Ulrike and Eamon Compliant

Ulrike and Eamon Compliant is an ambulatory work commissioned by the De La Warr Pavilion for the Venice Biennale.

For the first time since Desert Rain (1999), this project is based on real world events and is an explicit engagement with political questions. Participants are invited to assume the role of Ulrike or Eamon and make a walk through the city while receiving phone calls. The experience culminates with an interview in a hidden room.

A description of the work in Venice

The work starts in Palazzo Zenobio where you enter a wooden room, which has air holes drilled into it, and pick up a mobile phone. There is a screen on the wall showing video of an interview – the interview is live and you can faintly hear the conversation the two people are having.

To begin you press dial on the phone: on the screen a phone starts to flash. A person walks into shot and answers it, telling you to put on a pair of sunglasses. They ask you whether you would like to be Ulrike or Eamon. They tell you to leave the gallery and walk outside.

They guide you onto a bridge and then hang up.

Over the next thirty minutes you receive a number of phone calls that lead you through the city, engaging you as either Ulrike or Eamon and prompting interactions. One call invites you to nod your head and to say whether you are a decisive or a hesitant person. You walk off the bridge past the pharmacy and onto the next bridge. When instructed to do so you raise your hand to your head; then choose a passing stranger and give them a name. You are guided from the second bridge, alongside the canal to the tatty grass area in front of the barracks.

Once you lay your sunglasses on the bench, the next call asks you what you can do for the people around you. Your route leads past the high red wall of the barracks into tight graffiti covered alleys and out into the expanse of the square. You wait by the well before heading to the water’s edge to make your decision on whether to hang up and head home or to stay on the line and go to the room where questions get asked. If you go on, you are led to the final bridge and from there to the dead end alley where an interviewer is waiting in the distance.

As you approach, they head inside the tiny, ancient church and into a wooden room identical to the first one in the gallery. There are two chairs and a mirror on the wall where the video screen was. The interviewer invites you to sit down and asks you their first question: ‘What would you fight for?’ They do not refer to you using the name Ulrike or Eamon. Over the next few minutes they explore whether you would kill. They may ask, ‘what would you do if people came into your area and killed your friends and neighbours?’ or ‘are your beliefs rational or emotional?’ They probe for the inconsistencies in your stance and the gap between your ideals of social engagement and the reality of your lifestyle. The last question they ask is ‘are you a hesitant or a decisive person?’

You are then led out of a hidden door at the far end of the room, around the back of the mirror, where it becomes clear that it is a two-way mirror. You are invited to wait for a while to watch as the next person comes in and sits down to be interviewed. Then you step back into the alley outside the church.

A book is available about this work containing the full documentation and essays by Richard Grayson and Matt Adams. A DVD is also available.

Biographies

Ulrike Meinhof (1934 – 1976) was a German journalist who became notorious through her membership of the Red Army Faction. Her fraught relationship with fellow members Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin may have contributed to her suicide while awaiting trial in prison in 1976.

Eamon Collins ( 1954 – 1999) was an active member of the IRA’s Nutting Squad, in charge of internal security, before becoming an informer on whose evidence large numbers of the IRA were prosecuted. He was murdered in 1999.

Partners

‘Ulrike and Eamon Compliant’ was commissioned by the De La Warr Pavilion for the 53rd
Venice Biennale and developed with the support of the Mixed Reality Lab at the University
of Nottingham.

It was made possible by the generous support of Arts Council England and Turning Point
South East and with the cooperation of Nuova Icona and Oratorio di San Ludovico.