Output details

Ulrike and Eamon Compliant

• PaR (DVD and related booklet) Portfolio

Dramaturgical research to create an interactive and immersive performance in which individual participants take a walk through a cityscape,inhabiting the character of either Ulrike Meinhof or Eamon Collins. In choosing which character to ‘inhabit’, the participant takes the first step in a process of compliance which ultimately challenges them directly to consider their ethical stance on violence.

300 words - Information about the research process and/ or content

The PaR project evidences a shift in Blast Theory’s work away from gaming structures towards more overtly theatrical performance. Within an interactive and immersive performance mode, the research inquiry sought a means theatrically to instantiate an ethical dilemma for each participant. The project is consciously concerned with how immersive performance might go beyond thrill to pose a tough challenge. Influenced by Philippa Foot’s conception of ‘virtue ethics ‘("Be this sort of person" rather than "Follow this rule."), the project parallels and instances the move in philosophy from ethical imperatives towards charting a course among various options.

The work mobilises a walk through the city for lone participants in the role of either Ulrike Meinhof or Eamon Collins. In choosing which character to ‘inhabit’, the participant takes the first step in a process of compliance. The process affords some agency, but, the initial choice having been made, the piece guides participants into a narrowing set of options. The work culminates with an open-ended personal interview, initially asking “What would you fight for?”. In contrast with more passive theatrical modes, a direct interaction requires participants to consider their own ethical and political stance on violence. Of all BT’s projects, it is designed to be the most highly demanding and theatrically direct, engaging participants in an intellectual and ethical dilemma.

The self-reflexivity of the interview process revealed an uncertainty amongst participants as to whether they were responding ‘in character’ or as themselves. For project makers, insights into potential dramaturgies have been gleaned and disseminated: in respect of troubling identity, subjectivity and ethics; harnessing the ambivalent play between levels of identity and between ‘self’ and ‘fictions of the self’.

Ulrike and Eamon Compliant was first mobilised live at Venice Biennale in June 2009 but is submitted by means of DVD and related print publication.