Context:

This piece was commissioned by Arts Catalyst as part of the EU funded programme Trust Me I’M an Artist, which explored ethics in art practices. This work developed out of an interest in the Hollywood style zombie as a figure which might be useful for exploring the politics of illness and contagion. The zombie horror genre is predicated upon apocalyptic narratives in which a contagious virus is passed through the bite from a re-animated corpse.

The work does not involve any representation of the undead. Instead, it develops a logic of contamination through a three-hour durational action-based performance. This work was made before I developed my notion of zombie time, but functioned as a catalyst for further thinking about the potential of the relationship between temporality, performance and dying.

 

Imperatives:

• To explore how durational performance can function as a mode of autopathographic performance. 

 

Critical Reflections and Dissemination: 

• O’Brien, Martin and David MacDiarmid (eds). (2018) Survival of the Sickest: The Art of Martin O'Brien, London: Live Art Development Agency. 
• ‘Flesh eaters: Performance, Zombies and Cannibalism’, Leonardo Journal of Arts, Science and Technology (2015) 

 

Research Findings:

• Durational performance enables an exploration of temporalities of chronic illness in ways that undermine common representations of the patient.