La Classe

A classroom in Kreuzberg in the summer of 2010. It's hot. The pupils, just on the cusp of puberty, are sitting in their desks, trying to concentrate, fighting tiredness, daydreaming. The teacher writes a formula on the blackboard. One of the ceiling lights flickers. The room slowly tilts. 



With "La classe" - created as part of the "X-Schools" project - Boris Nikitin transforms the school situation into a Kafkaesque ready-made. As in "Woyzeck", "F wie Fälschung" and "Imitation of Life", the inconspicuous room in its supposedly naturalised architecture is the secret protagonist of the work. Almost invisible at the beginning, it increasingly emerges as the actual framework in which reality not only takes place, but is invented and produced on a daily basis. This motif of invented natural space will also play a central role in later works, e.g. in spatial-installative works such as "Also the real thing", "The Johannesburg Auditions", and to an even greater extent in "Sänger ohne Schatten" - for which Nikitin had the rehearsal stage of the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies completely reconstructed - or "The Last Reality Show" - a replica of the house from the first season of the reality show "Big Brother".

X Schools
The re-encounter with the institution of school has the character of a journey back in time to one's own childhood for artists and spectators. PISA. Reform. Run amok. More than almost any other institution in Germany, schools were plunged into crisis in the noughties and were almost exclusively characterised in the public eye by reports of catastrophe followed by calls for reform. In schools, social problems and ruptures have become concentrated in an existential way.

For the site-specific project "X-Schools", HAU and the Hector Peterson School are inviting twenty artists and artist groups to explore and perform at the school in summer 2010. The "actual inhabitants" - pupils, teachers, caretakers, parents, canteen cooks, cleaning staff - are part of this game. The twenty or so productions and room installations - one of which is Nikitin's "La classe" - are presented in the form of three theatre parcours.