It is 2025. We live in a year without summer: In a jump-scare reality that feels like an apocalyptic vision of our world, thrown into darkness and stripped of certainty. Survival becomes ritual, and despair dances hand in hand with ecstasy.

In 1816, the original „year without summer“, Mount Tambora erupts in Indonesia, ashes fill the sky, the sun disappears, crops fail, and the world hungers. That same year, 18-year-old Mary stays by Lake Geneva with other poets and storm and darkness inspire them to tell ghost stories. Mary imagines Dr. Frankenstein, a genius of science, who forces nature to bend to his will and ends up in destruction with his monster assembled from corpses‘ parts.

Florentina Holzinger and cast explore the stories we tell about our bodies, health, identities, decay and our environment: The 21st century pursuit of longevity, medical promises of rejuvenation to the perils of unchecked technological growth in a world shaped by AI, robotics, and bioengineering. A Year without Summer appropriates this attempt to improve nature to the point of perversion and plays off the promise of eternal life against the certainty of death.

But what happens when the creation becomes the monster? When creation becomes (like) us?