Exhibition Kunsthochschule: HERKUNFT

Exhibition opening:
June 30, 2022, 6 pm

Opening hours:
July 1 to 28, 2022
Thu - Sun, 3 to 8 pm

HERKUNFT started in the summer semester 2021 as part of an open and interdisciplinary project seminar of the same name at the Kunsthochschule Kassel. In the seminar, we asked about the interrelationships and relationships between social origin, class, classism, identity constitution, visibility and recognition.

We dealt with autosociobiographical texts and the images, narratives and discourses of the topos "social class" negotiated in them. Here we found texts by authors such as Didier Eribon, Annie Ernaux, Édouard Louis, Pierre Bourdieu, bell hooks, Stuart Hall or Toni Morrison - authors who, among other things, stand for important works in the context of autosociobiography as social criticism and whose texts analyze the transmitted experiences in the context of the social structures that determine them.

As part of a workshop with the writer Heike Geißler, we worked on our own autosociobiographical text formats. Our own approach to speaking and language was important to us in our research, as was the examination of examples of media representations of poverty and precarious living. We discussed his exhibition East German Landscapes with conceptual artist Sven Johne and her film Milli's Awakening with communication sociologist and author Natasha A. Kelly.

We then reflected on our own experiences and existing artistic approaches in order to develop further possibilities for action. New approaches and concepts were put on the table, in which all media and working methods were welcome. The aim was for the group to develop and create a complex exhibition format.

The exhibition HERKUNFT shows works by 27 students from the Kunsthochschule Kassel. We see ourselves as a group of individuals from different geographical and social backgrounds. The diverse media, individual working approaches and artistic working methods each show a personal reference, their own attitude to the subject. Using intermedial approaches that include media such as photography, moving images, sound, sculpture and performance, the exhibited works deal with experiences of discrimination and homophobia, the history of different migration processes and the influence of geographical and national borders that shape the understanding of one's own identity.

In addition to the exhibition, the symposium "Ruptures and Lines - Conversations about Origins" will take place alongside the tour. With the symposium, we want to create a space for direct exchange. Here, too, it is important to us to think of origins in the plural and to link different perspectives with one another: where can we find points of contact, continuities, breaks and ambiguities?

Conception and management of the interdisciplinary seminar Origin and the exhibition project Origin: Prof. Peggy Buth and Holger Jenss, artistic assistant (Intermedia Photography class); curatorial support: Sebastian Klemm (Berlin).