THE SKY’S THE LIMIT

NACH OBEN KEIN ENDE tells of a fictitious climatic health resort in an undefined future, in which life has given way to a preserving artificiality and the rapidly advancing consumer capitalist practices move up to the highest heights. A cable car system connects the peaks encircling the valley, swinging the aerial spa audience in gondolas from slope to slope, ever further, ever higher. At the top of the mountain, concentrated oxygen is pumped into the lungs to stimulate the lymphatic system: breathe in – breathe out. Eternal life in artificiality is promised with all kinds of cures. Down in the valley, extras in their roles as villagers perform a past life in front of romanticised landscape backdrops. Every day, the scythe or axe is swung for the audience – the memory of a past, supposedly much better time is preserved in repetitive choreographies. Here work is performed with the hands, there the landscape or the body is worked with machines, because nothing can be left standing, everything must be optimised and utilised. Gradually, the mood turns sinister: the longer the stay at the climatic health resort, the more the capitalist structures behind the wellness and self-care façade become visible. The narrative develops into an anti-utopia, at the end of which nobody knows why things are still going upwards.