Vicki Bennett
This is Vicki’s bio.
Since 1991 British artist Vicki Bennett has been working across the field of audio-visual collage, repurposing pre-existing footage to craft audio and video collages with an equally dark and witty take on popular culture. She sees sampling and collage 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.
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.
From her bio, I am interested in how she uses visuals with audio. As well as this her thoughts on sampling media are refreshing and something I can agree with. Collaging audio and visuals is also something I do in my own work and to see others have common thoughts is reassuring. I’m excited to look into her work.
Wire Interview of People Like Us
This entire interview is an in-depth historical account of the experience People Like us went through on her journey of becoming and developing her artistic practice. I found it really humbling, the way she speaks and her progression. She speaks in a way that is conscious of her decisions and her stance on her place in the art scene. She mainly uses sampling in her work and combines audiovisual elements together to create something new. I have a few pieces of her work that were mentioned that I will take a look into and see if I can find a video to experience them. I’m also interested in her ideas of sampling ethics and how she uses others works to create something. She does state that she doesn’t see it as using someone else’s work because the work is only the person’s final outcome. We are all sampling each other and the important part is adding to the process of another.
DrivingFlyingRisingFalling
I researched People Like Us on Youtube and found this piece. Titled DrivingFlyingRisingFalling. It was really humorous, I found the use of video to create a different message and narrative engaging. I feel perhaps if I knew the film it would create a bigger context? I was concentrating on the audio as well and it does contrast what’s going on but also occasionally feels ironic. The dark nature with the old people laughing and the music being upbeat.
Post-Lecture Reflection.
PeopleLikeUs began the lecture similar to the Wire interview, speaking on how she began her career. She did a fine art course In Brighton and the course was an Offshoot of fine art. This course showed her that she really enjoyed working with time-based media, media that moves. After dropping out due to personal issues she was unemployed and all the equipment she was using became Unaffordable. So she started with what was at home, and that was HI-FI. Her work is inspired by sampling during the 90s. She used Tv audio, a radio tuner, and a cassette double recorder. Making mixtapes and sharing them with other people was the earliest form of sharing she can remember.
So she experimented for years doing cassettes. Which lead her to work into radio doing hip hop and experimental music with sampling. The first role she was Given was at a radio station from midnight – 3pm. Radio has always been the foundation for her, the mixes that she makes using sound beds made her Realise it was becoming more than the thing she was making.
This leads her to ask is this something releasable? She saw others releasing sampling, in art but was unsure of the issues with sampling legally. She ignored the matters and pressed 100 records to see what would happen. Back then she says that it wasn’t saturated as much, now it’s different. Publishers wanted to buy all the records.
She used to listen to Sussex radio, and one specific show was all talk. A lot of padding was going on the radio and phone-ins would happen and you lost the point of the show. To her, it was the height of boring listening, but perhaps interesting in a John cage kind of way. So she began recording Sussex county radio without listening.
In one of her pieces, she sampled someone who phoned in and didn’t realise it was a Sussex radio phone-in, the caller was trying to connect to the office. She used the piece and played it on the radio and received love from BBC radio who enjoyed it a lot.
Proceeding this after 1994 she signed to a label in the Netherlands. And they told her about plunderphonics and John Oswald. This reassured her that what she was doing was a movement. She didn’t make the same sort of stuff as John but to see others using samples in experimental form confirmed and pushed her even further.
The next drastic change in her career was when society shifted into the year the 2000s when technology and fast broadband finally arrived. Expensive equipment was now much cheaper and enabled her to expand her practice and allow for more complex ideas to be achievable.
On specific piece became an idea when she was watching the sound of music live on Christmas Day, and it reminded her of Apocalypse Now. So she downloaded the audio from both films and found it to be in the same key.
She then proceeded to create and merge both the videos. This involved a lot of rotoscoping to combine the parts she felt worked together in a collage style.
Randomness in the creation ended up working in synchronicity. This responds and Reflects on an interconnected world in art. Opening up to unexpected Surprises is key. So when they arrive it allows them to manifest so that when you leave space for things to happen things that aren’t your usual pattern of working can occur.
She loves using pre-existing material. To her, it has had a previous life of its own. But there is no order to the thing. Originality is not very important, Uniques and originality are important. We don’t own ideas, we breathe them in like air. Limiting the thought of being unique is the worst thing to do. The world of ideas that can happen can occur because we are surrounded by surprising things. Give back and we won’t run dry.
She ends by relating her work to her inspiration for folk art. How we are always sampling. Humans mimic, that’s how we learn to speak. And this is why it’s so Important to publish and share your work.
I found PeopleLikeUs had great points to add to my ideas and philosophies of sampling. I love to sample and use other peoples work to create something new. I find it interesting to take something out of context and create your own meaning with your relationship to the sample. Although she spoke about audio and visuals and it did tend to lean more towards the visual I did connect with her ideas. The only thing I was tempted to ask but strayed away from was the ethics and what boundaries are there when sampling? What would she never sample due to these samples being sensitive topics?