Do you remember your own mortality? And if so, how?
How do you communicate with deceased loved ones?
Do you believe in life after death? What might it look like?
How do you imagine the soul and does it even exist?
What is it like in the world's cemeteries?
Have you ever listened into the earth?

The Museum of Sepulchral Culture has been dedicated to the topics of dying, death, burial, mourning and remembrance for over 30 years. In 2026, it will be temporarily closed, remodelled and renovated. The goal: a new permanent exhibition. In the meantime, until the reopening, we are now focussing on current developments, content and questions. We want to find new exhibits and present existing exhibits in such a way that they can also tell your story.

With in between. You, life and finiteness, we are preparing our new permanent exhibition. Since the opening of this special temporary exhibition, we have already received exciting responses from you. In the second update, we invite you to help shape and get involved. Discover exhibits from the fine and applied arts as well as cultural-historical objects. Immerse yourself in topics of sepulchral culture and take a stand on them. You won't be alone: the programme includes lectures, discussions, readings and artistic interventions - for children and adults alike.

Come along to our field of experimentation.
It's about you, your life and finiteness.

In June 2024, British artist Michelle Atherton invited people to join her in listening to the earth in today's cemeteries. People could register for time slots. The event took place at Kassel West Cemetery and Kassel Main Cemetery. It tied in with the exhibition inbetween at 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.

The installation at the museum features a vinyl record, automatic turntable, headphones and a hammock. Visitors can lie in a leisurely state of suspension as they listen to the sounds from the ground.

The Soil Séance Sessions V album includes recordings made by the artist at FriedWald and Künstler-Nekropole and by members of the public who were invited to spend as long as they liked listening to the soil at Westfriedhof and Hauptfriedhof during the summer of 2024. In total the tracks document the frequencies from above and below ground sounds, simultaneously transmitted via contact microphones attached to the earth through kitchen skewers.

The exhibit presents a provocation to audiences to shift their auditory perceptions down to the ground. To use acoustic devices as portals to the underworld, where hidden actions, processes and movements are transformed into energies, transmuting into sonic apparitions through vibratory matters.

This is an invitation to listen to the sounds of the earth for as short or as long as you like. 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.

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 campaign in June 2024 was documented 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.