Artist and zombie Martin O’Brien is back! On Thursday 14th December, Fading Out of Dead Air (Transmissions for the Necropolis) will be performed, the third and final part of the queer writer and performance artist’s trilogy as Writer in Residence at London’s esteemed Whitechapel Gallery. The work will take the form of a durational performance installation, with free entry and open to visit anytime from 11am-9pm.
“Hello…?”
“Hello…?”
A scratchy sound of white noise emanating from a small radio fills the dark room. A faint voice comes through. It sounds like nothing from this world, as if death itself was speaking.
Somewhere else, sickly patients lie in hospital beds in hell. They don’t understand why they are still sick. They listen to the hospital radio, but it doesn’t play their favourite songs. Instead, they listen to the sounds of a life once lived.
Following the inaugural performance An Ambulance To The Future (The Second Chance) in May and July’s large-scale Overture For The End (An Ashen Place), December’s new work continues to explore mortality through ideas of immortality.
Taking its inspiration from hospital radio and pop culture references to ghosts heard only through analogue technologies, Fading Out of Dead Air (Transmissions for the Necropolis) explores the human desire to communicate and record. In a strange and eerie landscape, O’Brien shuffles around, recording and playing half-heard voices and unholy sounds.
Martin says: “‘I’ve always loved the radio. From listening to local radio as a kid, to long stays in the hospital, with hospital radio playing all day. From Saturday football commentary to waking up in the middle of the night with strange stories playing out through the airwaves. I listen all day every day. I’ve started to become interested in the conceptual possibility of radio as a ‘visual’ art. I want to experiment with the ways that images might translate to or produce sound.
My voice and the use of recording sound have been important parts of the first two pieces in the residency trilogy. Each piece has involved recording on tapes as part of the process of the performances. I wanted to make a piece where voice and sound were at the centre recording was the main action. The trilogy has been dedicating to exploring mortality through the idea of immortality. I was asking what we can learn about life and death by thinking about the possibility of living forever. As part of that, I have looked at a lot of pop cultural representations of ghosts. I am interested in the films where ghosts can only be heard through radios and other recording technology. I want to capture that spooky feeling through the radio. It’s like a hospital radio show for the dead, or for the living by the dead”.
Martin O’Brien has cystic fibrosis. 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.
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Booking link: www.whitechapelgallery.org/events/
Queerguru’s Contributing Editor Ris Fatah is a successful fashion/luxury business consultant (when he can be bothered) who divides and wastes his time between London and Ibiza. He is a lover of all things queer, feminist, and human rights in general. @ris.fatah
