[EOL]. End of Life

In “[EOL]. End of Life”, Victoria Halper and Kai Krösche prove that a limited space of 9.6 square metres can become an incalculable metaverse. Because as soon as participants have put on their VR-goggles, a fictitious major corporation dispatches them to a digital landscape of ruins to decide which data are to be allowed to continue and which should be irretrievably deleted. Among other data, they come across echoes of bygone existences that have developed a life of their own over time. In their technically, aesthetically and thematically perfectly aligned work, DARUM skilfully blur the limits of perception and confront participants with the question of which traces are left behind by a human life and who will one day determine their own digital heritage.

Statement of the Jury

Virtual reality has arrived in the theatre, even if both are still often wary of each other. This VR-experience by the duo DARUM (Victoria Halper and Kai Krösche) looks at virtual worlds, and more specifically at the remnants of our daily interactions in the web: Memories of ephemera that never fade. How many of these data heaps can the net endure? Do we have any kind of responsibility for them? Could we even – love them? When audience members put on a pair of VR-goggles, they receive an area of 9.6m². The company IRL (Imaginary Reality Landscapes) then asks them to check virtual ruins that have not been accessed for a long time. The task is to decide what should be permanently deleted and what is to be absorbed into the metaverse. But then, the virtual realm takes the examiners hostage, and a deeply moving story unfolds; a story that tests our relationship with digital legacies and sets new standards of virtual storytelling. Is this still theatre or is it theatre yet?

Tojuror Martin Thomas Pesl’s video statement on “[EOL]. End of Life” (in German)

ProgrammeBooklet (pdf, 1 MB)