Norbert Klassen

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Norbert Klassen (born May 30, 1941 in Duisburg ; † December 1, 2011 in Bern ) was a German actor and performance artist who moved to the Swiss city ​​of Bern at the age of 23 .

life and work

After classical stage training at the Westphalian Drama School in Bochum and his first engagement at the Aachen City Theater, he was brought to the Small Theater on Kramgasse and the City Theater in Bern in 1965. Classes had in Bern success with the play outside the door of Wolfgang Borchert . The first performance took place in 1966 in the Kleintheater Kramgasse 6 , Bern. The play was performed about 300 times under the direction of Thomas Nyffeler.

The world of acting became too narrow for him and he performed at train stations and in the tram, on the balcony and in the corridor, even before he got to know the term “performance art”. Inspired by the Fluxus movement, by John Cage , by The Living Theater and Gerhard Johann Lischka , Klassen founded the theater collective Studio am Montag in Bern in 1970 . Here he explored the border areas between theater and performance, often in collaboration with his partner Janet Haufler. Klassen proclaimed the "death of theater" and postulated the performance as an adequate artistic successor. The studio on Monday moved further and further away from traditional theater and became the Stop Performance Theater STOP.PT in 1985. When the municipal subsidies for STOP.PT were halved, he returned the Sisyphus Prize in 1995 that he had received in 1992.

Norbert Klassen taught from 1980 to 1997 at the Bern Drama School and from 1982 to 1994 drama and performance at the F + F School for Art and Design . From 2001 to 2010 he organized the Bone Festival for Action Art in Bern and was one of the founders of Black Market International , a performance artist group .

The Bracteaten piece is a 24-hour performance that was staged at documenta 8 in Kassel in 1987 and was created in collaboration with Boris Nieslony Jürgen Fritz, Zygmunt Pietrowski, Jacques van Poppel, Tomáš Ruller and Norbert Klassen.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Grädel, Jean: Norbert Klassen, in: Kotte, Andreas (ed.): Theaterlexikon der Schweiz, Chronos Verlag Zürich 2005, Volume 2, pp. 995–996
  2. ↑ "Outside the door" played by the studio on Monday. Wolfgang Borchert's new face in Zähringer., Kb, Berner Tagblatt, November 25, 1976
  3. ↑ Beate Engel, Norbert Klassen. (1941–2011) “For all the few”. In: Bern Almanach. Volume 6-Performance., Gisela Hochuli, Konrad Tobler, (Ed.), Edition Atelier Bern, 2012, ISBN 978-3-9523742-7-6 . Ref see p. 48
  4. ↑ The weekly newspaper, Beate Engel “For all the few”, accessed on August 27, 2015
  5. ↑ Swissfestivals Bone – Festival for Action Art in Bern ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed on August 27, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / swissfestivals.jimdo.com
  6. ↑ Black Market International Norbert Klassen (Switzerland) accessed on August 27, 2015 (English)
  7. ↑ documenta 8 catalog: Volume 1: Essays; Volume 2: Catalog page 302; Volume 3: artist book; Kassel 1987, ISBN 3-925272-13-5 .
personal data
SURNAME Classes, Norbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Swiss actor and performance artist
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Duisburg
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 2011
Place of death Bern