People Like UsJuly 19, 2009
*Name: Vicki Bennett
*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: No
*Members: 1
*Founding Members: Vicki Bennett
*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: I'm a collage artist (I've used all of the above and more, and prefer a more umbrella term rather than refer to the tool I use).
*Another genre descriptor: "Collage" covers just about every medium going, across many decades. I prefer not to be any more exclusive than that. I have my own genre description - "avant-retard".
*Why you use this descriptor: Avant-Retard means to go forward and backwards at the same time, very fast. It also means that you look into the past to make the future. It also means that avant garde=highbrow/academic and retard=backwards/unintelligent can merge seamlessly.
*Location: England.
*Original Location:
*What is your creative/artistic background: I've always made collage - in paper, photographic, tape, digital audio, film and video form. I've been doing all of these since 1990, and truly started doing what I visualised in the late 90s when I was able to access the kind of tools needed to be more detailed and proficient in what I had in mind.
*History: Since 1990.
*Born: Late 60s, England.
*Motivations: Because it's the only think I've ever done for one, and also being an artist allows relatively independant thought and movement for the majority of the day, week, month and year. So not only is this a very convenient way of being for someone who is virtually unemployable (!), rebellious and awkward, but it also allows me to make things up as I go along and work from project to project basis, and therefore change direction and medium with relative ease. In theory anyway. In practice of course it isn't quite so idealistic.
*Philosophy: To be able to connect and communicate efficiently. I use collage (objects and forms that previously exist in another form or context) because it seems an appropriate tool for the age I live in, and feels like a good way to interpret what is around me, and pay homage with what has gone before, in order to shape it into something yet to come, I hope. I'd say it's folk art or even folk music of our time.
*How would you like to be remembered: As someone that gummed up the internet.
*Web address: http://www.peoplelikeus.org is my artist address and http://www.wfmu.org/peoplelikeus is my WFMU radio show homepage.
