‘That’s me’. Can that be said with such certainty? How many factors and hurdles stand in the way of this statement? What does it mean to feel a lack of belonging? Class 456 A from Nürtingen Primary School in Berlin-Kreuzberg spent three days developing characters that contradict expectations and question their own ideas of belonging and what is normalized and accepted. 

Using theatre, sound and voice recordings, storytelling, and collage, the class explores ambiguities, annoyances, contradictions, and crossed boundaries and, in collaboration with the artist Shanti Suki Osman, creates mini radio plays in which intersecting binaries (such as bad / good, migrant / non-migrant) are disrupted and corresponding expectations are refuted.

During a school day, students from Berlin are invited to listen to audio pieces at Haus der Kulturen der Welt with children from the Nürtingen Grundschule and to inspirit these pieces with new experiences. Whose voices can be heard in the pieces? Which individuals and issues do not get a good hearing? With the aid of recording devices the participants of the workshop together with Shanti Suki Osman embark on a journey in search of answers to the questions that they may find in the voices, noises, stories, sound snippets, or even in the silence they encounter in the exhibition Forgive Us Our Trespasses / Vergib uns unsere Schuld.

Participating students of the Nürtingen-Grundschule:

Felix Ağca, Aya Al-Hashmawi, Ida Baratella, Lou Braun, Paul Conrad, Maria Fondis, Karl Georg, Santi (ago) Gomez Stiepani, Lafand Hussein, Pauline Kring, Lara Künne, Akira Martins, Edgar Reidel, Robert Riqui, Leni Rollny, Rodion Romas, Rona Şuşut, Esra Uzun, Rio Wilson, Mina Yassen, Rabia Yıldırım, Cem Yildiz, Ava Zareh