Victoria Halper & Kai Krösche (DARUM)
Country: Germany
Biography
Director’s Bio – Victoria Halper :
Victoria Halper is a director, video artist, and performer whose work moves between theatre, performance, and expanded media. Trained at the University of Toronto, she relocated to Austria in 2010. Her practice spans performative installation, essay performance, contemporary circus, video art, digital art, VR, and film – exploring forms that merge the poetic with the political and the intimate with the virtual.
In 2018, she received the Austrian Federal Chancellery’s Start Grant for Performing Arts for «Dad Left», an autobiographical multimedia essay on migration and loss. Since then, she has collaborated closely with director Kai Krösche under the label DARUM, which she co-founded. Their works have earned four Nestroy Award nominations, including a win for «Homesick» («Heimweh»).
Their VR debut «[EOL]. End of Life» has garnered international acclaim, presented at Impulse Theater Festival, Festival Politik im Freien Theater, and selected for the 2025 Berliner Theatertreffen. Halper’s debut experimental film «Floating Flies» premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival.
Director’s Bio – Kai Krösche :
Born in Düsseldorf in 1985, Kai Krösche is a director, musician/sound designer, author, and video artist whose work explores the intersections between theater, film, performance, installation, and media art.
He is the co-founder of the Vienna-based performance label DARUM, with which he was nominated four times (2019, 2020, 2023 & 2025) for the Nestroy Theatre Award, and in 2023, together with Victoria Halper, received the Nestroy Special Award for their production «Homesick» («Heimweh»).
Krösche’s projects have been presented at numerous renowned festivals, including the Berliner Theatertreffen, Hofer Filmtage, Rhode Island International Film Festival, Lessingtage Hamburg, Impulse Theater Festival, and die digitale.
In 2025, he and Victoria Halper were honored with the Austrian Outstanding Artist Award for their year-long artistic achievements in the field of the performing arts.
Portfolio & Latest Theatre Performances :
2026
Auflösung (engl. Dissolution) | Virtual Reality / Performative Installation | Coproduction with Brut Vienna coming in April
2025
Pseudorama | Coproduction with Volkstheater Vienna
Link: https://www.volkstheater.at/produktion/2444154/pseudorama/
Alle Lust (engl. All Delight) | Coproduction with Theater am Werk, Vienna
Link: https://www.darum.at/allelust
2024
[EOL]. End of Life | Coproduction with brut Vienna
Developmental Residency at the ZKM
Link: https://www.darum.at/endoflife
*Top 10 Berliner Theatertreffen 2025 and Showcase Selection Impulse Theater Festival 2025.
Invited to the Festivals: Politik im Freien Theater Leipzig, Lessingtage Thalia Theater Hamburg, Digithalia Schauspielhaus Graz.
*Voted “Best Video” by the critics of theater heute
*Nominated for the NESTROY “Special” Category (Austrian Theatre Prize)
*Longlisted for the “Annwn Prize” for best immersive storytelling
2022
Letzter Aufguss (engl. « Final Infusion”) | Coproduction with Schauspiel Leipzig
HEIMWEH (engl. “Homesick”) | Coproduction with WUK Performing Arts
Link: https://www.darum.at/heimweh
*Winner of the NESTROY “Special” Category (Austrian Theatre Prize)
2020
AUSGANG: OFFEN (engl. “Exit: Open”) | Experimental Film
*Nominated for the NESTROY “Special” Category (Austrian Theatre Prize)
*World Premiere at the International Hof Film Festival
2019
Ungebetene Gäste & Was Bleibt? (engl. Uninvited Guests & What Remains?) | Coproduction with WERK X-Petersplatz
*Nominated for the NESTROY “Special” Category (Austrian Theatre Prize)
*Showcase Selection at the Impulse Theater Festival 2020
For the full production history and more info about us, please visit our website: www.darum.at
«[EOL]. End of Life»
Concept of the Performance:
In «[EOL]. End of Life», the audience enters a fictional, decommissioned Metaverse 1.0 – an immersive 3D ruinscape asking what digital traces remain after we are gone, and who decides their fate. What do abandoned worlds feel like? How much life lingers in reconstructions of the dead? Building on «404-TOTLINK» (Impulse Festival 2021), DARUM invites audiences via Meta Quest 3 to act as freelancers for the corporation IRL, tasked with deciding which virtual worlds are saved – and which are erased. Each environment preserves echoes of its creators, confronting us with how we will be remembered. Selected as one of the ten most remarkable productions of 2024, «[EOL]. End of Life» was presented at the Berliner Theatertreffen 2025, the leading theatre festival in the German-speaking world.
“Funded by the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna and the Federal Ministry for Art, Culture, Public Service and Sport.”
“The artistic development of [EOL]. END OF LIFE was supported by a residency at the Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany.”
A coproduction of DARUM and brut wien, featured by Wiener Festwochen as part of the Prospero New Network
Artistic Statement
As DARUM, we make art about the things that keep us awake at night – the hidden and the irreconcilable, the sad and the bad. Our work explores both societal and personal states of exception, and the questions that emerge from them.
What do abandoned virtual spaces feel like? Who am «I» in the presence of the absent? And what will not find a place in the future, corporately owned metaverse?
Set in the not-so-distant future, we created «[EOL]. END OF LIFE» to confront our digital afterlives – the spaces, codes, and traces we leave behind once our bodies are gone. Each audience member enters a decaying virtual world as a freelancer for the fictional multinational corporation IRL (Imaginary Reality Landscapes), deciding which fragments deserve to remain and which should be deleted for ever. «[EOL]» is a meditation on mortality, technology, and responsibility. It reflects on how memory is outsourced, how algorithmic data summons empathy, and how much presence can exist within radical absence.
Trailer
https://vimeo.com/1012490053?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci
A quick look (Teaser)
https://vimeo.com/1010977705?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci
