People Like Us
The Mirror, 2018 Digital film with soundtrack
Duration 35 minutes

Since 1992, artist Vicki Bennett (under the name People Like Us) has developed an immediately recognisable aesthetic, repurposing pre-existing footage to craft audio and video collages with a dark and witty take on popular culture. Working across a range of sources, including performance, radio, streaming and installation, Bennett carefully selects her found material to form new structures and readings.

The Mirror splices together snippets from films with unique, sample-based music. The work explores the masks we wear when represented through a lens, using parallel narratives across the screen to show an ever-changing stream, rather than a singular, fixed subject, narrative or moment in time.

Bennett has said of her practice, “I see 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.”

People Like Us website
The Mirror performance
WFMU People Like Us playlist and archive