On going places and never giving up

LOW PROFILE Never Give Up (2013) site specific installation at Exeter Phoenix

Plymouth-based LOW PROFILE staged their 12-hour performance DRY RUN part 2: How to save your skin when disaster strikes without warning last Saturday as part of their show 'Against All Odds' at Exeter Phoenix  (24 May - 6th July 2013).

During this performance, they read, learn from and test each other on the advice offered in a 1960's publication - The Book of Survival.  It all took place in a building decked out with a giant window work encouraging passers-by to "Never Never Never Never Give Up" and with a small, displaced safety curtain draped across its reception space.

I only dipped in for an hour but learned a lot about avoiding avalanches and escaping burning buildings. (And also, I guess, about surviving as an artist.)  The tone of the Q&A dialogue between the two performers veered from funny/absurd to calm/weary to nervy/hyper, recalling Forced Entertainment's Quizoola!  It was good to see a durational performance where endurance was essential to its meaning (rather than a masochistic/macho add on).

Down the road at Spacex, Layla Curtis is showing 'Antipodes' (18 May - 13 July), based around a curation of paired public webcams worldwide. Drawing attention to what's happening on opposite sides of the globe isn't a new idea, but there's something pleasing about the haphazardness of relying on someone else's live footage and the odd correspondences (and blips) that occur.  It's shown alongside an intense video piece Tong Tana with amazing binaural sound, filmed from an tiny HD camera sewn into the hat of a hunter in Borneo and showing you the forest from his point of view.  Borneo is antipodal to the UK and the contrast couldn't be greater.