DARUM (Victoria Halper & Kai Krösche)
[EOL]. End of Life
Eine virtuelle Ruinenlandschaft
(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.
DARUM (Victoria Halper & Kai Krösche) makes performances, installations, films, sound, video and media art. Deliberately blurring the lines between fact and fiction, DARUM creates pieces that try to direct audiences’ focus on the unappeased and the contradictory associated with exceptional states and phenomena in our society. DARUM’s first performance in Vienna, Ungebetene Gäste (2019), was invited to the 2020 Impulse Theater Festival and nominated for a NESTROY special award. The duo’s performance installation Ausgang: Offen (2020), turned into a film due to COVID restrictions, was nominated for a NESTROY special COVID award, and its third performance production in Vienna, Heimweh (2022), won DARUM the 2023 NESTROY special award. DARUM’s film and media art projects have been presented in Germany (Hofer Filmtage; die digitale, Düsseldorf), Austria (Diagonale, Graz) and the United States (Seattle International Film Festival, Brooklyn Film Festival), among other places. www.darum.at
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.
Press quotes
‘With [EOL]. End of Life, Victoria Halper, Kai Krösche and brut Wien have created a touching and thought-provoking VR story about analogue volatility and the digital continuation of a human life. It was rightly invited to the Theatertreffen. May it have a long, digital existence!’
Elena Philipp (Berliner Morgenpost)
‘A good one and a half hours later, still slightly confused, […] one stumbles out into real life – moved, delighted, rattled and one’s head full of thoughts. It’s great that virtual theatre is able to achieve something like this.’
Fabian Wallmeier (rbb24.de)
‘A perfect fusion of form and content.’
Natasha Tripney (The Stage)
‘The most radical experiment with form, systematically isolated from any kind of outside world, is mastered by Victoria Halper and Kai Krösche, who show their VR installation [EOL]. End of Life. This piece is so much more than just a continuation of gaming experiences and their AI aesthetic in a theatre context.’
Peter Laudenbach (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
‘Both technologically and dramaturgically exquisite, [EOL]. End of Life sets new standards in a laborious genre. […] This touchi’g story that cleverly […] tests our relationship with digital heritage, is a clear must-see.’
Martin Thomas Pesl (FALTER)
Credits
Directing & story Victoria Halper & Kai Krösche (DARUM) 3D architecture & design (Vitual reality) Mark Surges Music Arthur Fussy Design (live performance) Matthias Krische Character design & animation, costume design, photogrammetry scanning, motion capturing & videos Victoria Halper 3D object animation Kai Krösche, Mark Surges Creative coding, motion capturing, lighting design & additional sound design Kai Krösche School drawings Alexander Tingrui Wülferth (at the age of 4) Testing & feedback David Rosenberg, Matthias Krische, Matthias Seier, Flori Gugger, Arthur Fussy, Armin Kirchner and many more
Featuring Victoria Halper, Kai Krösche, James Stanson
Thanks to interviewees Götz Dipper, Bernd Lintermann, Tina Lorenz, Felix Mitterberger, Dorcas Müller, Morgane Stricot (Centre of Art and Media Karlsruhe) and Susanna Neueder MSc. (Psyducated).
Funded by the City of Vienna’s Department of Cultural Affairs (MA7) and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Housing, Art, Culture, Media and Sport.
The artistic conception of [EOL]. End of Life was supported by a scholarship from the Centre of Art and Media Karlsruhe.
Dates & Tickets
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
November 2025
€22 / €18 * Various time slots 15:00 - 19:50
€22 / €18 * Various time slots 13:00 - 17:50
€22 / €18 * Various time slots 13:00 - 17:50
€22 / €18 * Various time slots 15:00 - 19:50
€22 / €18 * Various time slots 15:00 - 19:50
€22 / €18 * Various time slots 15:00 - 19:50
€22 / €18 * Various time slots 15:00 - 19:50
€22 / €18 * Various time slots 15:00 - 19:50
€22 / €18 * Various time slots 15:00 - 19:50
€22 / €18 * Various time slots 13:00 - 17:50
brut nordwest
Nordwestbahnstraße 8-10, 1200 Vienna
accessible
Info
Content notes
The performance addresses death, severe illness, natural disasters and suicide. Some scenes may make attendants feel cramped or claustrophobic due to their immersive nature. Some scenes use flaring and flashing light as well as loud sound and music. Recommended from the age of 18 years.
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