Since 1991, British artist Vicki Bennett (People Like Us) has worked across the field of audio-visual collage, and is recognized as an influential and pioneering figure in the still-growing area of sampling, appropriation and cut-up techniques of found footage and archives. Working under the name People Like Us, Bennett specializes in the manipulation and reworking of original sources from both the experimental and popular worlds of music, film and radio. 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.

This event is part of Digital Alchemy, a series of performances and discussions exploring the intertwined intellectual and ideological histories of art and technology. For admission to the full series, become a member and pick up the Digital Alchemy All-Access Pass.

We Edit Life: An Evening with People Like Us

Vicki Bennett introduces an evening of audio-visual collage in two parts:

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.

People Like Us

Since 1991 British artist Vicki Bennett has been working across the field of audio-visual collage, and is recognized 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 specializes 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 catalog is available for free download hosted by UbuWeb.

Blectum from Blechdom

Kevin Blechdom and Blevin Blectum make a parlor trick of whisking listeners away on a psychedelic organic-electronic universe-ride filled with cavorting sonic Snauses and rambunctious fractal Mallards. Kevin Blechdom and Blevin Blectum are intertwined in a serious generative long-form game for the future. Monstrous walls of well-executed mega-structured sound and piles of visionary questing antics first spawned within their minefieldmeld in the illicit sound spaces of San Francisco in its glory wormhole days circa 1998. Over the years they have accumulated a pile of award trophies that now lie beneath a sleeping fiendish dragon-basilisk. Blectum from Blechdom is thrilled to again share a stage and time-space coordinates with like-minded and similarly-warped co-conspirator Vicki Bennett.

Blevin Blectum (born Bevin Kelley) is celebrated as an icon of deviant and cerebral electronic music. Often observed in the wild, far and wide, alongside fellow laptop-trickprankster-snaustamer Kristin Erickson (Kevin Blechdom) in psychedelic combination as Blectum from Blechdom. Currently resides in Seattle, and lately cultivates solo-alter-ego Synopterus on the Parisian label Darling Dada.