The House With the Ocean View - an invitation from Marina Abramovic

In May this year I was invited by Marina Abramovic to re-perform her extraordinary and challenging work, The House with the Ocean View which was originally performed by her in 2002 at Sean Kelly Gallery.

There will be three iterations of the 12 day continuous performance as part of the remarkable exhibition, Marina Abramovic at Royal Academy of Art 23rd September - 1st January 2024.

The work will be re-performed by:

Elke Luyten 5th –16th October

Myself, 21st November - 2nd December

Amanda Coogan, 6th –17th December

Look out for updates about my thoughts and preparation for this extraordinary and very special performance on my blog here on my website (first post) and instagram

Amanda Coogan, myself, Marina Abramovic and Elke Luyten at Royal Academy on 19th September 2023
Photograph by Todd Eckert

Opening 13th April, Zagreb: How to Look at Natures? – Art and the capitalocene

Curated by Ivana Filip and Suzana Marjanić, the exhibition How to Look at Natures? – Art and the capitalocene opens at HDLU Hrvatsko Drustvo Likovnih Umjetnika, Zagreb on 13th April.

The group show presents works by: Maša Bajc, Alex Brajković, Nikolina Butorac, Tanja Dabo, Charlotte Dumas, Darko Fritz, Igor Grubić, Nenad Jalšovec, Lisa Jevbratt, Gustafsson & Haapoja, Olga F. Koroleva, Zvjezdana Jembrih, Alen Novoselec, Erez Nevi Pana, Olly & Suzi, Ivana Ožetski, Ana Ratković Sobota, Davor Sanvincenti, Nives Sertić, Pinar Yoldas, Vjeran Vukašinović, Otchuda Say and myself.

My work being presented is Arachnid – Tick Sensing (2021), with Antye Greie-Ripatti (AGF), explores human/tick transspecies encounters. It is an audio work conceived to be listened to by one person via headphone, whilst sitting on a rocking chair.

A review of Arachnid – Tick Sensing written by Yvonne Billmore is here

sKu-mNyé workshop 16th April: Lions

I am teaching another workshop in sKu-mNyé, Dzogchen psycho-physical exercises from the Aro gTér.

Suitable for beginners and those with experience.
Sunday 16th April

10.30 - 13.30

Lions

What is sKu-mNyé?

sKu-mNyé (pronounced koo mnyay). is a cycle of Dzogchen psycho-physical exercises

sKu-mNyé means ‘massage of the energy body’. The ‘energy body’ is called the rTsa rLung system. rTsa rLung is a system unique to the Vajrayana tradition of Tibet. The rTsa rLung system is made up of ‘nerves,’ called rTsa, and the currents of energy they carry, called rLung.

During this workshop we will look at exercises from the Lions section, from the first 35 of 111 exercises

These range from comparatively gentle and accessible exercises to ones that are more challenging.

I will introduce a combination of these, and we will look at ways of breaking up the harder ones and how to work towards accomplishing them.

The active exercise part of sKu-mNyé is always practiced with a prone medication posture, alternating active movements with phases of medication. I will give some explanation of this so that you have the beginnings of a practice you can explore at home.

Donations are requested to cover studio rent, suggested minimum €10

How to book:

For more information and to register, contact Tsül'dzin: kira_oreilly@hotmail.com

For more about sKu-mNyé read:

'Primal Energy Exercises of Tibetan Dzogchen', an interview with Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen

The lion painting is by Naljorma Thrin-lé Chatral, one of the Aro gTér Lineage Thangka painters.

Strange Duets - with Rachel Zerihan

Rachel Zerihan’s bench marking book The Cultural Politics of One-to-One Performance, Strange Duets was published by Palgrave McMillan in late 2022.

It’s a great many years ago now that Rachel first approached me to interview me about my work with her enquiringly gentle persistence. Insightful and canny, her writing and scholarly companionship has always added valuable dimensions to the reading of my work. Something I do not say lightly, or, for that matter frequently about writing on my work . I am delighted that as well as finding fruition in journals, her writing is finally presented in this publication.

This monograph is the first study to critically examine works of performance made for an audience of one. Despite being a prolific feature of the performance scene since the turn of the millennium, critical writing about this area of contemporary practice remains scarce. This book proposes a genealogy of the curious relationship between solo performer and lone spectator through lineages in the histories of live art, visual art and theatre practices. Drawing on one-to-one performances by artists including Marilyn Arsem, Oreet Ashery, Franko B, Rosana Cade, Jess Dobkin, Karen Finley, David Hoyle, Adrian Howells, Kira O’Reilly, Barbara T Smith and Julie Tolentino, Rachel Zerihan produces research that is both affective and critical. This performance analysis proposes four frameworks through which to examine the significance and challenge of this work: cathartic, social, explicit and economic. One-to-one performance is proposed as a rich portal for examining the cultural politics of contemporary society. The book will appeal to students and scholars from performance studies, theatre, visual art and cultural studies.

Palgrave Macmillan London 2022

Interview: On Eco Ethics and the Inherent Uncertainty of the Future.

Last autumn Liucija Dervinytė interviewed me during a visit to Alt Lab, SODAS 2123 in Vilnius, where I as invited to give a workshop on making winogradsky columns called, Making the Invisible World of Microorganisms Visible

The interview, titled: On Eco Ethics and the Inherent Uncertainty of the Future. An Interview with the Artist Kira O'Reilly is here.

During the weekend we made a winogradsky columns tutorial which is here.

‘Winogradsky Column Workshop – Making the Invisible World Of Microorganisms Visible’ with Kira O’Reilly at SODAS 2123. Photo: Gerda Krutaja

Metabolic Arts Gathering announcement

I was thrilled today to see the announcement of the Metabolic Arts Gathering go live today, an initiative curated by Hannah Star Rogers and Adam Bencard of which I am one of the selected artists. The rest of the group includes Kathy High and Hege Tapio, artists I have known from the filed of bioart for some time, and also Baum & Leahy, Cooking Sections and Adam Dickinson - information and links on them all in the Metabolic Arts Gathering page. It’s a great line up of people with whom I am looking forward to spending time this year at the remarkable Medical Museion, Copenhagen.

#SaveSymbioticA - how you can help

As you no doubt know, The University of Western Australia has started a process to shut SymbioticA down, SymbioticA has until the end of October to make a case as to why it should continue. 



Kathy High, Jennifer Willet and myself, all former residents at SymbioticA began a petition and social media campaign to #SaveSymbioticA and to convince UWA to continue their support. 

We need to keep SymbioticA and its manifold impact in the publica gaze, so we are turning to you for your help. 



We are asking former residents, students, colleagues and associates to consider posting on any social media channels about their SymbioticA related projects as a way to demonstrate the extent and impact of its influence, what it has facilitated and enabled, and continued its relevance. A love letter to SymbioticA perhaps.

Any other projects, associations, outcomes  that you feel are as a consequence of your working relationships to SymbioticA are also welcome, be it your lab, a conference, a workshop etc. It can be direct, it can be tangential.



Use the hashtag #SaveSymbioticA

Tag @symbioticA 



We’re trying to demonstrate the benefits for UWA to continue its relations with its  symbiont - SymbioticA

If you have not done so already, send letters of support by 28th October

Sign our petition https://www.change.org/SaveSymbioticA

Spread the word. 



THANK YOU for all of your help, at any volume in any capacity, it ALL helps

Read SymbioticA’s latest statement here

The Cosmic Dance, by Stephen Ellcock

It arrived, ‘image alchemist’ Stephen Ellcock’s extraordinarily rich Thames & Hudson publication, The Cosmic Dance, A Visual Journey from Microcosm to Macrocosm, ‘finding patterns and pathways in a chaotic universe’. Read more here.

Work in forthcoming book Cosmic Dancer by Stephen Ellcock

A few months ago I was kindly approached by Stephen Ellcock for one of the photographs of a series of copper salt floor drawings made in 2015, to be included in his next book, The Cosmic Dance A Visual Journey from Microcosm to Macrocosm, Thames & Hudson, September 2023.

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Untitled salt copper drawing , 2015

Residency in Vilnius, Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association at SODAS 2123

For the duration of February 2022 I am in Vilnius, hosted at SODAS 2123 by the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association.

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I am working on some small drawings and other experiments, all loosely connected to my Menopausal Gym project. One of the really valuable aspects is occasionally meeting other artists and makers here in SODAS and Vilnius and simply being in this beautiful city.

Videos added to archive videos of performance works from early 2000s

Documentation of the following performances have been added to vimeo, you can access them here.

Close/d, 2000, Trace

Wet Cup, 2001, Kannonhalle

Succour, 2002, Break 2.1, Ljubljana

Archive video material of early performance works now online

An opportune moment of delving into a storage box, and it’s contents of hard drives made for a discovery of edited video footage of some of my earliest performance works, documentation that I had forgotten I had. Some years ago, prior to moving to Helsinki I digitised edited footage from VHS. I have put four of these works on my vimeo channel, and will follow with more.

The works are:
Recollections, 1998, in collaboration with Bryony Watson
Bad Humours /Affected, 1998
13, 1999, in collaboration with Irina Padva,
Work in progress for Unknowing, 1999

I’ve long resisted putting this work online when requested. I will write about them more but for the time being short commentaries can be read on them and they can be viewed on my vimeo profile

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I versus Us versus I, a review of TICK ACTs by Yvonne Billmore in No Niin Magazine

Helsinki based curator Yvonne Billmore has written a review of her experience of TICK ACTs, the small two day exhibition of works by Laura Beloff and I, with Antye Greie, shown in SOLU Space, the project space of the Bioart Society here in Helsinki.

Yvonne’s review stages her thinking with the art works as companions to her own forming and shaping as audience and active co-conspirator. No Niin Magazine ‘an independent online monthly magazine at the cusp of art, criticality and love’, has hit the ground with a passion and a fury seem an apt platform for this writing.

Having ones work written about valuable, facilitating all kinds of subsequent audience to the initial showing and presentation, of course it is through a lens - that of the writer, editors and platform which further shape and influence these mediated receptions. Thus one sees at least at least partially how the work enters into dialogues through publishing. TICK ACTs, presented in the spring in Helsinki was particularly poorly attended, perhaps the influence of the pandemic associated caution or maybe the disgust attendant with the subject matter of the punkki - ‘the unloved other’ imbued with dread and fears of the possibility of pathogenic infection that accompany its increasing ubiquity. Therefore I am especially grateful for the efforts of both the author and No Niin in featuring our work.

TICK ACT at Ectopia, Lisbon, 17 - 30th June, 2021

Finally, works from TICK ACT have been included in the Biofriction exhibition at Ectopia, Lisbon, including our TICK TALKs and Laura Beloffs Tick Terrarium.

From the Facebook event page:

The exhibition BIOFRICTION, hosted by Marta de Menezes and curated by the Biofriction partners, opens in a new cultural space in Lisbon, on the 16th of June, at 6pm.

It can be visited between the 17th and 30th of June, at Ectopia – Rua José Sobral Cid, N.16, in Lisbon, between 10am and 3pm on Mondays and Wednesdays and in July by appointment (contact number: 919193108).

The exhibition is the culmination of a collaborative project supported by Creative Europe that involved institutions in four countries. This project explored transdisciplinary artistic practices involving themes related to marginalization and exclusion. The title refers to a point in a surface of friction between biology, biotechnology, fiction and art. In this bio-friction, the emancipatory potential of biotechnology through artistic practices is explored with special attention. The artworks include a variety of biomaterials and a marked role of the artist-activist. These projects were mostly developed during artistic residencies in the different participating countries, under conditions influenced by contingency measures against Covid-19.

The artworks on display are especially diverse: Joel Ong (Canada), during his residence in Portugal, created a project where he investigated the cloud microbiome and its own DNA, in a work that crosses climate change and biotechnology; Simona Deaconescu ( Romenia) and Vanessa Goodman (Canada) created an artwork that explores the movement and the relationship of our body with the bacteria that reside in us; Mayra Gomez (México) has a work centered on botany and social activism; Adriana Knouf (United States of America) reflects on feminism and estrogen as an essential hormone of women; Laura Beloff (Finland) and Kira O’Reilly (Ireland) had a series of conversations with different experts, concerning ticks as vectors of multiple pathogens; Christina Gruber (Austria) seeks to transform common field sampling practices trough bioacoustics and sound recordings; Vanesa Lorenzo (Switzerland) conceived biocompatible prosthesis, which challenge the concept of ornament, symbiose, gender and species; Kinlab (Italy) perceived the women’s body around three stage of life: adolescence, fertility and menopause; and also the four Braiding Friction work groups that created diverse content about curatorial challenges during the times of the pandemic.

The Biofriction exhibition is hosted by Marta de Menezes and curated by the Biofriction partners, presented by Cultivamos Cultura in partnership with the other European Biofriction network members (Hangar, Kapelica and Solu/Bas).

Biofriction residency at Cultivamos Cultura

Finally after much pandemic caused postponement and the careful, thoughtful support of the host organisation Cultivamos Cultura I have begun a month long residency as part of Biofriction,

Biofriction is a research project with the goal of generating and facilitating spaces for exchange where artists, curators, theoreticians and different social collectives, such as activists and educational projects, can collaborate in transdisciplinary experimental proposals that offer practical alternatives to existing problems in contemporary Europe, such as the rise of essentialist discourses that launch not only a worrying discourse but also policies of marginalisation and exclusion.

My research project is called Menopause batteries and endocrine piracy I’ll blog about my progress and processes and post on Instagram @untitledbodies . Suffice to say it has begun wonderfully in the company of fellow Biofriction artist Christiana Gruber and the company of both Adam Zaretsky and Dalila Honorato who are here in Sao Luis before the annual bioart summer school begins in a couple of weeks. Both Adam and Dalila’s scholarly and artistic practices exceed any single website, look them up to get a sense of the breadth of their respective practices and activities from multiple sources.

Cultivamos Cultura is the vision and long term residency project initiated by artist, curator, mover and shaker Marta de Menezes. Check out the ‘who we are’ including Claudia Figueiredo whose producer skills and tenacity is so critical to the administration and enabling of all of our activities.

Needless to say great care is being taken in respect to how we convene and conduct both our practices and our living arrangements during covid 19 times, both for ourselves and the local Alentejo community and context into which we find ourselves.

I have enormous affection and gratitude for being a multiple return visitor to Cultivamos Cultura. Already it’s ambient charms and the vital rigour of daily conversation and friendly, encouraging exchange is making this a remarkable experience.

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The barn bioart laboratory created by Marta de Menzes at Cultivamos Cultura

New video work in Martin O'Brien's The Last Breath Society (Coughing Coffin)

This spring it was such a pleasure to be make a new video, Untitled (aria) for Martin O’Brien’s forthcoming The Last Breath Society (Coughing Coffin), ICA, London.

The Last Breath Society (Coughing Coffin) is a living installation and exhibition, featuring daily durational performances by Martin O’Brien and a series of 10 commissioned video works by Franko B, Ansuman Biswas, Rocio Boliver, Noëmi Lakmaier, Lechedevirgen Trimegisto, Joseph Morgan Schofield, Kira O’Reilly, Sheree Rose, Shabnam Shabazi, and Nicholas Tee.

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Martin O’Brien

Viewing between 24th July and 1st August, bookable via the iCA website.

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Untitled (aria), video still

I will write more about Untitled (aria) , it’s processes and acknowledgements in a forthcoming blog post soon.

Arachnid - Tick Sensing, TICK ACTs for Biofriction

Arachnid - Tick sensing was inspired by the uncanny sonic textures developed by Antye Greie (AGF) who edited and mastered the TICK TALKs podcasts, it was inspired by her sound work I vs us, Kyla Schuller’s essay ‘The Microbial Self: Sensation and Sympoiesis', and other readings.

This work was made as part of TICK ACTs, SOLU, Helsinki June 2021
. TICK ACTs presented contemplations and ideas from a collaboration between artists Laura Beloff and Kira O’Reilly on ticks, tick-borne pathogens and their environments. 
The series of four podcasts, TICK TALKs are available to listen to via the Bioart Society’s Soundcloud page.

Using a specially composed text and sound, alienlike sensational subjectivities of human/tick transspecies encounters are explored, as inseparable from their environment-ing worlds and the ticks microbial cargos. Cross-kingdom relations are conducted via tick sensing of molecular, chemical phrases by which we betray our presence, through secreted volatile signatures.

Text written and read by Kira O'Reilly

Sound and compositional elements by Antye Greie (AGF)

Best listened to with headphones

TICK ACTs and TICK TALKs are part of Biofriction, a European collaboration project committed to supporting bioart and biohacking practices. Biofriction project is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

Enormous thanks to all at SOLU and AGF

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Photo credit Mari Kaakola

TICK TALKs

TICK TALKs is a short series of conversations between Laura Beloff and I with researchers in ticks and their pathogens in the sciences and humanities.

Hosted and produced by the Bioart Society, and supported by Biofriction, through these conversations we archive and reflect on our work in Tick Act during 2019, our current thoughts and possibly where we might go next in terms of our development of the project.

Juror for ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art 2020

Along with Joāo Laia and Fiona Winning I am on the jury for this years ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art. It’s a particularly interesting year given the impact of the pandemic on travel and access to experiencing live art, ANTI Festival have brought their considerable acumen to bear on this facilitating 2nd edition of Shortlist LIVE! and the nominees’ performances which will be presented through a mix of live, digital and remote showings during the festival taking place in Kuopio, Finland.

My relationship with ANTI Contemporary Art Festival began in 2003 and it is an honour to return in this capacity as chair of the jury for this amazing prize, and the only one like it in the world.

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Örö Residency this October 2020

I am here on the beautiful island of Örö which is located in the outer reaches of the Turku archipelago for for the duration of October that is organised and hosted by Öres.
It is a remarkable place, full of military remnants from the past 100 years since it’s establishment as an outpost by Russia, and now the site of the careful conservation of it’s unique flora and fauna under the auspices of Metsulahitus.
During my sojourn here I am going to be happily engaged in several concurrent projects including responding to the very locale itself and it’s the blustery autumn weather conditions. I shall be discussing these in my blog.
Thank you to Öres for this wonderful opportunity and to all on the island of Öro.

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Moments from the Öres residency house