BRACE
The material on this page is a selection of images, texts, videos and small ideas (that we have generated over the last 5 years), which celebrate our ongoing interest in, and long standing commitment to, doubleacts, two-ness and collaboration.
LOW PROFILE are rachel dobbs and hannah jones.
they have been working in collaboration since 2003
to make live art and performances. they are currently
based in plymouth, uk.
LOW PROFILE are two friends who discovered art together.
LOW PROFILE are two friends who learned how to be artists together.
LOW PROFILE are two friends who decided to make artwork together.
LOW PROFILE are Hannah and Rachel. They first met in the kitchen of
Hannah’s flat, in the halls of residence that they both lived in, on the
evening that they arrived at University. They were 19.
Hannah was pretty terrified, luckily, Rachel was confident enough to pop
round to her flat and say hello, to see if anyone else liked smoking fags
or would like to go for a drink. Hannah was very glad that there were some girls to make friends with (as she was sharing with 6 boys) and gratefully took her up on her offer.
In the 8 or so years that they have known each other, they have shared
a huge amount together and with each other.
Homes, relationships, accidents, deaths, cookery lessons, laughing, budget planning, daily walks to college, singing loudly to deal with stress, art, fear, performances, moving countries, loneliness, very bad hangovers, house buying, teaching, epic journeys, tents, parking fines, tears, beds, sleeping bags and a lot of conversations.
In 2006, we wrote a series of 59 letters to doubleacts (some living, some dead) as a way to examine, challenge, question and make public our interest in collaborative practices. This list was made to help us select who to write to.
I Would ..
This text fragment is taken from the performance, DRY RUN part 6: I Would..
This durational live performance (1-2 hours) centers around a large (8ft x 8ft) freestanding blackboard. In chalk, on one side of the blackboard, one performer writes a text that always begins, ‘I would’ and ends with an imagined response to an imagined scenario. On the other side of the performance, the other performer writes a text that presents a series of possible ‘emergency’ scenarios that range from being absurd, trivial, ridiculous and over the top to at times being strangely familiar, pertinent, recognisable or common place.
Kylie and Jason (duet/sexual tension)
And and Dec (breakfast tv)
Richard and Judy (husband and wife)
Morecome and Wise (comedians/people who 'look the same')
Lone Twin (people who 'look the same'/people we could get compared with)
The two ronnies (comedians)
Bert and Ernie (husband and wife/fictional - possibly named after characters in 'its a wonderful life')
The chuckle brothers ('comedians')
Cannon and Ball ('comedians')
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (comedians)
Torvil and Dean (sport)
Gilbert and George (people who 'look the same')
Dolly Parton and Kenny Rodgers (duet)
Rod and Emu (scary ventriloquist/ill fated)
Philip Scofield and Gorden the Gopher (side kick)
Jordan and Peter (duet/husband and wife/celebraty couples/reality tv couples)
lennon and yoko (husband and wife/spare part - mcCartney)
lone ranger&tonto (fictional/side kick/why people ask who's the boss!)
blair&brown (politics)
siegfried and roy
starsky and hutch (fictional/equals)
wilber and orville wright (family)
tin tin and snowey (side kick)
barbie and ken (sexual tension - link to jordan and peter)
bill and ted (link to jon and jonny)
chas 'n' dave
basil fawlty and sybil fawlty (husband and wife)
vic and bob (equals)
murry walker and martin (sport)
wham! (the first pop band to tour communist china)
wayne and garth
porridge - godper and fletcher (ill fated)
'comedians':
kenan and kel
little and large
strategic partnerships e.g posh and becks
sport:
nancey kerrigan and tonya harding (figure scaters/controversy/rivals)
two girls/who we might get compared to:
tracey emin and sarah lucas
trinny and susanna
mel and sue
politics: why arn't there more political double acts? strength/power/leadership - do alliances signify weakness or compromise
tony and gordon
nick and david
temporary alliances: e.g tennis doubles
pairs of pairs of paring off:
men behaving badly
2 pints of larger
the good life
friends
co driver and co piolts
good cop bad cop:
illusionists/magicians:
penn and teller
good names (names that follow each other well/work together well):
simon and garfunkel
smith and jones
geeves and wooster (fictional)
fry and laurie (comedians)
modesty blaise and willie garvin (find out more)
the smothers brothers (entertainers)
Breakfast show presenters:
Jonny vaughn and Denise (duet)
Chris and Gaby
Des and Mel
Kelly Brook and Jonny Vaughn
Jamie Theakston and Zoe Ball (sexual tension - kids tv)
Simon and Maquita (pop world)
trevor and simon (looked like each other)
film:
the cohen brothers
Serial double acts:
John Travolta (Pulp fiction)
john travolta and kelly preston (couple)
silent partners:
ricky gervais and steven merchant
verushka lindorf and photographer
tag teams:
musicals/song writers:
Gilbert and sullivan
mick jagger and keith richards
rodgers and hammerstein (sound of music/good names)
burt bacharach and hal david
elton john and ---- (the lyrics)
robbie williams and guy chambers (?)
robsom and jerome ('musicians')
the chemical brothers
tim rice and andrew lloyd webber
jazzy jeff and the fresh prince
side kicks:
danger mouse and penfold
dorothy and toto
phileas fogg and passepartout (willy fog/find out more)
petshop boys/erasure
eurythmics
doctor who and the assistant
spares:
Ed the Duck and Andi Peters
paul and helen (reality tv couples)
sarah green and philip scofiled (sexual tension - kids tv)
baddiel and skinner (comedians)
blackadder and baldrick
charlie brown and snoopy
adam and joe
french and saunders (two girls/who we might get compared to)
hale and pace
joseph and mary (husband and wife - nativity play)
auguste and louis lumiere (family/inventors)
tom sawyer and huckleberry finn
people we know/have met:
Dando and Weitz (names that work well together)
ben and holly
jon and jonny
husband and wife:
Ike and Tina (duet)
sonny and cher (duet)
marina abramovic and ulay
carl kennedy and susan kenedy (fictional/on off)
jack and vera duckworth (on off/ill fated)
tom and barbara (the good life)
margot and jerry (the good life)
stiller and meara (comedians/ben stillers parents /find out more/american list)
colin and justin
charles and diana
bob geldof and paula yates
paula yates and michael hutchings
celeberaty couples:
kidman and cruise (ex)
brad and jen (ex)
bennifer (ex)
posh and becks
courtney love and kurt cobain
iman and david bowie
sting and trudie
bruce forsthweight and miss world
elton john and david furnish
jessica simpson and nick lachey (ex)
britney spears and justin timberlake (ex)
catherine zeta jones and michael douglas
lisa marie presley and michael jackson (ex)
liz hurley and hugh grant (ex)
family:
donnie and marie (duet)
the righteous brothers (duet)
the white stripes (duet/brother sister)
satchi and satchi (brothers/brand/rivals?)
the kemp brothers (spandault ballet/rivals/cray brothers/spare parts)
grant and phil mitchel
bobby and jack charlton
joel and ethan coen
he-man and she-ra (siblings)
the chuckle brothers brothers (imdb)
thompson and thomson (tin tin/not related)
venus and serena williams (rivals)
on screen mum and dads:
roseanne and dan (john goodman)
jill and tim (tool time) (tim allen - real life name)
spare parts:
bros (family)
sooty and sweep (sue/sexual tension)
fictional:
thelma and louise (people we could get compared with/two girls)
batman and robin (side kick/family)
del boy and rodney (family-brothers/ill fated)
sherlock holmes and doctor watson (side kicks/catchphrases)
fox mulder and dana scully (equalls/sexual tension)
maria and tony (west side story/fictional lovers/rivals - sharks and jets)
equals:
cagney and lacey (two girls)
fox mulder and dana scully (fictional/sexual tension/must have)
laurence lewleyn bowen & diarmuid gavin (used to be rivals - changing rooms)
the avengers - mrs peel & john steed (sexual tension)
ill fated:
Steptoe and son (family/fictional)
laurel and hardy ('comedians')
bill clinton and monica lewinski
hugh grant and divine brown
statler and waldorf (the muppet show guys on balcony)
rivals:
ali and joe frazier (boxers)
chris evert and martina navratilova
duets:
Olivia Newton John and John (sandy and danny/fictional/sexual tension)
one's we don't know where to put somewhere else:
fred astaire and ginger rogers
criminals:
bonnie and clyde
the crays (family - link to kemp brothers)
leopold and loeb
people who we don't know much about:
Cheech&Chong (entertainers)
emily cox and henry rathvon (crossword puzzle authors)
bill gates and paul allen (business partners/microsoft -one more famous then the other)
ebay (brand)
google (brand)
gilbert and sullivan (songwriters)
karl marx&engels
russell and whitehead (mathematicians)
watson and crick (scientists)
andrade and trevi (accussed of being criminals)
dean martin and jerry lewis (sucsessful on stage comedy duo)
wilber mills and fanne foxe (good names/ill fated/senator caught with stripper in the 'tidal basin' incident)
uramium - 235 and uramium - 238 (almost inseperable isotopes)
harvey and robert weinstein (film makers/family)
peter and jane and ann and barry (children's books)
arno penzias and robert wilson (the radio engineers in that film about steven hawkin who recorded the sound that supported the big bang theory and noble prize 1978 1 1/4 of the prize each because they had to share it with another solo scientist)
inventors:
alexander graham bell made the first telephone call to the room next door and he said 'watson come here i need you')
brands:
william hewlett and david packard (business/the names working well together)
johnson and johnson
marks and spencer
steve jobs and steve wozniak (apple - two steves in a garrage with assistance from mike markkula)
abercrombe and fitch
barnum and bailey (circus)
ben and jerry (ill fated!)
black and decker
b&q (block and quayle)
tate and lyle
H&M
lea and perrins/lee and herring (comedians)
mills and boon (good names/find out more)
rolls and royce (grandad?)
armitage shanks (toilets)
americans list:
penn and teller (illusionists)
baseball guys
mork and mindy
beavis and buthead
ren and stimpy
smothers brothers
a&w (root beer inventors alan and wright)
dick and jane (fictional/family)
salt 'n' peppa
sears and roebuck (brand/extreme makeover home edition/friends)
john smith and pocahontas
**
teams - the old london buses - driver and ticket conductor
antiques - a pair is more valuable then one
policemen out of ello ello
GIN AND TONIC
left and right
3-legged Race
In 2006, LOW PROFILE made the performance, Low Profile presents: d o u b l e a c t s, which was A Phoenix Scratch commission, supported by Arts Council England and Exeter Phoenix. This video work was presented in the foyer area of the theatre, ‘greeting’ people before they entered the space.
LOW PROFILE recreate Pj&Duncan’s ‘Lets get ready to rumble’
This video documents LOW PROFILE ‘performing’ at the platform I Am Your Worst Nightmare, Arnolfini, Bristol (2007).
1. Decide on a dance you want to learn more than any other
2. Find someone to teach you the dance
3. Spend all day learning the dance until you can; jump, Brucey, jump jump, arm, spinning thing, crackerjack, punch punch, rumble.
4. Think about ant and dec. Think about the end. Think about making it. Think about the applause.
5. Ask yourself one question, Are You Ready To Rumble?!
Who Am I?
This video is an extract of the performance Low Profile presents: d o u b l e a c t s. It shows a moment in the performance where LOW PROFILE play a guessing game based on the names of doubleacts submitted by the audience.
LOW PROFILE ring Gilbert and George
This video re-presents the process of Hannah&Rachel phoning the well know artist duo, Gilbert and George and is an extract of the performance Low Profile presents: d o u b l e a c t s.
never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never give up.
This diagram operates as a proposal for a ‘steady hand buzzer game’, where the wire would be shaped to form the sentence, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never give up. (2010)
Are you okay?
This photograph was taken during an intensive self-made camping residency, of cross-collaboration antics with the performance duo Hunt&Darton (2010)
Brace Brace
This image (2010/11) is sampled from the piece DRY RUN part 5: Procedures for Preparedness (photo series), where LOW PROFILE continue their ongoing investigation into ‘dry runs’ - exploring the procedures that occupy safety demonstrations and other obscure briefings, rituals and tests that stand in for real life emergency situations, alongside their own attempts to prepare for ‘the worst’.
on collaboration
on collaboration is a short essay written by Rachel which puts forward a personal desire to reclaim, define and re-define the term collaboration (2009).
A personal desire for definition: Collaboration is not the same as co-operation.
In the discourse around arts practices, I often find myself confronted by the use/mis-use of the term collaboration. As someone who has been engaged for a prolonged period in this way of working, I have felt the need to define/re-define this term – it seems to me so useful, it would be a shame to lose its potential as a term that denotes a very particular working arrangement – one that I see as quite distinct from a more simple co-operation (working together).
I’d like to express a desire to ‘save’ the term collaboration to describe a way of working between two or more people, where the creative process confuses authorship to the extent that none of the collaborators can identify elements (or contributions) that are solely ‘theirs’ – generating a product that is ‘shared’ rather than claimed solely by any one contributor. It is with this sense of collaboration in mind that I am attempting to unpack my position as a co-creator of the work produced under the moniker LOW PROFILE.
This wilful confusion of authorship, ownership and accountability, of course, presents complications in the academic situation – how can I present (any of) this practice, this work or these ideas as truly ‘my own’, and more particularly, ‘my own unaided work’?
11. Author’s Signed Declaration*
If your work has been part of a collaborative group project, a declaration must be made to indicate clearly your own individual contribution and the form and extent of collaboration.
* from “Protocols and Conventions for Dissertations” (MA Guidelines document), University College Falmouth incorporating Dartington College of Arts
In a similar way, it is unhelpful (if not, unachievable) to begin to indicate, list or tally ‘my own’ individual contributions – to do so seems to reduce the situation of collaboration (an intricate, interdependent working relationship that relies on shared ownership rather than individual possession) to one of co-operation (synonymous with less complex notions of helping each other out, assisting one another, or working together towards an identifiable aim).
My intention in producing this statement (as one half of the collaboration LOW PROFILE) is not an attempt to plagiarise or ‘pass off’ the work created by LOW PROFILE as simply ‘my own’, or to evade scrutiny of how the work was developed, but to acknowledge that this practice, this work and these ideas are produced through (and informed by) a collaboration where we each (as heterogeneous individuals) take equal/shared/joint credit, responsibility and attribution for what is created.
Who is this we?
The word “we” suggests a manifesto, something that is bigger than “I” or “me”. “We” suggests conspiratorial activity. “We” suggests a promise, pledge or commitment. “We” suggests an equal agreement.
We are in this together.
When Hannah was studying for her MA, she was asked to write down (to make a list of) the things that she was responsible for within the work that we had produced as LOW PROFILE. The institution wanted her to define and separate whose ideas were whose, who had done what and what work was identifiably hers.
We realised at this point that a list like this would be disastrous to a/our collaboration – undermining what we had built by introducing greed, individual possession and ego.
Who is this we?
In our writing, when we (LOW PROFILE) talk of “we”, we are talking of ourselves as a collaborative duo and the space where our beliefs, concerns and ideas intersect (becoming shared), but at times, we are also hinting towards the simultaneous suggestions of “we” widening its definition to include the audience.
The form and extent of the collaboration
We are involved in (and committed to) developing work in a conversational way – trying to work things out through talking, going to see things (i.e. films, exhibitions, performances) together, friendship, (sometimes) getting drunk, telling each other about things we have seen or read, and writing collaboratively - generating ‘sanctioned’ texts. This leads to a situation where stability is achieved through each comma/every detail being discussed, cases being put forward, argument erupting and so on, until the resulting texts or ideas become ‘stable’.
Faithfully documenting this process would require a constant state of data collection (which in itself would be undesirable and almost unmanageable), and once the implications of the request for such detail have been properly considered, the resulting document - imagine a series of interlinked/hypertextual documents where each word is accounted for by an unlimited series of ‘track changes’ marks - is also not a tally that would be particularly legible, let alone insightful, interesting or useful to those producing it.
Where do the individual contributions go?
When I think about collaboration, and especially when I find myself looking through a ‘paper-trail’ that inadvertently documents the process of working together (emails, notes, drafts etc.), I wonder about how this process affects what gets picked up, what is left behind and what ends up being worked into the ‘final’ piece, text or idea.
I’m thinking about this not so much in terms of keeping score (I’m not very interested in this and hence an excellent person to play badminton against) but more in terms of this not being so visible in a solo creative practice where the decisions are made by one individual.
I find it fascinating that on a different day, we could easily choose a different set of solutions (there are always more possibilities than we can ever use) – this tacit process of formulating (first through individual thought processes), presenting (talking about/sharing ideas and fragments), testing (often individual thought process – does it make sense to you too?), considering (where could this go?), re-formulating (a formation of shared/agreed ideas or directions), re-presenting (beginning to ‘make’ something) and re-testing (does it work?/how does it work? etc).
I think I have forgotten how people do this in a solo practice (I forget sometimes how working ‘alone’ might even be possible, let alone desirable!) – when can the process not start to involve other people?
We are in this together.
++++++
INSTRUCTIONS FOR A LIVE WRITING PIECE:
(to be written while speakers read out their thoughts on collaboration - talking for 2 minutes, twice)
Copy the diagram (by the side of this text), beginning with the headings FOR and AGAINST. Fill in the text on the left column first, followed by the text on the right column.
Untitled (hair dryers) 2010
This video was made in the ladies toilets of the Arnolfini, Bristol. After getting really wet, going out to get video tape, we couldn't resist making something which used the lovely two-ness of the hairdryers.
LOW PROFILE are...
a short story..