Martin O’Brien; Difficult Viewing
{and an attempt at explaining why we feel like we do by a complete amateur.}
There’s an inherent fear for an audience member when watching difficult work; The Fear of Isolation. Often in work like this the audience aren’t allowed to sit silently in the comfort of the darkness but instead must stand in the light watching the performance, vulnerable to it.
In Martin O’Briens work we are invited to watch his body come under harm, both by his hands and someone else’s. In this particular piece we watched an older woman first stretch his skin and then attach thick, black pegs to his chest, pulling the skin taught and pinching it into redness. This very imaginable pain although cringe producing is watchable and it may be that, for a moment we can imagine the pain and this empowers us, we can watch it. Martin has yet to over step our known experiences as an audience member and with this is a form of comfort.
What happens then, when we do step over this line?
The point where it first leaves the imaginable is when he has hypodermic needles pushed through his penis and I doubt that it is merely my status as a woman that stops me from imagining that pain. This makes us want to respond, to avert our gaze, speak out, something and usually we can’t, we are trapped by the courtesy of performance. We watch as Martin is finally cut free from his Sarcophagi and he now moves around the space, penis still pinned to a board as the performance continues. It is awkward and pained and funnily enough in particular moments the audience laugh, in fact Martin laughs with them and suddenly we are back to an understanding, to something we know, something more human. I think this is where I find my own thoughts on this performance challenging, I almost dehumanised it, dehumanised him because I found some of it difficult to watch.
Some elements I found entrancing, like his relationship with pain and pleasure in moments where the pain was fetishized. The woman spanking Martin with a leather paddle, on its own, within this performance was interesting as I didn’t fully understand this tonal change but this was layered the pain of him having his hands hooked and stapled to a table, he was trapped. Now I have a personal fear of staple guns, inexplicable yet real, and for me the hook moment was the hardest to bear.
This maelstrom of painful acts, in person, must have been difficult to upkeep the theatre etiquette through and thankfully I did not have to.
I got to watch a recording of this piece, in the comfort of FADS, with a group of fellow students and we had no such etiquette to upkeep. Jokes were made throughout out, quips, likely, at the cost of the piece were made but there was also an open display of discomfort and even fright. There was yelling, verging on screaming at some points. Our emotoions were allowed to run free, our reactions came unbidden and we created our own little group therapy to help us through the piece. We may not have had the comfort of sitting in the dark, but we had the comfort of freedom to communicate. The interesting thing, to make jokes of something you have to pay attention, to watch. I felt comfortable enough to watch some of the most challenging points of this piece because I felt supported, I knew I could laugh to dispel tension and make jokes out of my own discomfort.
This piece did make me think, I’ve thought back to it many times since watching it because I find it difficult to verbalise all my feelings, I have attempted here to create the logic of how these feelings may have came about, but what were they? I know I was uncomfortable, grossed out but I also know that I enjoyed myself because I laughed and paid close attention to the piece. I think Martin O’Brien’s work is brave. I don’t want to say I understand it, I think everyone understands everything in their own way, for them but what I do think of this piece is that seeing someone take charge of their pain, something that for them is forced upon them through illness, is somewhat empowering. Martin is taking charge of pain by inflicting it on his own terms and although difficult to watch I can take the positive that for Martin this must be truly important and that through performance he can help himself and give others insight into illness and the endurance it takes to keep living through it.
