Claudia Cox and Tobi Pfeil founded ONLY SLIME, a shapeshifting artist duo based in Oslo, in 2021. Across their work, they fuse theatre, opera, digital art, and immersive technology to create high-impact, genre-fluid performances and installations.

Following a near-death experience Claudia had in 2021, ONLY SLIME sought to capture the resulting surreal sense of bodily disconnection, which led to the production of AFTERLIFE: a live performance that channelled the intensity of this experience through a fusion of Greek mythology, internet and gaming culture, and operatic drama. 

Their current exhibition at FACT is an ambitious reimagining of AFTERLIFE and the first time the work has been presented as an explorable, interactive installation. Claudia and Tobi invite you to step into their gamified worlds using motion-capture technology to animate the characters, the same way they do during their performances!

With a bold signature aesthetic shaped by game engines and electronica, and influenced by iconic videogames such as Deus Ex and Half-Life, we asked ONLY SLIME to share recommendations — from music and films to books and games — that have helped build their reference-rich universes and immersive hybrid worlds.

Watch 

Can you recommend films that have influenced AFTERLIFE and your wider practice?

• Dead Poets Society (1989)
• Good Will Hunting (1997)
• A Gorilla Story: Told By David Attenborough (2026)
• Inland Empire (2006)
• Melancholia (2011)

TOBI: We love all David Lynch films! They feel like stories from the same incredible world, and the way they combine into some kind of coherent cosmos has been hugely influential to our artistic thinking. Although often underrated, Inland Empire is one of our favourites. Recently, we watched A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough. For me, the animal world puts everything into perspective because it reminds us of all the wonderful experiences our world offers. AFTERLIFE is very much about that sense of wonder — about what lies beyond being human.

CLAUDIA: Films that make me cry and give me the urge to do something drastic with my life are usually the ones that inspire me most. Recently, I rewatched Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, and Melancholia, and they all hit a nerve. Each of these films captures a different stage of the same feeling: the moment something cracks open and a strange calmness of acceptance appears. Not everything can be controlled, but you can still wake up today. I love arcs like this. I think I needed stories like these during my recovery from my acrobatics accident in 2021. As humans, we all need stories to help us grow when we feel stuck. Life is messy and beautiful, and I especially love films that wake me up. I’m forever searching for experiences like that because they bring so much inspiration and impact how I create.

Listen

As AFTERLIFE originated as a live performance, and music is a big part of your practice, could you share some essential listening?

• Abbey Road and Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles
• The Ring of the Nibelung by Richard Wagner
• Silence

TOBI: To this day, I never get tired of The Beatles. It was the first music that hooked me when I was 10, and I still love it to bits. Abbey Road and Magical Mystery Tour are my favourites. It was special for me to come to Liverpool to produce this installation at FACT. I felt a deep and strange connection with the city and the people living here, sort of extending all the way back from my childhood, where I would listen to The Beatles on repeat all day, every day.

CLAUDIA: Collectively, we listen to a lot of things: random new pop albums, the big classics through all genres and times. Recently, we’ve been listening to German composer Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung on repeat at home. It makes our boring everyday lives of laundry and emails feel epic! Essential listening for me is sometimes silence. Other than Wagner, lately I have been needing a lot of silence. We often go for walks to the graveyard, it is beside a forest, and all you can hear is the birds and the trees in the wind. It’s perfect.

Read

Are there any texts, blogs, or books you’d recommend that would help us to dive further into the worlds you create?

• Haruki Murakami 
• Xia Jia
• Novacene: The Coming Age Of Hyperintelligence by James Lovelock 
• Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life As Play and Possibility by James Carse
• The Lord of The Rings Trilogy by J.R.R Tolkien
• Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales by The Brothers Grimm

TOBI: For me, fiction is where it’s at. I love everything by Haruki Murakami, it feels like a magical parallel universe is bleeding into our world through his books. I recently read a short story that I really loved called Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse by science fiction and fantasy writer Xia Jia. Short stories are so cool, and I’ve always loved the format. Anything that expands our imagination and takes you into strange, alternative worlds fascinates me. For the theoretically inclined, AFTERLIFE was written while reading Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence by James Lovelock and Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse. They are both bold and incredible thought experiments.

CLAUDIA: I love fantasy. Part of me wishes it were possible to live inside Álfheimr, a.k.a. the Land of the Elves from Norse Mythology. I’m a huge Lord of the Rings fan, and completely obsessed with dark fairy tales, particularly the original Grimms' Fairy Tales. They’re grotesque, but filled with so much wonder. 

Play

Can you highlight videogames that have inspired AFTERLIFE and share any references we can look out for while exploring the installation?

• Deus Ex (2000)
• Eclipsium (2025)
• Eternal Afternoon (2026)
• Half-Life (1998)
• Prey (2017)
• System Shock 2 (1999)

CLAUDIA: We really enjoy playing narrative games that tell stories through their otherworldly environments and characters. Early games from the 2000s have brilliantly weird and funny character interactions, a result of the limitations in animation, timing and editing, which we really admire. We definitely tried to exploit these traits when writing AFTERLIFE!

TOBI: A good example of this is the first Deus Ex game, released in 2000, which is an incredible piece of art! It explores big ideas about society, politics and class through quirky, almost comical character interactions. We borrowed an asset, a pack of ‘Soy Food’, from this game, which can be found on the ground in our mini-game. Also, in Deus Ex, you can beat most levels using multiple strategies. If you find the right quirk in the game, you can sometimes skip a whole level just by jumping a wall. Our mini-game at FACT also has a way to complete the game that skips the entire main mission — you’ll have to be disobedient and explore to find it!

CLAUDIA: The original Half-Life and System Shock 2 are incredible for their time, and still today, for atmosphere and immersion. These games play with original, fun and big ideas about the human condition in relation to the universe. We love that about them.

TOBI: Modern games we have really enjoyed are Eclipsium and Prey. We’re excited to play Eternal Afternoon. It looks like a great place to get lost in. We love to get lost in games — we find many modern games to be too one-directional, telling the player what to do and how to do it, and packaging a streamlined story in glossy graphics. We think there are lots of interesting things happening in the indie development scene, as game engines have become more easily available online, and people are sitting at home with incredible ideas that they want to share through immersive game environments. We’re excited to keep exploring these digital worlds and encourage you to dive in too! 

A big thank you to ONLY SLIME for sharing their recommendations! You can visit their exhibition, AFTERLIFE, at FACT until Sunday 16 August. Our galleries are open Wednesday-Sunday, 11:00-18:00, and entry is always free. 

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