In late 2018 O’Keefe joined the Chicago based collective known as the Midwives. The Midwife Circle is a network of peer support, advocacy, and accountability. Each individual in the network commits to serving as both a midwife and an artist for a nine month term. The goal in these relationships is to create space for seeds of artistic projects to grow, change, and deepen. This process is guided by a philosophy of generosity, curiosity, and making the artist the authority in the room.

During her nine month residency as artist and Midwife, O’Keefe is exploring a subject that has always fascinated her and a story that has been at the tips of her fingers for a long time. Space travel is a subject that O’Keefe has explored in the past, yet Simulation attempts to explore the psychological effects of a space mission that never leaves the Earth.Simulation: Monica and Phil have the chance of a lifetime; the opportunity to do something really noble for all of human-kind and they’re honored to do it – sort of. As respectable biologists and engineers, they find themselves part of a 520 day simulation to study many of the challenges and effects on humans that would arise on the long journey to Mars. Though they are isolated to a small mock-up of a space station they carry out their days doing research projects and attempting to keep their minds sharp. While on the outside (a.k.a down on Earth) Monica’s mother Birdie and Phil’s wife Heidi start meeting in secret outside of the allowed family visits in search of their own comforts. Based upon the Mars 500 mission experiments from 2007-2011, Monica and Phil find themselves not only in an experiment in food rationing, living in tight living quarters, or lack of proper exercise, but also dealing with the pressure of waiting and watching for the inevitable psychological side-effects to set in.