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.