Pierre Huyghe’s site-specific project for the 2017 Skulptur Projekte consists of a live ecosystem of animals, insects and plants, an incubator containing living cancer cells, and an augmented reality app adding a virtual pattern to the physical environment: ice rink, sand, clay, aquarium, black glass, automated ceiling structure. At the opening, in the summer 2017, After ALife Ahead had peacocks and bees among its inhabitants. By mid-September, they had retreated from the cold. All that remained was a conus textile sea snail, and a fluorescent GloFish, both confined to a tank. After ALife Ahead was conceived as a symbiotic system, in which the opening and closing of the automated roof is dictated, in part, by the HeLa cancer cells, which are linked to the mathematical pattern on the snail’s shell. Each element has its own cultural potency: HeLa is short for ‘Henrietta Lacks’, an African-American woman whose cells (harvested without permission) became the most commonly used cell line in cancer research. GloFish is the brand name for genetically engineered fluorescent fish. The conus textile snail creates a shell with a pattern that resembles ‘Rule 30’, key to understanding complex behaviours in nature. This ‘wasteland’ is home to an unfathomable complexity of life, both innate and manipulated.