This performance installation arrived in Sheffield as part of DocFest, the annual documentary festival which seems to have grown substantially in scale and ambition this year.
The mixed media, techno-philhic performance practice that is ‘Blast Theory’ have produced a range of game / performances that place the spectator-participant in direct contact with the reality of the city. In U&E, you are invited to assume the persona of one of two iconic anti-heros, Red Army Ulrike, or IRA informer Eamon. Whatever the choice, the work draws upon the documentary of the violent political lives of these figures, and provokes participants to contemplate the effect of these actions at an emotional / personal level.
Blast Theory’s physical unassuming physical installation is a plywood box that sits in the very centre of the Winter Gardens. Very limited instructions are given (or needed), the piece works on a one-at-a-time basis, so an assistant ensures that at least six minutes are left between each participant. The only device is a single mobile phone (and umbrella for the weather if required!), and upon dialling the number you are asked to choose which character to play.
The phone works perfectly as a device for this performance, on one hand the idea that Ulrike is ‘on the run’ suited the covert feel of talking to the invisible co-conspirator / narrator– yet it is such a ubiquitous piece of technology that you can carry out the whole 30 min piece on the line to the narrator – walking and briefly taking - without conspicuously ‘performing’ in public.
Ulrike’s story follows her separation from her partner, political activism, violent rescue of a comrade from prison, and loss of her children before she turns herself in. Though the story itself doesn’t relate to the urban landscape you are witnessing, I found that the disconnection from the reality of the city (that I know very well) heightened the sense of spatial and social interaction. And on the occasions when a moment in the narrative did ‘fit’ with the more filmic nature of the surroundings (under Fountain Precinct, down a back alley off Fargate) the suspension of belief crept in and the social reality began to erode.
When offered the final choice – echoing Ulrike’s choice of ‘flight or fight’ is asked “hang up in the next 30 seconds if you want to escape home”, and it transpired that you had to meet a man by nodding across the street, the first contact with an live actor felt all too real. He led you into the backstage of the Crucible, where a second box (mimicking the first) sat in a darkened room. This was lit with single strip light and designed to recreate an interrogation chamber, and a 10 minute grilling by the actor on your personal attitude of violence for the cause. It wasn’t entirely clear by this point whether you were still ‘in character’, but I found this manipulation process (akin to real interrogation techniques?) made me open up emotionally in a surprising way. It was also a final shock to realise that the interview was being monitored by a webcam through a two way mirror in the chamber, which was broadcasting a live feed back into the first box!
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