Artist in Residence - Martin O'Brien - Regimes of Hardship January - June 2012 

 

 

Martin O'Brien

was Artist in Residence at ]performance s p a c e [ between January and June 2012. Martin used the residency period to realise the project Regimes of Hardship: Illness & The Enduring Body.

 

 

Martin O’Brien’s practice revolves around physical endurance and excess in relation to the fact he suffers from Cystic Fibrosis. His most recent performance, Mucus Factory, was commissioned by the Live Art Development Agency. Documentation of his work will be featured in a new publication on Live Art and disability and in a special edition of Contemporary Theatre Review on Live Art in the UK. He has performed in Britain, Poland, Spain and Germany. He is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Reading.

 

 

 

Regimes of Hardship was a practice as research project consisting of three performance installations taking place over a three month period at ]performance s p a c e [. In the year of the London Olympic Games O’Brien uses endurance in order to examine and challenge contemporary ideologies of health and illness and how this relates to the social construction of medicine and the body. The three installation-performances will examine the ways in which self-imposed endurance could act as a personal pathological resistance to illness. Regimes of Hardship attempts to communicate, interrogate and extend discourses around the body and medicine including areas such as pain and discipline within the medical regime, health and illness, the medical and art gaze and issues of embodiment.