EOL. End of Life, DARUM (Victoria Halper & Krösche)

What is it like to experience abandoned virtual worlds? What remains of a person when they exist only as a digital reconstruction? And who are you yourself when you can only observe from the perspective of the absent? Building on the hyperlink installation 404-TOTLINK (Impulse Theatre Festival, Germany, 2021), [EOL]. End of Life allows the audience to step into a not-so-distant future via a Meta Quest 3 virtual reality headset. Participants take on the role of ‘outsourced freelancers’ for the fictional billion-dollar company IRL (Imaginary Reality Landscapes). Commissioned by that company, they decide which abandoned worlds may continue to exist in the virtual utopias of tomorrow’s metaverse and which will be permanently erased.