#4: Knut Klaßen

We are different. We are artists. We are the art.

Knut — Have you just seen this?
Jette — What?
Knut — There was someone sitting.
Jette — Where?
Knut — By the side of the road.
Jette — Crass.
Knut — At the tree. So completely upright.
Jette — How that?
Knut — With his feet on the road.
Patrick — That is nothing for me. That is totally psycho.
Knut — Turn?
Patrick — No. (1)

Knut Klaßen (b. 1967 in Muenster, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. His visual art practise comprises filmmaking, photography and theatre. He creates films/video, also documentary, acts as director of photography for related artists, is managing the developing department of a larger Berliner artist studio, enhances his photographic oeuvre and produces simultaneously impressive theatre productions together with Monika Gintersdorfer as Gintersdorfer/Klaßen. Their shows and compelling productions are shown widely; among other venues in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire), at Kampnagel in Hamburg, D or in the sophiensaelen and Volksbühne in Berlin, D.

In this large spectrum of self-chosen tasks he is working on the contrast of lived-in-world versus aesthetics and form. Thereby it is about dealing with the question of the self-conception and conditions of the production of art, how free one can act and be within the field of art and how far one can go and respectively must?

this is the lived-in-world
the lived-in-world is the definition of facts
on the condition of the function
through speaking and compromise (2)

aesthetic is the border of language
is the border of thinking
is doing, is doing, is doing, is doing before you have left
aesthetic is absolute, is total, is total liberty
is total liberty
liberty (3)

Knut Klaßen is working with professional actors and dancers as well as with non-professionals, artist friends and colleagues. The implicit »Here and Now«, the transfer of his personal environment, his actual presence as artist in his work outlines the content. Knut Klaßen does not tell linear stories neither in his videos nor in his theatre productions. They are investigations, models and negotiations.

here being conditioned is gonna be abandoned,
fuck being conditioned,
here it is about abandon yourself,
be outside of yourself (4)

Knut Klaßen presents:

Liv, 2006/07, 38:00 min
Yes Please, No Please, 2009, 15:00 min first release

Knut Klaßen’s web site: www.knutklassen.com

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(1) Video »Yes Please, No Please«, 2008/2009
(2), (3), (4) Video »Liv«, 2006/2007