a film/installation commission with Sonic Arts Network, 2004-2005
Worked on a film commission for LUX, 2004
">Yerba Buena Center For The Arts with Matmos, November 2003
Article featuring media work of PLU on BBC site July 2002
Review of People Like Us album, Recyclopaedia Britannica, on BBC website 2002
PLU get a mention in Larry Lessig's blog 2003
Very good interview with Kenny G on WFMU, March 2003
Small mention in The Guardian (UK)
Sound Unseen Festival, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis 2002
Sound Unseen Festival, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis2 2002
Ether Festival Flyer, Purcell Room, London 2002
Ether Festival review in The Wire, Purcell Room, London 2002
Ether Festival reviews, Purcell Room, London 2002
Sight and Sound magazine 2002
Lovebytes Festival Programme, Sheffield 2002
Lovebytes Festival Programme, Sheffield 2 2002
Oblique Lu Nights Festival, Nantes, France 2002
People Like Us at Sound Unseen, Minneapolis 2002
LMC 10th Anniversary Festival, Purcell Room, London 2001
LMC 10th Anniversary Festival, Purcell Room, London 2 2001
People Like Us and Matmos concert at Sonar, 2001 (The Wire)
Laptops Live ICA, London 2 2001
Laptops Live, ICA, London 2001
Futuresonic Festival, Manchester 2001
EMAF, Osnabruck, Germany 2001
Electrofringe, Newcastle, Australia 2001
Reviews in NME and Bizarre Magazine 2001
Sydney Opera House flyer 1 2001
Sydney Opera House flyer 2 2001
Sydney Opera House ticket 2001
Lux Centre, London 2001
BBC Radio Times 2001
Sound Projector interview 2000
Exit Festival, Creteil, France 2000
The Wire magazine interview 1999
San Francisco Bay Guardian review 1999
Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria 1998
NME Single of the Week 1996
NME Interview 1996
NME Interview 1995
This is by no means an exhaustive list, there are many that we have not scanned in from the 1990s, and many a web search we have not made. But it's a taster.
List of Residencies, Commissions & Collaborations
Developing a new gallery installation Cyclorama with Forma (2010/2011)
Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival commission to create a new live a/v performance with Ergo Phizmiz (2010)
Edinburgh Printmakers commission to create audio and artwork for a picture disc LP “This Is Light Music”, as part of their group exhibition “Prints of Darkness” to be shown at Edinburgh Printmakers in Summer 2010 then touring venues (2009-2010)
Grants For The Arts commission to make a new live A/V set entitled “Genre Collage” (2008-2009)
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2009/genre_collage.html
Great North Run Moving Image Commission 2009 - The Great North Run Cultural Programme – to create a film using the archives of the Great North Run, entitled “Parade” (July 2008-October 2009)
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2009/parade.html
Grants For The Arts commission to release of "Rhapsody In Glue" with Ergo Phizmiz on bleep.com – an album created with audio collage sourced from the podcast “Codpaste” (May 2008)
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2009/rhapsody_in_glue_now_available_for_free_download.html
Retrospective exhibition of People Like Us A/V work, entitled "We Edit Life" at alt.gallery (May 2008)
alt.gallery: http://www.altgallery.org/exhibitions/PLU/PLU_past.html
commissioned essay by Drew Daniel: http://www.altgallery.org/exhibitions/PLU/Drew_Daniel_Essay.pdf
documentation: http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2008/documentation_of_the_people_like_us_retrospecitve_at_altgallery.html
Curation of CD "Smiling Through My Teeth" - Sonic Arts Network (May 2008)
Documentation: http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2008/smiling_through_my_teeth_cd_curated_by_vicki_bennett.html
Vicki Bennett essay: http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2008/people_like_us_text_for_smiling_through_my_teeth.html
Commissioned essay by Kembrew McLeod: http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2008/humor_in_music_by_kembrew_mcleod.html
Forma/AV Festival commission “Now Hear This” to make Bluetooth audio compositions for mobile phone (January 2008)
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2008/people_like_us_breaking_waves_mp3_bluetooth_project_2008.html
Lecturing "Music & Other Media"- Goldsmiths, London (2006-2008)
Wandsworth Film Awards commission to make short digital film "Skew Gardens", exploring the boundaries of urban land use - (September 2007)
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2008/skew_gardens.html
Lovebytes commission in association with Millennium Galleries, Sheffield to make three screen A/V film “Work, Rest & Play” (June 2007)
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2007/see_work_rest_play_in_sheffield_this_winter.html
Grants For The Arts commission to make podcast series "Codpaste" on WFMU, where People Like Us and Ergo Phizmiz explore the working process of creating music from scratch (September 2007)
Documentation: http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2007/codpaste_podcast_on_wfmu.html
Subsequent album release of “Rhapsody in Glue:http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2009/rhapsody_in_glue_now_available_for_free_download.html
Teaching Pack: http://www.peoplelikeus.org/piccies/codpaste/codpaste-teachingpack.pdf
Radio session for BBC Radio 3’s “Mixing It” (February 2007)
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2007/on_the_rooftops_of_london_our_mixing_it_session.html
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2007/remixing_it_for_mixing_it_on_bbc_radio_3.html
Artist Residency at BBC Creative Archive with "access all areas" to work with their archive - Arts Council England (Interdisciplinary Arts) with BBC, White City – (March 2006)
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2007/trying_things_out_film_download.html
Grants For The Arts commission to create 10" record to be given away for free in selected international record stores "Honeysuckle Boulevard" (August 2006)
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2007/people_like_us_ergo_phizmiz_honeysuckle_boulevard.html
PRS Foundation award to create a new live set (with artist Ergo Phizmiz) using dansette players and self-pressed vinyl compositions "Boots!" (June 2006)
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2006/people_like_us_ergo_phizmiz_boots.html
Grants for the Arts commission to create new live A/V performance – (April 2005)
Documentation: http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2007/live_excerpts_film_download.html
LUX commission to make digital short film sourcing the LUX archive collection "Resemblage" (October 2004)
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2004/resemblage_a_short_film_by_people_like_us.html
Residency at FACT to make radio play “Molaradio” in collaboration with artist Felix Kubin and Croxteth school children (January 2004)
Documentation:http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2004/people_like_us_felix_kubin_molaradio.html
Sonic Arts Network commission to make short film and subsequent DVD release - "Story Without End" – (June 2004)
Short film “Story Without End” http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2005/story_without_end_short_film_download.html
DVD “Story Without End” http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2005/story_without_end_a_dvd_by_people_like_us.html
Live session and radio broadcast for “Mixing It”, Spitz (May 2004)
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2004/people_like_us_wobbly_on_bbc_radios_mixing_it.html
Radio session for John Peel (January 2003)
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2003/people_like_us_session_for_john_peel.html
Future Physical commission to make digital short film "The Remote Controller" (June 2002)
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2003/the_remote_controller_a_short_film.html
Lovebytes commission to make short film "We Edit Life" (December 2002)
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2002/we_edit_life_a_short_film_by_people_like_us.html
Year of the Artist Residency, Lighthouse, Brighton with Brighton & Hove Music Library, teaching sound collage (June 2001)
Year of the Artist Residency, Hull Time Based Arts, making A/V collage - (January-April 2001)
Live session and radio broadcast for “Mixing It”, Dingwalls (March 2001)
Work & Leisure International commission to make new A/V live set - (September 1999)
Selected Performances and Screenings
September 2010 - Berwick Film And Media Arts Festival - premiere of The Keystone Cut Ups with Ergo Phizmiz http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2010/a_new_commission_for_people_like_us_ergo_phizmiz.html
August 2010 - Genre Collage at Vintage Goodwood
August 2010 - Genre Collage in the Ukraine presented by Forma and the British Council http://www.britishcouncil.org/ukraine-arts-contemporary-media-artwork.htm
July-Sept 2010 - Prints of Darkness, Edinburgh Printmakers - group exhibition - pic disc LP and print by Vicki Bennett
July-Oct 2010 - In The Long Run: 30 Years of Great Running - Great North Museum: Hancock - "Parade" as part of group exhibition
April 2010 - Baltimore Transmodern 2010
April 2010 - Issue Project Room, Brooklyn
March 2010 - AV Festival, Newcastle
December 2009 BFI Southbank, London
December 2009 – Grand Café Zum Rothen Krebsen (IFEK Institut für erweiterte Kunst), Linz, Austria
November 2009 - Night of the Long Worms, Cafe OTO, London
November 2009 - NEW NEW! 2009 – Fleda, Brno, Czech Republic
October 2009 WFMU Record Fair, Manhattan
October 2009 Vancouver New Music Festival
August 2009 – Cafe OTO, London (live with Ergo Phizmiz)
May 2009 – Sonic Recycler, London (screening Skew Gardens)
May 2009 – Vienna Independent Shorts (screening Work, Rest & Play)
April 2009 – sound:frame Festival (screening We Edit Life)
April 2009 – Indielisboa, Lisbon (screening Work, Rest & Play)
April 2009 – Glimmer Festival (screening Work, Rest & Play)
April 2009 – Migrating Forms Festival (NYUFF), New York (screening Work, Rest & Play)
March 2009 - Zemos98, Seville
February 2009 – Rotterdam Film Festival (screening Work, Rest & Play)
January 2009 – Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Stuttgart (screening Work, Rest & Play)
December-May 2008/9 – Fundacio la Caixa Gallery (screening 3 works)
November 2008 - SPNM hosted concert at Kings Place, Kings Cross, London
November 2008 – Invideo, Milan (screening Work, Rest & Play)
October 2008 – Cork Film Festival (screening Work, Rest & Play)
September 2008 – Experimental Film & Video Festival, Seoul (screening Work, Rest & Play)
June 2008 – Sonar, Barcelona (screening Work, Rest & Play)
May - July 2008 - People Like Us Retrospective - alt.gallery, Newcastle
May 2008 - live solo concert, reinterpreting the works of Daphne Oram (BBC Radiophonic Workshop)
March 2008 - Screening of Skew Gardens at Curzon, Soho, London
March 2008 - Sightsonic, York International Festival of Digital Arts - National Centre For Early Music - solo and joint A/V concert with artist Ergo Phizmiz
January 2008 – London Short Film Festival (screening Work, Rest & Play)
November 2007 - Live soundtrack to Christian Marclay's Screen Play, as part of the Wire 25 anniversary series, London
October 2007 - Touch live event in Balham, London
June 2007 - Bilbao "Copy Your Idols" conference
May 2007 - 3 Screen video premiere of Work, Rest & Play at Lovebytes International Festival of Digital Media, Sheffield
February 2007 - Session for Mixing It, BBC Radio 3
November 2006 - Encounters 12th Annual International Short Film Festival, Bristol (screening of Story Without End)
November 2006 - La Casa Encendida, Madrid (screening of The Remote Controller)
November 2006 - Fundacio La Caixa. Mediateca, Barcelona (screening of Story Without End)
October 2006 - La Blanche Nuit, Paris (screening of Story Without End)
September 2006 - Exis Experimental Film and Video Festival, Seoul, Korea (screening of Story Without End)
July 2006 - Miguel Dias Vila Do Conde ISFF, Portugal (screening of Story Without End)
June 2006 - Sonal Cinema, Barcelona (screening of Story Without End)
June 2006 - BOOTS - Live collaboration with Ergo Phizmiz - info here
May 2006 - European Media Art Festival, Osnabrueck (screening of Story Without End)
April 2006 - Britspotting, Berlin (screening of Story Without End)
April 2006 - Porto at Casa Da Musica, Porto
March 2006 - Photographers' Gallery, London (screening of Story Without End)
March 2006 - Visual Arts Ipswich, Ipswich (screening of Story Without End)
February 2006 - Club Transmediale, Berlin (screening of Story Without End)
January 2006 - Le Cube, Paris
January 2006 - Flatpack Festival, Birmingham
November 2005 - Other Cinema, San Francisco
November 2005 - UC Davis, Davis, California
November 2005 - Leeds Film Festival
October 2005 - Nulle Part Ailleurs Production (screening of We Edit Life)
October 2005 - Experimentaclub in Madrid http://www.experimentaclub.com/festart05.htm#plus
September 2005 - Etrange Festival at Forum Des Images in Paris. http://www.etrangefestival.com/
July 2005 - Optronica at The National Film Theatre, London
June 2005 - Mission Creek Music Festival, California
April 2005 - Britspotting, Berlin (screening of The Remote Controller)
April 2005 - Femme Totale, Dortmund (screening of The Remote Controller)
February 2005 - AHRB Centre for British Film and Television, London (screening of We Edit Life and The Remote Controller)
February 2005 - Cinilingus, Belfast (screening of We Edit Life)
January 2005 - Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Stuttgart (screening of The Remote Controller)
December 2004 - Live concert as part of Christian Marclay's Sounds of Christmas installation at the Tate Modern, London
November 2004 - Rio de Janeiro International Short Film Festival (screening of The Remote Controller)
November 2004 - Tromsø Kunstforening (screening of The Remote Controller)
November 2004 - Festival International du Film Independant (screening of The Remote Controller)
November 2004 - INVIDEO, Milano (screening of The Remote Controller)
October 2004 - Leeds International Film Festival, Leeds (screening of The Remote Controller and We Edit Life)
October 2004 - Backup Festival, Weimar (screening of The Remote Controller)
October 2004 - Bath Michael Tippett Centre
September 2004 - Seoul New and Film Festival - Seoul (screening of The Remote Controller)
September 2004 - Barcelona LEM Festival
August 2004 - Chicago Underground Film Festival (screening of The Remote Controller)
August 2004 - Oslo Studio 04 Festival
June 2004 - The Music Hall, Shrewsbury (screening of We Edit Life)
May 2004 - BBC Radio 3 - Mixing It - Live Session/broadcast
April 2004 - Toronto Images Festival http://www.imagesfestival.com
March 2004 - Virginia Film Festival http://www.vafilm.com/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=251
March 2004 - New York Underground Film Festival http://www.nyuff.com/
February 2004 - First Anniversary of 2003 FACT, Liverpool
January 2004 - Hanger, Barcelona (screening of The Remote Controller)
January 2004 - Rotterdam Film Festival (screening of The Remote Controller)
November 2003 - Work, Work, Work at Yerba Buena Center For The Arts, San Francisco, as part of Matmos's artist installation
November 2003 - Sample Culture Now at The Tate Modern http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/sampleculture.htm
October 2003 - Oslo S-, Oslo (screening of The Remote Controller)
October 2003 - Wheels Instead of Hooves, Newcastle (screening of We Edit Life)
October 2003 - City of Women, International Festival of Contemporary Arts Ljubljana, Slovenia
October 2003 - Dissonanze Festival of Electronic Music and Digital Art, at MACROl, Rome
September 2003 - Kino Central, Berlin (screening of The Remote Controller)
September 2003 - The Pompidou Centre, Paris
July 2003 - The ICA, London - screenings of The Remote Controller and We Edit Life as part of their Radical Entertainment season
June 2003 - Le Fresnoy, Studio National Des Arts Contemporains, France
March 2003 POL Pol Festival, Frankfurt
February 2003 - Club Transmediale, Berlin at "Maria am Ostbahnhof"
January 2003 - Session for John Peel, for BBC Radio 1
November 2002 - Avanto Festival at Kiasma Centre, Helsinki, Finland
September 2002 - Sound Unseen Festival at The Walker Center, Minneapolis, USA
Sound Unseen Festival, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis 2002Sound Unseen Festival, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis 2002
June 2002 - South Bank's Meltdown Festival, Queen Elisabeth Hall, London - visuals for Baby Zizanie
May 2002 - South Bank's ETHER Festival, Purcell Room, London 2002 - Oblique Lu Nights Festival, Nantes, France
April 2002 - US tour (New York, Portland, San Francisco and LA)
December 2001 - Dysfunktional Beats at 93ft East, London November 2001 - Laptops Live at the ICA, London
November 2001 - Futuresonic, Manchester
October 2001 - Sydney Opera House, Australia Sydney Opera House flyer 1 2001 Sydney Opera House flyer 2 2001 Sydney Opera House ticket 2001
June 2001 - London Musicians’ Collective’s Tenth Annual Festival, Purcell Room, London
June 2001 - Sonar Festival, Barcelona – collaboration with Matmos (US)
May 2001 - Catalyst/Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, Belfast
April 2001 - EMAF – Osnabreuck
March 2001 - Lovebytes Festival, Sheffield
March 2001 - Dingwalls, London in association with Mixing It, BBC Radio 3
February 2001 - London Lux Cinema in association with The Wire magazine
December 2000 - Bristol Cube Cinema, in association with The Wire magazine
December 2000 - Lisbon Numero Festival in association with Warp Records of London
November 2000 - Burning Bush, Dundee Contemporary Arts
October 2000 - Montreal Festival of New Cinema and New Media (FCMM)
May 2000 - Brooklyn Experimental Music Festival, NYC
April 2000 - Komedia, Brighton
June 2000 - TransEuropa 2000, Hildesheim
March 2000 - Exit Festival, Creteil
June 2000 - Sonar 2000, Barcelona
February 2000 - Brussels 2000, European City of Culture Festival
January 2000 - Chicago Underground Film Festival (CUFF) event
October 1999 - Fylkingen, Stockholm
October 1999 - Nottingham Expo Festival
September 1999 - Ars Electronica, Linz – collaboration with Negativland (US)
August 1999 - Festival of the Regions, Enns
September 1996 - Dutch Electronic Arts Festival (DEAF) at V2, Rotterdam
Press shots
Click on images below to download the larger version (around 2MB). Please credit where listed, otherwise credit People Like Us. For photographs of People Like Us with Ergo Phizmiz ONLY use these for JOINT advertisements. Please note: the film stills are from the original QuickTime movies, and therefore the size you get them is the size that they will always be, in 72dpi resolution. If you need it to be a different dpi then do go to Photoshop and resample the image as such yourself. We have resampled some for you. |
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