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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Martin O’Brien, 2023. Photo by zack mennell.

The Last Breath Society

a participatory project about living and dying queerly
2023/24

The Last Breath Society was a creative engagement project led by artist Martin O’Brien. The project explored how performance art can be a way of processing mortality, illness, grief and loss. We invited queer people impacted by these conditions and experiences to join us in this process.

Facilitators Martin O’Brien and Joseph Morgan Schofield (Future Ritual) were joined by guests Anne Bean, emilyn claid, Sam McBean and Shabnam Shabazi.

“Medicine is keeping me alive and it’s amazing, but I have to give full control to the doctors so I can continue living. Illness and its treatments strip you of agency and it feels like art is a place – maybe the only place – where you can regain agency over your body.”

Martin’s practice is concerned with death and dying, with what it means to be born with a life-shortening disease, and with the philosophical implications of living longer than expected. 


Across the autumn and winter we will meet for four weekenders. At each, we will focus on different creative methodologies drawn from Martin’s practice to explore our experiences of mortality and grief. Currently, we are thinking of working through image making, writing, site-responsive and time-based practices.

As a participant, you will be guided through tasks and exercises by Martin and others, hear from artists and thinkers engaged in this work professionally, create and share your own work or creative responses, and have the option to exhibit something made during the process at a closing event.





Photos by Marco Berardi.

Care


That so much of this legacy also carries the mark of trauma reminds us that live art, at it’s best, places itself on the frontline of life itself, where loss and death reveal themselves as the ground from which creativity and love grow.
Peggy Phelan, Live Art in LA

The deeply emotional nature of the topics we aim to explore means that personal and collective risk will be present during the process. While we welcome risk as a necessary condition of being alive, we ask potential participants to read this information fully and carefully consider if this process will be appropriate and beneficial to them at the current moment, and if they can in good faith commit to supporting their own wellbeing and that of the group.

As facilitators, we commit to leading the process with artistic and human compassion, but we cannot commit to offering psychological or other professional modes of care. While we will co-agree practices of accountability and care within the process, ultimately each person’s psychological wellbeing is their own responsibility.

The Last Breath Society should not be understood as a therapeutic process and those receiving therapeutic care should seek the advice of their therapist, doctor or counselor before applying.

The Last Breath Society should be understood as a primarily artistic and creative space, where we will explore what performance art can teach us about living, dying and grieving.

Prior to beginning the sessions, participants will be invited to complete a ‘Braver Spaces’ survey, helping us to understand how best to facilitate access and care in the process. In the first meeting, we will co-agree a set of working practices to support wellbeing. While we hope that everyone is able to stay the course, we understand that people may have to leave the process and this is OK.







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

2023/24

This year long project, led by Martin O’Brien and produced by Future Ritual, explored life and death and the queer space in between. Alongside The Last Breath Society, the project involved: