vouch-for-us

Build Your Own is about being ‘useful’, having practical purposes and being of value or benefit to others.

Throughout the process of Build Your Own, we (LOW PROFILE) will need people to vouch for us. We will need to make clear to a range of people that our work is important, good, noteworthy and worthwhile. We don’t want them to just take our word for it,

We are asking you to record a short video message or write a short text that you think will help convince funding bodies and/or doubleacts to help finance our project. You could use the in-built camera in you laptop and send us a message via **. It will only take a few minutes.

Make sure to say:
- who you are (and your job title or position at an institution, if relevant)
- how you know us/our work
- what the specific qualities are about our work, practice, approach or aesthetic that makes it exciting, important and/or significant.

we will need YOU to tell them too!

“ I was lucky enough to witness LOW PROFILE's ‘Just in Case' at OVADA in Oxford. It was a humourous and sometimes touching performance in which we were led around the street of oxford the roofs of theatres. It was a performance that addressed the site in which it was performed, opening our eyes to the everyday. Somehow creating a strong sense of 'group' amongst the participants. Playing with things they actually had, a fear of heights and fictional or imagined belongs.

The performance text listed a list of objects, moments, memories - a list that is one of LOW PROFILE's fascinations. I also remember seeing ‘A Lesson in Love’ in which they try to remember the titles of 60 or so love songs. In a more studio based context they still managed to create a strong sense of the audience. Their everyday, endearing and humbling performances enable the audience to feel that they can join in shouting the names of the love songs projected behind them, that they failed to remember.

Reminding us that we all fail, and that it's all okay, and if we do, someone somehow will help us out of the shit. I find that their work ultimately speaks about what it is to be human.

As artists in Plymouth they are extremely active and as another artist I am grateful for their presence instigating connections betweens companies and artists, through one.c and the future PL:ay festival. Plymouth's live art scene is certainly a better place for having LOW PROFILE on the scene. I don't know when I will get to see their most current performance but I hope it is sometime soon. And I look forward to it very much. “

Neil Callaghan – artist and performer
(with propeller, Uninvited Guests and in collaboration with Simone Kenyon)

SOME SUPPORT FOR LOW PROFILE'S WORK

“I was a member of the audience for "Just in Case", a ‘cautionary’ performative tour around a strangely re mapped centre of Oxford. I was impressed by the imaginative and disturbing re connections of space and time, through hidden doors and corridors in which car parks, pavements, rooms, buildings, fire escapes and alleys merged into a previously dislocated and unseen continuum, both intriguing in itself and as a back drop for the oration of the text "Just in Case . . . " that accompanied the journey, at times in sync with the surroundings, at others in oppositions by turns surreal, dark and humorous. It was a memorable experience that continued to grow and resonate for a long time after the tour itself had finished and has left an after image of a region of Oxford that will never feel quite the same again.”

Jem Finer – Artist

“So I mention the words “just in case” as a passing comment, and it still has the power to take me back somewhere in Oxford to places that I would only dare to go down if I was stronger, or younger, a super hero and/or less intimidated,

There was a strange comfort about going to places that normally you wouldn’t be allowed, and then being constantly reminded that you weren’t supposed to be here really, just in case we get found out, or just in case the police come we have an excuse, were professionals.

I see a lot of shows (living and working in Belgium it’s hard not to) and a lot of those pieces I forget, but I haven’t forgotten this piece, it made it’s mark with me, it made me think, it made me smile, it made me realise that I can stay inside too much, even though we ourselves had spent a whole month outside dreaming of sitting inside out of the rain.”

Mole Wetherell – performer and director, Reckless Sleepers

We (LOW PROFILE and I) spent a month working alongside one another at OVADA’s VAIN Live Art Residency in Oxford during April 2005, and I can genuinely say that they remain to be amongst the most dedicated and hard working arts professionals I have had the pleasure to work with.

I was greatly impressed by their combination of research and process which is skilfully delivered via humorous and thought provoking performances. This careful blending of the cerebral with the immediate provides an unique and successful performance experience.

Their performance, Low Profile presents: Just in Case, presented as a perambulation around the hidden enclaves of Oxford’s city centre, was both highly engaging as well as entertaining. Likewise, the performative lecture, Low Profile presents: an introduction, provided the students of Oxford Brookes University with an educative model of the ideal fusion of practice and research (praxis) as well as expanding existing notions of what constitutes performance.

I consider Hannah and Rachel’s work to be an important contribution to the growth of live art and would encourage their support in order to both develop their practice and increase cultural awareness of the burgeoning phenomenon of live art as an accessible and sustainable art form.”

Philip Babot – Artist (SHIFTwork, Time Based Art Research Group, Centre for Research in Art and Design, Cardiff School of Art and Design, UWIC)

“I saw LOW PROFILE perform their [work in progress] show ‘double acts’ at the Exeter Phoenix Scratch event. I found this piece of work charming and hugely inclusive. The audience, rather than feeling 'assaulted' as can be the case with some performance art, eagerly took part in the process of selecting working material and consequently developed a sense of ownership and identity within the work itself.

For all its inclusiveness and charm the work was by no means shallow, dealing deftly with the issues of partnership and what it is that individuals bring to a working relationship or indeed a friendship or long term relationship (neatly parodied by their ongoing taking it in turns to inflate a double sized air mattress by mouth).

Through the bizarre and funny workings of the material I felt myself reflecting on my own relationships and what part memory plays in the retelling of the story of a relationship, perhaps reinforcing the public and private image of that relationship.

Bill Wroath - Artist