In addition to the yearly academy exhibition, students of the Kunst­hoch­schule Kassel have access to the temporary platform INTERIM, which offers a space for focused inter­dis­ciplinary projects, including col­laborations with other academies. Industrial spaces with a ceiling height above 5 metres and natural light are available for projects in a central location connected to Kulturbahnhof Kassel.
Questions of presentation and edu­cation – ranging from aspects of interior architecture to questions of economic inclusion or exclusion – form the central issues of the inaugural exhibition at INTERIM. One year after the end of their tenure as visiting professors the artist collective FAMED and the students of their seminar “On the performance of what has been read” took the step from theory to practice with “Difference and Rep­etition”. The goal of the project was to evaluate the permanent flux of thought and action in real terms; how what has been read, thought or spo­ken develops a relation to everyday life and in particular to the work of the artist or the designer. The participants reflected on these issues under the difficult conditions of an organism in development.
FAMED built a space within a space with the use of Billy shelves, the most popular bookshelf worldwide. A ref­erence to the history of the bourgeois notion of preserving, collecting and archiving turns into an artistic practice. The hybrid of sculpture and exhibition architecture provides a frame for the artworks of the stu­dents, it presents them and engages them in a dialogue. In this way, the exhibition almost casually makes a fundamental statement on the concepts of the White Cube; while the cultural economies and theoretical approaches on difference and rep­etition alluded to in the title are also taken into account.

Susanne Prinz

Photos: Maja Wirkus