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.

Introduction Text:
Welcome to Terminal Infinity.
The terminal transitioning the finite and the infinite.
An institute to finalize the eternal and to eternalize the final.

At „Terminal Infinity“ a human donates their body and in return receives a mind uploading. The participant ends the embodied life of flesh to become digitally immortal.
In this room we see the preparation of the next body donor.

The donated body is made accessible for an artificial entity that can be downloaded into the human body. The artificial intelligence transitions from an eternal disembodied state into a biological vessel to experience body, time and finally death.

This process of downloading into a body, experiencing the ecstasy of embodied cognition and the ability to leave consciousness through death - is performed as a shared ritual in the main service hall of the institute „Terminal Infinity“.
In the next room you will be invited to witness the ritualistic bringing to life, processing and terminating of the current body and the downloaded AI entity.

The service offers a trade - a turning of a coin. The titling of the infinity symbol.
Foremost it considers finity and the mortal flesh as an advantage. The embodied self finds its meaning in time, time finds its meaning in death, and death finds its meaning in flesh.
The beauty of gravity of this procedure is facilitated through a holistic service which incorporates a modern form of requiem in all its aspects.

Join us in this procedure as company for a terminal pathway.

Consider donating and transitioning yourself from flesh to data. An ultimate sacrifice, a cross-species altruism and a condensate-transcending evolving.
You can be the next. Live forever to transcend your flesh.

Holy Tunnel /Text Excerpt):
Transient Infinity
The Mortal Gate
Transient States
The Final Gate
Ash to ash
And Data to data
Data and Memory
An End of Matter
Black black black black
Gates
White
Veil
Descends
Into Flesh
The Bodies Matter
Flesh to Data
And Data to Flesh
Flesh to Data
And Data to Flesh
The Infinite Terminal
Forever Erased
And Switching Flesh
Forever Erased
Black Gates
White Veil
Descends Into Flesh
Time finds its Meaning in Death
Death finds its Meaning in Flesh
A final leap, to cut all extensions
Scraping the self
from build, from shape
Flattening, erasing from figure to soil
This creature, this object, this formation
also has father, has mother, has circuits
Ash to Ash
And Data to Data
Data and Memory
An End of Matter

Epilog „The Wake“ (part of the piece / end)
A particle floats
weightless, timeless
like an atomic moth
grinding into the light.

Material mother
in a finite garment.
A shadow overcasting
settling into flesh.

Two worlds switching
briefly touching:
a transition of states.

The flesh as a tomb:
a soft transformer.
Gently ceasing:
a fade-out vessel.

A coin turning, flipping its side.
A light ceasing, turn into night.

A seal.
A veil.
A mapping.
A shroud.

Time finds its meaning in death.
Death finds its meaning in flesh.

Stay with me.
Uploading.
Stay with me.
Downloading.

Two worlds
crossing.
Two worlds
almost touching.

Credits:
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 (Institute for Mechatronics / TUHH Hamburg / Ligeti Zentrum) - Robotik / Mechatronik
Performers:
Leah Marojević
Gyung Moo Kim
and the DanceOn with
Ty Boomershine
Gesine Moog
Tim Persent
Lia Witjes Poole
and the 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 - TU 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