DARUM (Victoria Halper & Kai Krösche) - [EOL]. End of Life. A Virtual Ruinscape
In DARUM’s performance installation [EOL]. End of Life, nominated for the Berlin Theatertreffen as one of 2024’s most remarkable productions, the audience gets to travel into a disused metaverse 1.0 by means of virtual-reality headsets. Writer-directors Victoria Halper and Kai Krösche take us on an intense, immersive journey across a virtual sea of debris that forces us to wonder what traces we will leave once we are gone, and who will determine what to do with our digital legacy in the future.
What do abandoned virtual places feel like? How much life is there in the digital image of a deceased person? Who am ‘I’ in the presence of the absent? Who and what is displaced from the future corporate metaverse? Picking up on themes of their hyperlink installation 404-TOTLINK (www.404-totlink.at) created for the 2021 Impulse Theatre Festival, DARUM takes a look at a possible not-so-distant future using the fairly recent means of virtual reality. In [EOL]. End of Life, the audience assumes the role of an ‘outsourced freelancer’ for the fictional trillion-dollar corporation IRL (Imaginary Reality Landscapes). The participant’s task is to determine which pieces of content should be permitted to exist in tomorrow’s vivid virtual parallel universes – and which should be irretrievably deleted. [EOL]. End of Life confronts the virtual travellers with a multitude of three-dimensional walk-in worlds and a considerable number of human traces; because the 1.0 version of this already collapsing, abandoned ‘metaverse’, while not connected to the online servers, preserves the digital echo of past lives – and with it the question of how we will once be – or want to be – remembered.
[EOL]. End of Life premiered at studio brut in September 2024. It has since been invited to the 62nd Berlin Theatertreffen as one of 2024’s most remarkable productions as well as to the showcase of the 2025 Impulse Theatre Festival as one of the outstanding theatre productions in the German-speaking area created in 2024. Also, the show was listed as one of the ten best theatre productions of 2024 by FALTER magazine, named as one of three theatre highlights of the year in DER STANDARD and nominated for the 2025 nachtkritik.de-Theatertreffen.
Accessibility:
The performance takes place in the rehearsal rooms on the first floor, accessible only via stairs. There is no elevator. An accessible toilet is available on the ground floor.
[EOL]. End of Life is an entirely immersive VR experience, programmed in Unity exclusively for one of the most cutting-edge headsets available: Meta Quest 3. Interaction within the virtual space requires visitors’ own hands only; no controllers are used.
Each visitor is provided with an area of approx. ten square metres for themselves, on which they are free to move around. Movement in virtual reality is like in the real world. Instruments such as teleportation or controller-activated locomotion are not used, significantly reducing the risk of so-called motion sickness.
You will be in the virtual world for about 85 minutes. While there will be isolated moments in which you may sit down (on the floor), the performance is designed as a walk-in installation in the virtual space that will require you to stand or walk often.
Tickets & time slots:
Time slots can be booked in our online shop. Each time slot is for one visitor. Please arrive ten minutes before your booked time slots. There is no late admission. Duration of the performance: approx. 90 minutes. No further discounts are available.
Tickets for the same day are available in our web shop.
Wed. – Fri.
15:00 / 15:10 / 15:20 / 15:30 / 15:40 / 15:50
16:00 / 16:20 / 16:40 / 16:50
17:00 / 17:10 / 17:20 / 17:30 / 17:40
18:30 / 18:40 / 18:50
19:00 / 19:10 / 19:20 / 19:30 / 19:40 / 19:50
Sat. & Sun.
13:00 / 13:10 / 13:20 / 13:30 / 13:40 / 13:50
14:00 / 14:20 / 14:40 / 14:50
15:00 / 15:10 / 15:20 / 15:30 / 15:40
16:30 / 16:40 / 16:50
17:00 / 17:10 / 17:20 / 17:30 / 17:40 / 17:50