Future Ritual is a practice of gathering, curating and organising. We collaborate with artists to create contemporary expressions of ritual, working to support the emergence of new and more attuned cultures. 

We are based in London (UK).

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 Almanac is a new regular performance platform taking place monthly in London.

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A year-long programme cycle exploring performance in times of fragmentation.
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Martin O’Brien, Overture for the End (An Ashen Place), Whitechapel Gallery, 2023. Photo by Fenia Kotsopoulou.

An Eternity of Nothingness or the (Im)possibility of Living On

a project by Martin O’Brien, 2023/24

Many people who weren’t thinking about their bodies and the possibilities of illness and death are now forced to ... I think my work can offer a space for people to sit with images of death, and not in a morbid way. Those of us who have lived in zombie time know death in a different way, and now is a good time to open up the conversations around mortality through art.


Across 2023, Martin O’Brien was ‘Writer in Residence’ at the Whitechapel Gallery. Martin’s work is continually exploring the politics of illness, death, and the undead. For this residency, Martin worked through writing and performance to consider ideas of immortality. He explored the ways in which writing and actions towards immortality might help to articulate something about death. 

Through his writings and performances during the residency, Martin explored spirits, ghosts, afterlives, undead creatures, cryonic preservation, rebirth, new lives, transformations and other fictional and imagined possibilities for immortality. Over the year, Martin created a collection of works in different mediums: performances, videos, short stories. The residency involved three live events and three published texts. Together they made up a series that playfully ask questions about the potential for immortality, and imagine a future without an eternity of nothingness.

Funders and Support
Commissioned by Whitechapel Gallery. Funded and supported by Arts Council England, the Leverhulme Trust, the Greater London Authority and Queen Mary University of London. Produced by Future Ritual.

Further Info

Press
The Guardian: the ‘zombie’ with cystic fibrosis who turns pain into art

Credits
Lead artist ~ Martin O’Brien
Producer ~ FUTURE RITUAL
Project Coordinator ~ Zack Mennell
Project Assistant ~ Ewan Hindes
PR ~ Abstrakt

Videography ~ Baiba Sprance and Marco Beradi



Martin O’Brien, An Ambulance to the Future (The Second Chance), 2023. Photo by zack mennell.

An Ambulance to the Future (The Second Chance)


Mixing video, live performance action and parables, this performance imagines a world in which immortality is possible. Drawing on stories of immortal people, it paints the picture of life lived over and over again, a life that doesn’t need water or oxygen, a life without the promise of an end point. It is a meditation on endings and new beginnings. With his usual intensity and wit, this work continues O’Brien’s explorations of the politics of death by asking what the idea of immortality can help us understood about being mortal.

The grim reaper stood there, finally I saw him. His skeletal form sparkled in the moonlight and nothing else existed. This was the deal. He reached out and wrapped his cold, bone hand around my skull. I was lost in the darkness of his cape. He drew me near and kissed me. He tasted like death, and I loved it.

performances
Whitechapel Gallery, London, May 2023 (premiere)
Toaster, Copenhagen, Mar 2024
Southbank Centre, London, Sept 2024







Martin O’Brien, Overture for the End (An Ashen Place), Whitechapel Gallery, 2023. Photos by Fenia Kotsopoulou.


Overture For The End (An Ashen Place)


A spectacular exploration of death and immortality, Overture For The End (An Ashen Place) transforms the gallery into a place of decay, part hellscape, part apocalyptic landscape, filled with strange bodies performing deathly actions. The performance imagines repetitive cycles of life and death, an eternity of continuation with a promise of death that never arrives. Taking on the figure of banshee and crone, legendary Los Angeles artist Sheree Rose watches over the actions and intervenes in the cycles.

Bodies crawl through soot covered landscapes. A ghastly figure looms, unearthly sounds emanating from her mouth. A funeral procession for the living marches by, trumpets sounding, and the mourners weep but they don’t know why. A group of skeletal forms sit at a dining table as if awaiting a feast.

performances
Whitechapel Gallery, July 2024 (premiere)





Martin O’Brien, Fading Out of Dead Air (Transmissions for the Necropolis), Whitechapel Gallery, 2023. Photo by Marco Berardi.

Fading Out of Dead Air (Transmissions for the Necropolis)


Drawing inspiration from hospital radio and stories of ghosts heard through analogue technologies, the final instalment of Martin O’Brien’s performance trilogy 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. 

The durational performance-installation is open throughout the day from 11am-9pm.

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 lay 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.  

performances
Whitechapel Gallery, December 2024 (premiere)






expanded programme

Alongside the trilogy of performance works, the project involved two further elements: DISCHARGE, a symposium and performance party, and The Last Breath Society, a creative engagement project.