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IPAF & Managing Discomfort presents: An Ambulance to the Future (The Second Chance) by Martin O’Brien
The grim reaper stood there, finally I saw him. His skeletal form sparkled in the moonlight and nothing else existed. This was the deal. He reached out and wrapped his cold, bone hand around my skull. I was lost in the darkness of his cape. He drew me near and kissed me. He tasted like death, and I loved it.
In ‘An Ambulance to the Future (The Second Chance)’, Death pays a man for sex. The price is immortality.
Mixing video, live performance action and parables, the work paints the picture of life lived over and over again, a life that doesn’t need water or oxygen, a life without the promise of an end point. It is a meditation on endings and new beginnings. With his usual intensity and wit, this work continues Martin O’Brien’s explorations of the politics of death by asking what the idea of immortality can help us understood about being mortal.
‘An Ambulance to the Future (The Second Chance)’ premiered at Whitechapel Gallery in May 2023 and was presented as part of Martin O’Brien’s year as ‘Writer-in-Residence’.
Notes for audience
An Ambulance to the Future (The Second Chance) contains nudity, footage of scrotal piercing, discussion of sex and death and spanking.
Double Bill: This performance is a DOUBLE BILL showing with Sall Lam Toro. 1 ticket = access to 2 performances.
Language
English
Access
Husets Teater does not have level free access and is not equipped with stairlifts, and is therefore not accessible for wheelchair users. We recognise that this is not good enough.
The text that Martin O’Brien will be performing in English will be available as limited quantity handouts at the venue.
Credits
Lead artist: Martin O’Brien
Producer: FUTURE RITUAL
Videography: Baiba Sprance and Marco Beradi
Performers (Live): Zack Mennell
Performers (Film): Ali Campbell, Ash McNaughton, Carolyn Naish, Ewan Hindes, Pianka M, Regina Jay
About the artists:
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. His most recent works were at Tate Britain in 2020, and the ICA (London) in 2021. He is winner of the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Visual and Performing Arts 2022. He is Writer-in-Residence at Whitechapel Gallery throughout 2023. Martin has cystic fibrosis and all 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. Martin O’Brien is currently senior lecturer in Live Art at Queen Mary University of London
An Ambulance to the Future (The Second Chance) is co-presented with TOASTER and Live Art DK and also a part of their Managing Discomfort Performance Festival.
An Ambulance to the Future (The Second Chance) is part of IPAF: an international festival for contemporary performance presenting artists from different cultural contexts, whose work engages identity politics, sexual expressions, and body representations, facilitated by Warehouse9.
The festival is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, the City of Copenhagen and Bispebjerg Lokaludvalg.
Jasmin has a master’s degree in English and cultural communications from the University of Copenhagen and has worked with several fields within the cultural sphere. She has worked with executing and communicating films, festivals, art fairs, and literature, and has now embarked upon queer performance art at Warehouse9.
Emma (they/she) has been a core member since 2012 and a leading effort in driving organisational development. They have helped shape WH9’s artistic profile, initiated national and international collaborations and consolidated WH9 through fundraising strategies, and insisting on production methods centering care and accessiblility.
In addition, Emma works as an independent curator, e.g. through the curatorial duo osborn&møller, where they have acted as guest curator at the Wellcome Collection (UK) and curated part of City of Women’s 25 year anniversary festival in 2019 (SL). Emma has experience as a freelance producer in the UK, where they worked with artists such as Poppy Jackson, Manuel Vason and SPILL Festival. Emma holds a MA in Theater and Performance from Queen Mary, University of London and a BA (Hons) in Drama, Applied Theatre & Education from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
Jørgen Callesen (They/He) is co-founder and co-director of Warehouse9.
For the past 17 years, they have been an integral part of developing Warehouse9 to become a leading organisation for cross-aesthetic queer art, including international festivals and socially engaged projects. He holds a Ph.D. in information & media science from Aarhus University (2005) and has an artistic practice with the performance figure “miss fish”. They have presented solo work in Denmark and internationally since 2002 and work in collaboration with numerous queer artists as well as in lager scale productions.