DRY RUN is an umbrella name for an ongoing series of works investigating LOW PROFILE’s particular concerns into preparedness, survival and working out the right thing to do in a situation of emergency. This series will include durational performances, videos, bookworks and
performative installations.
For a long time, LOW PROFILE have been looking in all the ‘wrong’ places for ways to survive their daily lives. We have been wondering how we can rehearse for life – trying to pre-empt and prepare for things that we will and won’t experience.
We have set ourselves the challenge to ‘be prepared’.
With no parameters or edges to this thing called preparedness, we find ourselves imagining all the various (multiple and interchangeable) scenarios that we may be faced with, whilst trying to work out the ‘right’ thing to do to ‘survive’ each situation.
LOW PROFILE’s research is concerned with the timely and persistent themes of survival and preparedness, alongside the perceived need for protection from others, the unknown and ourselves. The DRY RUN series seeks to play with the shifts in scale of events like emergencies – the emergency of the lost keys or the emergency of a broken heart to the emergency of the crashing aircraft or the emergency of the world falling apart.
Each of our tasks in the DRY RUN series sees us examine the process of learning about survival and preparedness in a safe environment – appropriating often over used, over familiar and over played sources in an attempt to reclaim elements that might otherwise be dismissed as trivial, over the top, far-fetched, unlikely, incredible or absurd.
In these times of risk aversion and uncertainty, this investment in examining and exploring the seemingly insignificant or inconsequential details of our daily lives, actions and reactions aims to offer up a greater understanding of society’s need for more – more order, more precaution, more safety, more peace of mind; and also the need for less – less pain, less heartache, less forgetting.
DRY RUN part 1: You are a workaholic with no time for love
DRY RUN part 2: How to save your skin when disaster strikes without warning
DRY RUN part 3: Scale Of Emergency
DRY RUN part 5: Procedures For Preparedness (photo series)
“DRY RUN parts 2, 3 & 5” are part of an ongoing research project supported by Plymouth College of Art
