Martin O’Brien is an artist and zombie. He works across performance, writing and video art. His work uses physical endurance, long durations, and pain based practices in order to examine what it means to be born with a life shortening disease, and to live longer than expected. He has shown work throughout the UK, Europe, USA, and Canada. This has included at Tate Britain, Spill Festival of Performance (both London), Kapelica Gallery (Ljubljana), Performatorium Festival of Queer Performance (Regina), Venice Week of Performance Art (Venice), In Between Time Festival of Contemporary Performance (Bristol), Grace Exhibition Space, Abrons Art Centre (both New York) and as artist in residence at ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives (Los Angeles). Martin has cystic fibrosis and all of 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. He is currently lecturer in Performance at Queen Mary University of London. He recently surpassed his life expectancy and is enjoying life as a zombie.

Conceived and performed by Martin O’Brien, with sound by Suhail Merchant. Produced by Joseph Morgan Schofield, and production managed by Thomas Wilson. Martin is assisted in the performance by Zack McGuinness.

The Last Breath Society (Coughing Coffin) has been commissioned as part of Waiting Times, a Wellcome Trust funded research project by academics from Birkbeck, University of London and the University of Exeter. Waiting Times offers a fundamental re-conceptualisation of the relation between time and care in contemporary thinking about health, illness, and wellbeing. 

The Last Breath Society (Coughing Coffin) has been supported with public funds from Arts Council England.

Images by Manuel Vason