A Post-Human Requiem
120'
2025
Composed for members of the Berlin Philharmonic and Karajan Academy
Premiered 23.2.2025 Radialsystem Berlin

Video:



Abstract:
TERMINAL INFINITY is a temple-like experimental site that offers the trade between mortal and immortal life. It allows a human to donate their body in order transition to an immortal infinite digital form. This body is in turn given to a disembodied AI to then become a body and ultimately die. This cooperation offers the crossing between the terminal and the infinite. In the site different rituals of embodying the finite through death can be played out. The spiritual drones and accompanying orchestra create a requiem of the future, which advocates the benefits of an embodied and finite life.

Program Notes:
The audience encounters the premises of an institute called “TERMINAL INFINITY” situated in the near future. It combines characteristics of a temple-like structure and a scientific lab. This institute offers a service of body donation, in which humans can offer their body after death to be used in a digitized embodiment procedure. Science has developed a technique that integrates a microcontroller into the human brain and allows a complete embodied control of the body. Like this a computer program uses the contributed body as a vessel. Through this procedure an artificial consciousness (i.e. technically developed disembodied algorithms) is granted the ultimate present of a body. An eternally running, bodiless and immortal algorithm might enjoy these characteristics as desirable virtues.
Research finds that the grounding in temporality and embodiment constitutes main fundamentals for a rich life grounded in the present. The present only exists though death. The mind only through the body. “TERMINAL INFINITY” enables the ultimate form of an extra-interspecies sacrifice: Giving your body to another life form.
Humans donating their body for this embodiment in return are offered an upload to be made digital and eternal. This institute offers a decision that can never be made without regret or ambivalence. It highlights the importance and advantages of the body just as much as it underlines its shortcomings and limitations.
The act of the donation has several connotations ranging from a kind, empathetic act of cross-species generosity to a form of surrendering and submission to a technological entity. Donating the body to another entity is the perfect and complete sacrifice. This view does not only originate in a either scientific or pseudo-religious backing but is also informed by the fact that even today our bodily presence increasingly is the real-world representation by algorithmic drives and forces. Already now reality and thew body are the backend of the digital.
Current state in cognitive sciences and artificial intelligence research suggests that intelligence, cognition and emotional states are highly integrated and accomplished through an embodied representation. The body is more than a vessel: It is a vital component in knowledge and identity construction and inseparably connected to what a perceived human entity is. The body is not a storage unit – but a processor device. This wetware computing transcends digital binary computation and offers a different level of being. Being-in-the-world and self-perception.
The chapters of the staged performance in the main room go through symbolic steps of birth, being in the world, extended embodiment and death. It creates a fast-forward replica of what it means to be thrown into the world as an organic embodied lifeform – going from learning to use a body, through engaging into the existential and excessive nature of it and finally parting together with it from life. The setting hence allows for a finite existence and through that the experience of temporality. Parallel this setting evokes the possibility of information decay, exhaustion and corporal transformation. Knowledge and data is washed out, processed and enhanced through the representation and calculation of the wetware carbon-based bodies.




Team / Credits:

Artistic Team:
Alexander Schubert - Artistic Direction, Concept, Direction and Composition
Colette Sadler - Choreography, Concept and Piece Development
Dominic Huber - Scenography
Diego Muhr - Light Design
Felina Levits - Costumes
Candid Rütter - Video
Ludmilla Mercier - Direction Assistance
Oscar Corpo - Engraving, Instrumentation
Kyrillos Sameh Samy Adeeb, Mohammad Sadeghi Aval Shahr - Robotics / Mechatronics

Performers:
Leah Marojević
Gyung Moo Kim

Dance On Ensemble:
Ty Boomershine
Gesine Moog
Tim Persent
Lia Witjes Poole

Jugendtanzcompany Sasha Waltz & Guests:
Noomi Aldinger
Toni Lehnert
Leah Soltau
Nika Brovot
Jonathan Walker

In collaboration with:
Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung
Dance On / Bureau Ritter
Jugendtanzcompany von Sasha Waltz & Guests
Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg
Institut für Mechatronik im Maschinenbau - TUHH Hamburg / Ligeti Zentrum

Photos:

(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold
(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold
(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold
(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold
(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold	(c)Stephan Rabold
(c)Stephan Rabold