In one room of the dazwischen exhibition, visitors will find ten positions that deal artistically with (their own) finiteness. These are works exclusively by female artists who bring a breath of fresh air to the often male-dominated funeral industry with their ideas.

On their Death Revolution Tour, they invite visitors to feel, fill or immerse themselves in gaps: in images and, above all, in their own feelings. Visitors are invited to engage with death in order to find out their own position - the card game "Sarggespräche" at the SargBar by Verena Brunnbauer and Nicole Honeck offers the opportunity to playfully exchange thoughts, preferences and stories about life and death. Greta Rauer's photographs invite viewers to fill in the gaps with their own memories. In Verena Oberhollzener's felted cocoon Phönizia, you can enter to feel confinement and become free again. And artists Anna Fiederling and Barbara Billy Bürckner focus on remembrance in their works - in the form of a room memorial and a mourning diary.

In addition, works by other artists have been brought together with one goal in mind: For visitors to ask themselves questions such as "What effect do the exhibited formats have?" or "What do you wish for your farewell?"

In June 2024, British artist Michelle Atherton invited visitors to join her in listening to the soil in today's cemeteries. People could register for time slots. The event took place at Kassel West Cemetery and Kassel Main Cemetery. It followed on from the exhibition in the Museum for Sepulchral Culture.

We have been burying our dead all over the planet for thousands of years. 100 billion people have already died on Earth (and lived on it before that) - compared to around eight billion people currently alive. This means that there are more dead people on Earth than living people - a weight that is usually not noticeable in our everyday reality.

Soils have a history and a lifespan. They are formed from rocks that have been shaped over thousands of years by climatic conditions, geological movements, biological processes and the action of organisms of all sizes. Soils are the product of highly complex relationships. They are both living and non-living.

This is an invitation to listen to the sounds of the earth in various cemeteries in Kassel for as short or as long as you like. On different days with different climatic conditions, the soundscape of the ground changes. It can be quiet, it can be loud as we tune into the frequencies that speak to us beneath our feet. Many people are currently deciding against burial. Hearing the liveliness underground also has a comforting potential in the idea that you won't be alone there at the end of your life.

The results of the intervention will be presented as a sound installation at the beginning of 2025 in the exhibition dazwischen. You, Life and Finitude at the Museum for Sepulchral Culture.

Michelle Atherton is an artist, researcher and lecturer in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University. She works with images, temporal states and contingency, utilising a range of media including video, photography, sound, collage and text and drawing and likes to make interventions on site. Her work has been shown across Europe in a variety of contexts, including galleries and museums, festivals and conferences, live projects and publications.

Michelle Atherton's action in June 2024 was accompanied by an editor from the Hessische Allgemeine. You can read the article here.

The project is supported by The Art, Design & Media Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University.

Together with the Bahá'í community in Kassel, we asked: How should a member of the Bahá'í religion be buried according to religious regulations? What is needed for this? And how can this be implemented in Germany and with the laws that apply here? People from different religious communities often come up against obstacles when it comes to burying their deceased in accordance with religious regulations or the wishes of their relatives.

This is precisely why it is important to talk to each other and to point out wishes, but also thresholds and possibilities. Selected objects from the burial tradition of the Bahá'ís convey their diverse burial culture in Germany.