Norbert Klassen

After Klassen's death in December 2011, the performance collective Black Market International (BMI) had been bequeathed with Klassen's urn.

Klassen had a black star tattooed on this bald head. The tattoo was result of a performance in homage to John Cage and Marcel Duchamp. This performance consisted in the action of the artist having his head tattooed inside a train station in 2008.

Since 1998, Klassen had been organising the BONE Festival für Aktionskunst at the Schlachthaus Theatre in Bern.

In 1992, Klassen received the Sisyphus-Prize awarded by the City of Bern. He returned the prize in 1995 as a protest against the drastic reduction of city subventions for the STOP Performance Theater (STOP.P.T.).

In 1987, Studio am Montag transformed into STOP Performance Theater (STOP.P.T.). On this occasion, Klassen announced the „death of theatre“, and postulated performance art as the only adequate artistic succession.

In 1985, Klassen was one of the founders of the international performance collective Black Market International (BMI), in which he worked together with Boris Nieslony, Lee Wen, and others, until his death in 2011. The collective bases its work among others on the principle that “all is possible”, and continues participating in numerous performance art festivals worldwide.

Between 1980 and 1997, Klassen held a teaching position at the Schauspielschule am Konservatorium für Musik und Theater Bern, and from 1987 to 1995 he taught at the F+F School for Art and Media Design Zurich.

In 1979/80, Klassen lived for one year in New York City.

Together with Gerhard Johann Lischka, Peter J. Betts, Rudolf Bober and others, Klassen founded the independent theatre collective Studio am Montag for experimental theatre in Bern in 1970, and run it in the position of director from 1971-87. The collective presented its productions in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. Their activities were funded by the City of Bern.

Klassen trained acting at the Westphalian School of Acting in Bochum. His first engagement in the years 1963/64 was as a theatre actor at the Theater Aachen. He had since been active as an actor and stage director, among others at Studio am Montag, Bern; Bern Theatre; Komödie Düsseldorf; Kammerspiele Düsseldorf. He maintained links to the theatre world throughout his career, but his work received more acceptance within the performance art circuit, and Klassen identified himself primarily as a performance artist. He was inspired by Fluxus and Living Theatre. In his first performance, My Red Brother, Klassen sat at a table holding a cigarette and watching the smoke rise, an action that he repeated in his performances through the years.

Norbert Klassen (born 30 May 1941 in Duisburg, Germany; died 1 December 2011 in Bern, Switzerland), was an actor, stage director, influential performance artist, educator and organizer of performance art festivals. He has lived and worked in Bern, and contributed significantly to making the city important for the contemporary performance art scene.