Meine sehr geehrten Damen und Herren, dear Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to this rather hot Friday afternoon in the Ständehaus in Kassel! This is, as you heard, Die Klau Mich Show. Today´s subject is education, es geht heute um Erziehung oder genauer gesagt um “Radical Education”, um “radikale Erziehung”.

(he seems to think for a moment)

And this show will unfold like an essay, that is the reason why we have called it “on radical education”.

(he seems to think again)

Some among you, as documenta insiders, staff, artists or just frequent visitors, know that we share this room with the “maybe education” department. The “maybe education” department is the name documenta 13 has given to the public program, or the lecture program. Why is it called maybe education? Does any of you know? Because it might not be education after all? Or because they are teaching the virtues of the potential, of the maybe, of the doubt?

(thinking again)

Do you know?

(thinking again)

There is a certain recent trend in art towards education.

(thinking again)

What does Klau Mich, a TV show have to do with education or radical education? With the Simpsons, we could say that all children since four generations have been really educated by TV. In one of the programs that served as a direct inspiration for Klau Mich, TV Party, a public-access television cable TV show in New York City that ran from 1978 to 1982, the perplexed audience called host Glenn O’Brian asking:

What is this show about? What is it for?

and he answered, solemn: “For your education, madam.”

What is Klau Mich? a TV performance originating in one book, Klau Mich, by Langhans and Teufel. This book, this book educated a whole generation. The book presented the transcription of the 1968 trial where two twenty-year old students confronted the authoritarian, almost totalitarian structure of the German Judiciary of that time. They convinced everyone that the personal is political and the book became indeed an educative text. A manual!

Klau Mich is here for your education, Madam.

But it is not an educative project.

We believe to be in perfect synthony with our guests of today, when we say: education is not something you possess that you can give to someone else to possess in exchange of money or similar, it is not something you sell and you buy, it is not something you have and others have not.

Education is a process and a struggle.

There are some keywords we will discuss with our guests. One, is struggle, another one is process. Another one is community, another one is self-image,

another one is dignity, another one is authenticity…

(it all begins to sound a bit rap-like)

another one is engagement, another one is creativity, another one is self-management, another one is group dinamics, another one is stigma-fighting, another one is self-determination, another one is justice…

At this point, he is interrupted by the little girl behind…