The Visiting Artists Program resource guides contain upcoming speakers' biographies, articles, video and audio content, related publications in the Flaxman Library, and additional online resources. These guides may be used in the classroom in preparation for the event, research, or post-lecture discussion.
Martin O’Brien: Monday, November 11, 6:00 - 7:30 p.m. CT
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation services.
Join us in person for a lecture by artist Martin O’Brien followed by an audience Q&A.
Martin O’Brien is an artist and zombie. He works across performance, writing, and video art. O’Brien has cystic fibrosis and all of his work and writing draws upon this experience. His work uses long durational actions, short speculative texts, 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, the US, 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, and he was Writer in Residence at Whitechapel Gallery in 2023. He is the winner of the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Visual and Performing Arts 2022. 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 and as a double-page spread in The Guardian. He is currently senior lecturer in Live Art at Queen Mary University of London.
Presented in partnership with SAIC's Wellness Center.
Photo courtesy of the artist.
‘I was born with death as my sidekick’: the ‘zombie’ with cystic fibrosis who turns pain into art
Alex Needham | The Guardian | July 18, 2023
Martin O’Brien: Fading
Martin O’Brien | White Chapel Gallery | February 15, 2024
Martin O’Brien: Death Prayers
Martin O’Brien | White Chapel Gallery | August 8, 2023
Martin O’Brien’s Overture for the End
Juliet Jacques | Frieze | July 27, 2023
Martin O’Brien: A Study in the Land of Greyness and Solitude
Martin O’Brien | White Chapel Gallery | July 4, 2023
‘I want to continue performing and doing work that lasts a long time, and now, thanks to Kaftrio, I can.’ Martin’s story
Martin O’Brien | Cystic Fibrosis Trust | May 7, 2023
Q&A: Martin O’Brien
Martin O’Brien, Jane Scarth | White Chapel Gallery | January 30, 2023
You are my death: the shattered temporalities of zombie time
Martin O’Brien | NIH National Library of Medicine | June 10, 2020
Flesh-eaters: Notes toward a Zombie Methodology*
Martin O’Brien | Leonardo, vol. 49 (3) | p.264-265 | June 2016
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
Lie Back and Take It: BDSM, Biomedicine and the Hospital Bed in the work of Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose
Martin O’Brien | Body, Space & Technology, vol. 15 | | January 1, 2016
Performing Chronic: Chronic illness and endurance art*
Martin O’Brien | Performance Research, vol. 19 (4) | p.54-63 | September 26, 2014
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
Editorial: On Medicine*
Martin O’Brien, Gianna Bouchard | Performance Research, vol. 19 (4) | p.1-5 | September 26, 2014
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
Martin O'Brien
Ministry of Arts Podcast [Podcast] | December 10, 2023 | Please note this podcast does not provide transcripts
Martin O'Brien: An Ambulance to the Future (The Second Chance) [Performance Recording]
Whitechapel Gallery | 2023 | Please note there is not a transcript for this recording
Survival of the Sickest: The Art of Martin O'Brien by 
Performance and the Medical Body by
This edited collection focuses on performance practice and analysis that engages with medical and biomedical sciences. After locating the 'biologization' of theatre at the turn of the twentieth century, it examines a range of contemporary practices that respond to understandings of the human body as revealed by biomedical science. In bringing together a variety of analytical perspectives, the book draws on scholars, scientists, artists and practices that are at the forefront of current creative, scientific and academic research. Its exploration of the dynamics and exchange between performance and medicine will stimulate a widening of the debate around key issues such as subjectivity, patient narratives, identity, embodiment, agency, medical ethics, health and illness. In focusing on an interdisciplinary understanding of performance, the book examines the potential of performance and theatre to intervene in, shape, inform and extend vital debates around biomedical knowledge and practice in the contemporary moment.
Sexuality by
Tracing the identification of art with sexual expression or repression, from the era of the rights movements to the present.It has been argued, most notably in psychoanalytic and modernist art discourse, that the production of works of art is fundamentally driven by sexual desire. It has been further argued, particularly since the early 1970s, that sexual drives and desires also condition the distribution, display and reception of art. This anthology traces how and why this identification of art with sexual expression or repression arose and how the terms have shifted in tandem with artistic and theoretical debates, from the era of the rights movements to the present. Among the subjects it discusses are abjection and the "informe," or formless; pornography and the obscene; the performativity of gender and sexuality; and the role of sexuality in forging radical art or curatorial practices in response to such issues as state-sponsored repression and anti-feminism in the broader social realm. Artists surveyed include Vito Acconci, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Lynda Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, Gerard Byrne, George Chakravarthi, Judy Chicago, Vaginal Davis, Wim Delvoye, Elmgreen & Dragset, Valie Export, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Guillermo G mez-Pena, Harmony Hammond, Claudette Johnson, Mary Kelly, Yayoi Kusama, Robert Legorreta, Paul McCarthy, Sarah Maple, Shirin Neshat, Lorraine O'Grady, Yoko Ono, Catherine Opie, Orlan, William Pope.L, Miriam Schapiro, Carolee Schneemann, Joan Semmel, Barbara Smith, Annie Sprinkle, Alina Szapocznikow, Del LaGrace Volcano, Hannah Wilke, David Wojnarowicz Writers include Malek Alloula, Norman O. Brown, Judith Butler, Douglas Crimp, Angela Dimitrakaki, Michel Foucault, Daniel Guerin, Eleanor Heartney, Jonathan D. Katz, Rosalind Krauss, Julia Kristeva, Pawel Leszkowicz, Herbert Marcuse, Kobena Mercer, Laura Mulvey, Lawrence Rinder, Jacqueline Rose, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Susan Sontag, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Stephen Whittle
Access All Areas: Live Art and Disability by Martin O’Brien Fading Out of Dead Air – Transmissions for the Necropolis – Whitechapel Gallery
Visiting Artists Program Lecture Recordings from the Archive
SAIC Visiting Artists Program video and audio lecture recordings (1977–present.) Available with SAIC login credentials.
SAIC Digital Collections: Visiting Artists Program
SAIC Visiting Artists Program publicity archive and audio recordings (1977–98).