Martin O’Brien: An Ambulance to the Future

In this humorous and haunting performance mixing video, live performance action and parables, Death pays a man for sex. The price is immortality.

An Ambulance to the Future (The Second Chance) 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 endpoint. It is a meditation on endings and new beginnings.

With his usual intensity and humour, this work continues Martin O’Brien’s explorations of the politics of death by asking what the idea of immortality can help us understand about being mortal.

Martin O’Brien is an artist and zombie, working across performance, writing and video art. He has cystic fibrosis, and all of his work and writing draws upon this experience, often exploring death and dying, what it means to be born with a life-shortening disease, and the philosophical implications of living longer than expected.

His work has been featured on BBC radio and Sky Arts television. He is currently senior lecturer in Live Art at Queen Mary University of London.

An Ambulance to the Future (The Second Chance) was commissioned by Whitechapel Gallery and supported with public funds by Arts Council England.

Credits
Martin O’Brien: lead artist
FUTURE RITUAL: producer
Baiba Sprance & Marco Beradi: videography
Ash McNaughton: performer (live)
Ali Campbell, Ash McNaughton, Carolyn Naish, Ewan Hindes, Pianka M, Regina Jay & Shabnam Shabazi: performers (film)