A unique performance of Vicki Bennett (People Like Us)’s Notations, a film created for live performance by improvising artists and musicians.
As well as Vicki herself, this evening’s prestigious line-up consists of legendary composer and turntablist Philip Jeck, sound poet and performance artist Jaap Blonk, and Steve Noble, rhythmic powerhouse and collaborator with everyone from Derek Bailey to Stephen O’Malley.
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.
The evening will also begin with an audiovisual performance by People Like Us of Consequences (One Thing Leads To Another), which places similar but emerging subject matter side by side to construct the narrative, a story emerging as a sum of the preceding parts yet digressing on a tangent. All actions have consequences, and here we see them played out, to wondrous and catastrophic effect!
#Arnolfinimusic #Arnolfinifilm
Buy a joint ticket with Holly Herndon for £10 – numbers limited. Call Arnolfini box office 0117 917 2300.
Vicki Bennett is 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 that communicate a humorous, dark and often surreal view on life. Vicki operates under the moniker People Like Us and promotes an 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, amongst others, Tate Modern, The Barbican, Royal Albert Hall, Pompidou Center, Centro de Cultura Digital, 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. Vicki recently completed 2 films for Animate Projects/Channel 4 television, UK as part of their Random Acts Series.
Philip Jeck rescues old records and turntables from junk shops and creates something beautiful from them. He won the 1993 Time Out Performance Award for his most famous work Vinyl Requiem, a performance for 180 vintage record players and has released a series of records on the renowned Touch label and collaborated with Gavin Bryars, Otomo Yoshihide and Jaki Liebezeit, amongst others.
Jaap Blonk hails from the Netherlands and is a self-taught composer and poet best known for his improvised vocal performances and sound poetry. Blonk is highly regarded for his pure and uninhibited style of improvisation, his sets often given greater depth by the use of live electronics, and he has collaborated with Maja Ratkje, Mats Gustafsson, Joan La Barbara, The Ex and many others.
Steve Noble first appeared as part of pop group Rip, Rig And Panic before becoming involved for several years with Derek Bailey’s Company Weeks and becoming over the years a key figure in the UK’s improvised and free music community, playing with improvisers of all approaches including Peter Brotzmann, Stephen O’Malley, John Edwards, Ikue Mori and Keiji Haino.
Tour produced by Tusk Music and commissioned by Sound and Music.
