Fading Out of Dead Air

Fading Out of Dead Air (Transmissions for the Necropolis) 

3 hrs durational performance by Martin O’Brien

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.  

Drawing inspiration from hospital radio and stories of ghosts heard through analogue technologies, this 3 hour performance by Martin O’Brien 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.

Martin O’Brien is an artist and zombie. He works across performance, writing and video art. His work uses long durational actions, short speculative texts and 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.

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

Presented as part of A Collective Archive
12–15 June 2025

A Collective Archive is a four-day celebration of artistic practices, shared resistance, and the many communities that have shaped Ugly Duck over the past thirteen years. What began as a temporary project space became a home for interdisciplinary, experimental, and politically engaged work—a space for collaboration, risk, and ideas outside the margins of mainstream culture.

We invite you to join us for this final chapter: a gathering, a gesture of gratitude, and a call to collective imagination.

Programme:
Thursday 12 June – Opening soirée with works and performances by Biogal, Bold Melon Collective and artists supported by Southwark Pride.
Friday 13 June – Performance Night Martin O’Brien presents Fading out of Thin Air ( 3 hrs durational ) 
Saturday 14 June – Archive collage workshop, panel talks, live radio show and The Last Dance – a final party featuring Josh Quinton and Tribe Incorporated.
Sunday 15 June – Closing performances by Chloé Filani, Puer Deorum and Joy Kincaid.

This project is a celebration of what has been possible and what can be done again. A reflection on subversive practices in a gentrified city. Not from a place of mourning, but from a desire to imagine otherwise.