The multidisciplinary performance practice of London-based artist Martin O’Brien uses physical endurance, pain, disgust, and sexuality to challenge common representations of illness. Inspired by an unrealized concept of poet and performance artist Bob Flanagan, Dust to Dust is an intergenerational collaborative performance between O’Brien and Flanagan’s partner and performance artist Sheree Rose. Drawing on O’Brien’s month-long residency in Los Angeles working with the couple’s paper...
The multidisciplinary performance practice of London-based artist Martin O’Brien uses physical endurance, pain, disgust, and sexuality to challenge common representations of illness. Inspired by an unrealized concept of poet and performance artist Bob Flanagan, Dust to Dust is an intergenerational collaborative performance between O’Brien and Flanagan’s partner and performance artist Sheree Rose. Drawing on O’Brien’s month-long residency in Los Angeles working with the couple’s papers at ONE Archives, this project builds on Rose’s pioneering artistic legacy with Flanagan who, like O’Brien, suffered from Cystic Fibrosis (CF). Flanagan’s poetry, writings, and performance work powerfully grappled with disease, death, desire, and pleasure, using deft humor and masochism to explore personal kink and life with CF. Dust to Dust marks an act of resistance to and a celebration of sickness while commemorating the seminal work of Rose and Flanagan.
This performance will be followed by a conversation between O’Brien, Rose, and Amelia Jones, Robert A. Day Professor of Art and Design and Vice Dean of Critical Studies at the USC Roski School of Art and Design.
Dust to Dust includes music by David Lucien Matheke, and assistance from Toro Castaño, Sam Emery, Rafa Esparza, Michael MP Griffin, Grace Marie, Dulce Stein, and Albert Vitela.
Support for Dust to Dust is provided by the British Council and Arts Council England through the Artists International Development Fund. Additional support is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
More information at http://one.usc.edu/dust-to-dust/.
Dust to Dust: Martin O’Brien and Sheree Rose
Saturday, February 7, 2015, 7pm
ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives
909 West Adams Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90007
Admission is free.