Martin O'Brien What the Serpent Told Me in the Misty Gloom

Martin O’Brien

Martin O’Brien is an artist and zombie. He works across performance, writing and video art. His work uses long durational actions, short speculative texts and critical rants, and performance processes in order to explore death and dying, what it means to be born with a life shortening disease, and the philosophical implications of living longer than expected. He has shown work throughout the UK; Europe; USA; and Canada, and is well known for his solo performances and collaborations with the legendary LA artist and dominatrix Sheree Rose. Recent works were at the ICA (London), International Museum of Surgical Science (Chicago) the Southbank Centre, and as Writer in Residence at Whitechapel Gallery (London). He is winner of the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Visual and Performing Arts 2022. Martin has cystic fibrosis and all of his work and writing draws upon this experience. In 2018, the book ‘Survival of the Sickest: The Art of Martin O’Brien’ was published by Live Art Development Agency. His work has been featured on BBC radio and Sky Arts television, and as a double page spread in The Guardian. He is currently Head of the Department of Drama at Queen Mary University of London.

Created and performed by Martin O'Brien

Produced by Regina Agard Brathwaite

Videography by Baiba Sprance and Marco Berardi

performance, possession + automation (pp+a) is a collaborative research project led by Nicholas Ridout, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), Dhanveer Singh Brar, University of Leeds and Orlagh Woods (creative producer), in partnership with Fierce Festival (Birmingham) and Transform Festival (Leeds) and with the collaboration of performingborders (London).

The project brings together academics and artists to investigate, through the practice and study of performance: the resistant power of ‘spirit possession’, the contemporary rise of automation, and their entanglement with histories of colonial slavery. We aim to produce an understanding of contemporary performance that is properly attentive to the colonial and racialising dimensions of the history from which it has emerged.

We are exploring automation and possession as two ways of thinking about what happens to human subjects who act in ways that they do not themselves fully control. How can making and thinking about artistic practice contribute to thinking about and through these ideas collectively.

https://possessionautomation.co.uk/

Accessibility and the performance

This is a new work, currently in development. We will update this page with more comprehensive accessibility information in October.

Seating: audience will be seated on chairs.

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