Emma Finn & Mina Heydari-Waite
GONG / WHISTLE / DRUM
Companies will migrate to the continent.
Border crossings will become cumbersome.
WE ARE AFRAID OF ONE ANOTHER.
FEAR IS IN THE CLIMATE AS THE FALL OUT ARRIVES.
BUT WORRY NOT,
BECAUSE PROTECT AND SURVIVE ARE HERE TO DISSEMINATE ESSENTIAL INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIAL.
(GO TO YOUR FALL OUT ROOM AND STAY THERE)
Protect and Survive was first a public information series on civil defence produced by the British government during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Intended to inform British citizens on how to protect themselves during a nuclear attack, it consisted of pamphlets and broadcasts. The series was originally intended for distribution only in the event of dire national emergency, but provoked such intense public interest that the pamphlets were authorised for general release. Organizations such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament protested that the pamphlet popularised the idea that a nuclear war could be survived, making such a war more likely. The women's movement in the 70s had a strong influence in this regard, much of it emanating from the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. In 1982 the camp organised 70,000 women to form a 14 mile human chain around a nuclear base. We are afraid of one another.
Our Protect and Survive 2.0 is three fold; a pamphlet, video and eight volunteers who disseminate indecipherable instructional material through performance. The performance was initially devised for Rhythm Machine in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Our Protect and Survive volunteers, the ladies who refuge, demonstrate ‘safe responses’ to different ‘alarms’, and use their standard cloth braids to create a refuge on the dance floor. Protect and Survive (2.0) indirectly responds to the current global and local sense of unease. We intended the work to reference ideas surrounding female occupation of public and private space, soft boundaries and female protest, as well as the trope of the immaculately composed, reassuring female public service announcer.