By Loki Bröder
In order to teach such a foreign work to students in a high school, the young people should first learn the background of the installation and then look at the parallels they can draw with their own lives. It should come down to a comparison of school and prison. These parallels would be:
- Breaking rules, which everyone knows happens but cannot always be dealt with: Burning alcohol - Writing crib sheets.
- It takes place in a building where many people are forced to interact with each other and where there are strict rules: Prison - School.
- This building is created out of a system: Prison system - School system.
The breaking of rules points to deep-seated flaws in this system: The prison system deprives human warmth that has to be replaced with alcohol - Pupils are more afraid of bad grades than they are interested in learning. This rule-breaking is made visible: distillery in the museum - cribbers that are collected and then exhibited.
The way secret rule-breaking happens in school and how it is pointed out can also be changed by the students. They have much more insight into the shortcomings of the system than outsiders. This process can be worked out over several weeks and should end in an exhibition of the joint work.