The Best Laid Plans is a multi-channel video installation that examines the potential use of everyday spaces as survival shelters. Photographic images are overlaid with illustrations of instruction-manual style drawings that transform the spaces into mini survival compounds. The illustrations slowly reveal themselves, as if the survival shelter is being imagined before you.
The plans that unfold in The Best Laid Plans are modeled from survivalist internet discussion boards. My investigation into this material began during the Y2K panic of the late 1990’s. During this time groups that were previously considered fringe groups were perceived as experts in the sustaining of society after the collapse of infrastructure. During the time I participated in these discussion forums I privately questioned the existence of some of the facilities described in the posts. I became interested in the imagined survival shelter.