Storytelling, in all its forms, is woven across our collective histories. Myths and legends shape rituals and cultures, handed down through generations as tales of caution, hope and identity. Moving beyond spoken and written stories, AFTERLIFE simulates an allegorical experience of life, death, and reincarnation. It follows a group of familiar characters as they travel through various spiritual and mortal realms, asking questions and seeking the meaning of conscious existence.
ONLY SLIME, the artist duo of Claudia Cox and Tobi Pfeil, blend theatre, opera, digital art, and immersive technology to create fluid, cross-genre works. They see slime as both a symbol and strategy for their practice: elastic, emotional, and radically adaptive. Following a near-death-experience that Claudia had in 2021, ONLY SLIME wanted to capture her resulting surreal feeling of bodily disconnection - one almost too strange to put into words. AFTERLIFE began as a live performance that captured the intensity of this experience through a mix of Greek mythology, internet and gaming culture, and operatic drama.
Across history, many cultures have imagined the worlds that we might travel to or come from - such as the nine circles of hell in Dante's Inferno or the shifting dimensions of the Half-Life video game series. Here, the gallery unfolds as overlapping realms, where the ‘overworld’ and ‘underworld’ coexist. Part neon-gamer bedroom, part retro dungeon-game aesthetic, visitors are faced with the provocation "Know Thyself" emblazoned on the walls. A mini playable version of the AFTERLIFE game acts as an allegory for controlling agency, and it is here that we encounter one of the work’s main characters: the Ghost. A confrontational character, the Ghost guides and challenges us through questions and provocations as it guides us through a surreal maze of abandoned pop-culture symbolism.
Moving through a portal into the ‘earthly world’, we meet Axi and Zi. They live quiet, repetitive lives on a tropical island, until strange dreams—voiced by the Ghost—begin to unsettle them. Their conversations shift from calm routine to deep dissatisfaction as they question the emptiness of their world. Axi and Zi’s desire for something more sends them across different realms, where they encounter new characters who lead them toward their fate. ONLY SLIME has created a new version of the work, which we can interact with. Step into the portal to the realm of Axi and Zi, and play with the motion capture sensors in the room to become part of their story.
As our lives stretch across physical and digital spaces, AFTERLIFE asks what 'real life' actually means. The dreamlike worlds we enter through digital play can continue the long tradition of storytelling and cosmology-making—forms that have shaped, and continue to shape, how we understand our shared reality.