Bang!

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Bang! eV (also: Peng Collective ) is a group of artists , activists , craftsmen and scientists in Berlin . The collective develops subversive action art with the aim of moving civil society to more courageous campaigns. Peng used false identities to infiltrate events as an act of civil disobedience several times .

The association has been cooperating with Schauspiel Dortmund under the Die Populistinnen logo since 2015 and realizes campaigns and activities with it . You have also been to the Berlin Biennale , the Manifesta Biennale , the Athens Biennale and the Hamburg Kampnagel Summer Festival 2016. Your work Call a Spy was also shown in the Danish State Museum Kunsthal Charlottenborg , and your exhibition Pretty Good Privacy was shown in the MuseumsQuartier Wien.

In 2018, Peng! awarded the Aachen Peace Prize.

Projects

Slam shell

In December 2013 they infiltrated a " science slam " organized as a PR event by the Shell oil company in Berlin's Tempodrom, where they staged an oil fountain on the stage. They called for Shell to withdraw from the Arctic and take responsibility for the environmental damage in the Niger Delta .

Horst Koehler's cuckoo clock collection

At a conference in Poland they were asked, misunderstandably, to submit a biography for the ex- Federal President Horst Köhler , as they run the satirical website "Horst Köhler Consulting". The biography published on the conference website had an unusual tone: "He was a central figure in the Argentine financial crisis of 2001 and proved himself to be a righteous believer in neoliberal politics." It also stated that he owned the largest collection of cuckoo clocks in Germany. The Horst Köhler Consulting website was set up on the day of the resignation of the former Federal President in order to promote the debate on the role of the Bundeswehr abroad.

Responsibility plants

When the Federal Association of German Industry organized the 4th Raw Materials Congress in the Haus der Deutschen Wirtschaft Berlin on July 3, 2014, they and other activists distributed small trees and flyers in front of the building on behalf of the Federal Association of German Industry. The congress participants were told that by 2020 the BDI would plant 5,000,000 trees in conflict regions around the world. On the accompanying website, which is designed in the corporate design of the federal association, it says: “Since we depend on metals from conflict regions to manufacture German high-tech products, we plant a tree in return for each victim. In this way, the BDI lives up to its social responsibility and also contributes to an improved CO2 balance for German industry. "

Google Nest

At Re: publica 2014 they presented new surveillance products as supposed Google employees. The company in the USA warned them, among other things, that they publicly announce that they are not Google employees. They then published a video in which they were sad that Google pretended not to work there and "quit before it is too late". The Electronic Frontier Foundation represented them against Google and published a letter which said, "Unfortunately, Google's skin was not thick enough to withstand this relatively light friction."

No Christmas for Merkel

In December 2014 they distributed Christmas postcards on behalf of the CDU in which Angela Merkel portrayed the deportation of refugees as a Christian act. They were referring to Angela Merkel's speech shortly beforehand in the Templin church, where she rhetorically asked whether deportation could be seen as Christian under certain conditions.

AstroTV hack

In 2015 they infiltrated the esoteric channel AstroTV and called live on the broadcast to withdraw the license of the channel. When AstroTV had them warned to delete their video of the action from the Internet, they called the broadcaster's esoteric advice and asked how they should deal with the warning. As a result of the action, former employees who testified against Astro TV as informants reported.

"Cinema for Peace" stage hijack

Together with The Yes Men and other activists in a polar bear costume, they infiltrated the Cinema for Peace gala in 2015 to promote the divestment of fossil fuels on stage . Since they interfered with Natalie Portman's speech , they published a letter of apology. When they were dragged from the stage by security guards, the Russian punk band Pussy Riot came to their aid.

Zero trollerance

On April 14, 2015, the Peng Collective launched a campaign against sexist behavior on Twitter. With Twitter - bots , they generated a list of "sexist" tweets after a speech analyzing Twitter- trolls that of 160 different fake Twitter accounts were invited to a self-help program. It consisted of six videos that the alleged trolls would receive and in which a "troll coach" named Adler King promised to cure them by turning them into feminists .

Vattenfake

On April 24, 2015, they captured the headquarters of the energy company Vattenfall in Berlin and announced on its behalf at a staged press conference that the company would take responsibility for Lusatia . They promised an exit from coal energy and a hundred percent switch to renewable energy. Among other things, the RBB and the Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung fell for the message and spread it as a real corporate decision. The CDU parliamentarian Sebastian Steineke announced that this message was due to the commitment of the CDU Brandenburg. The campaign was accompanied by a website announcing the responsibility program on behalf of Vattenfall.

Award for escape assistance

Via the website fluchthelfer.in , the collective announced the “1. Awarded the European Cross of Merit on Ribbon ”. "Known and anonymous escape helpers" should be honored on August 7, 2015 on Pariser Platz in front of the representation of the EU Commission. In addition, the collective called for help to escape during the holiday trip and offered a “starter kit” as “escape aid equipment”.

Intelexit

By founding Intelexit, in cooperation with Schauspiel Dortmund , they support secret service employees in leaving their jobs and building a civil life, be it for ethical and moral or psychological reasons. As part of the campaign, which ZEIT described as “a large project with a serious background, and by no means limited to Germany”, they used large billboards and trucks to advertise in front of the NSA , the GCHQ , the Federal Intelligence Service , the Dagger Complex and the Lucius D. Clay barracks . When they stuck parts of the constitution on the building of the protection of the constitution , the constitutional text was torn off and disposed of by employees.

With a model of the Sentinel drone , which is used, for example, in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom , the activists dropped flyers over the US military area Dagger Complex in Darmstadt. Allegedly, computers in the Dagger Complex were no longer able to access the Peng website Intelexit.org shortly after the unusual air show.

In the course of the project, according to the collective, several secret service employees reported who want to get out. They would now be accompanied by them when they exit.

April 2016 "Call a Spy" was installed in the exhibition of the Hartware Medienkunstverein in Dortmund and at the Logan Symposium on investigative journalism in Berlin, where visitors assume the role of Intelexit call center employees and meet randomly selected secret service employees in the USA, Germany, France, Canada and Great Britain can be connected by phone. In 2016 Call a Spy was part of the Berlin Biennale .

Bundeswehr hack

On November 23, 2015, the collective started a nationwide counter-campaign to the Castenow agency's advertising for the German armed forces. They built a mock-up website with a similar-sounding domain name ( www.machwaszaehlt.de instead of www.machwaszzähl.de ), which warned of the dangers of war and the armed forces, instead of blocking them as on the original website advertise to work in the Bundeswehr. The reason for the campaign is that the original campaign paints the wrong image of the army, says a Peng spokesman for Stern : “It suggests adventure, camaraderie, fun. It creates a hero myth. It is not clear that killing is an integral part of the work. ”Within a few hours, the Peng version of the website was in the Google ranking above the Bundeswehr website. While the original campaign cost the Ministry of Defense € 10.6 million, the collective said it only spent € 100 on undermining it.

Tortal war

On February 28, 2016 Peng pelted! Activist the AFD -Politiker Beatrix von Storch and Albrecht Glaser in Kassel at a meeting of the Alternative for Germany at the Penta Hotel with a cream pie while a second activist filmed the action. The action was justified with slightly modified original quotations from the AfD, it was directed against the shooting order debate of the party, in which the party had called for the use of firearms at the external borders. On the part of the AfD complaints were filed for insult, at the same time the police are investigating AfD participants in the meeting on suspicion of dangerous bodily harm because they allegedly assaulted the cake thrower. After von Storch named the cake thrower on her Facebook page, the activist received death threats.

Germany says sorry!

On April 26, 2016, a video was published on the website in which an alleged spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs reminded those who suffered from Agenda 2010 . The makers call on those affected to tell their stories and promise a signed apology from the Federal President . The focus of the video is in particular on single mothers, the low-wage sector and the sanction and reduction of Hartz IV benefits. The action was carried out in cooperation with the Dortmund theater .

Campaign against small arms exports

In Schwenke (Halver) Peng! A fictional CDU local association was founded, which addressed the party leader Angela Merkel to campaign against the export of small arms in the next legislative period. This call was also reported in the international media. Later confirmed Peng! the communication guerrilla campaign.

In the same week, Peng! an alleged recall of small arms from the manufacturer Heckler & Koch , by sending letters to US arms dealers on their behalf. The Heckler & Koch websites in the USA and Germany were then provided with the message for several days that they had been the victim of a hacker attack and fake news .

In the same week, the group published a video in which they documented how they awarded a peace prize for the arms industry and Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems only left shortly before the alleged award.

As part of this series of campaigns, Peng! five legislative proposals to renew the War Weapons Control Act and to “save Article 26 of the Basic Law ”.

VoteBuddy

In 2017, the collective founded the satirical website VoteBuddy , on which German non-voters could allegedly cede their voting rights in the 2017 federal election to immigrants who were not eligible to vote. The right-wing blogger David Berger , the politician Erika Steinbach and (for the time being) also the Federal Returning Officer Dieter Sarreither considered the website to be serious and illegal. An actual exchange of votes via VoteBuddy was never possible.

Haunted Landlord

Peng used a bot to call real estate companies and homeowners and confront them with the fate of the people they displaced.

Germany is stealing

With this campaign, Peng called on people to steal goods in supermarkets and instead pay the unions of producers in the Global South, through her website. You can pay to eight unions there that fight for the rights of workers, while Peng is campaigning for the introduction of a law in Germany that allows German companies to be held accountable for violations of human rights abroad.

Pretty good privacy

2018 headline in the newspaper Austria "Protection of the Constitution now being investigated against an art project in parliament." As it, is part of an artists' residence in the Museum Quarter PGP -key for all parliamentarians in the Federal and National Council of Austria and all publicly-find emails from the Austrian secret service created and uploaded your public PGP key to your own website called gvkeys.at. Two MPs, Michael Bernhard and Ewa Dziedzic , came to the "Department for Email Encryption Matters", which was set up specifically to issue the printed private PGP key, to collect their keys on presentation of their identity card. Furthermore, the private keys were encrypted with their own public key by Interior Minister Herbert Kickl of the FPÖ, President of the National Council Wolfgang Sobotka of the ÖVP and the former Green President Alexander Van der Bellen and displayed as a screen print on canvas. The Modulart gallery in Vienna was planning an exhibition of the works but canceled it at short notice because it was under “too much political pressure”, as it is officially called.

When asked about the motivation of the action, a spokesman said: “The FPÖ is trying to break democracy to its foundations with democratic means. First the BVT affair, where she specifically had data for right-wing extremism research confiscated, and then the upcoming surveillance package. We're slipping in and forcing parliamentarians to use email encryption with immediate effect. "

Federal pier

On June 29, 2018, Jan Böhmermann was the first to publish the satirical website called “Seebrücke des Bundes” by Peng, in which they claimed that the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Home Affairs was committed to ensuring that by 2019 all people in distress at sea in Germany will be included. A complex program of the Ministry of the Interior was presented on the website, in which people were encouraged to come to Germany and to find training positions with the help of "reintegration scouts". In macroeconomic terms , they argue: “Overall, the BMI expects economies of scale that effectively support the overarching goal of combating the causes of flight: Part of the support paid to refugees in Germany flows through direct transfers to the family members who have stayed behind in the countries of origin and helps the economic and social situation there stabilize and improve. It is known from surveys by the World Bank that this form of development aid is 2–5 times more effective and sustainable than traditional development cooperation or the granting of microcredits. ”The voice of Jan Josef Liefers can be heard in the image video on the website .

With this website, Peng initiated the " Seebrücke " movement by actively promoting participation on the website and in the viral video. The movement campaigns against the criminalization of sea rescue and drew attention to itself in over 50 German cities with demonstrations and actions in the following weeks.

The Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Home Affairs blocked the promotional video on YouTube , even though it was clearly satire, and repeatedly pointed out via Twitter that it was not related to it.

On July 10, leaflets were distributed at the town hall in Rostock, claiming that the city would take part in the action. The city checks the illegal use of its coat of arms.

Mask.ID

On September 22, 2018, it became known that the action artists had a German passport created that contained a non-biometric photo on which the human eye could be seen both by Federica Mogherini and one of her group members. They then staged five more such passports being sent to Libya , which could be tracked online. With this project, they wanted to draw attention to both surveillance within Europe by amalgamating biometric databases and the isolation of Europe from the outside world.

Prank in capitalism

In 2020, Peng! Activists described an action in which they wanted to use the COVID-19 pandemic to “ask fundamental systemic questions”, such as the socialization of companies, as a “doorbell on capitalism” . To do this, they built the website of the fictitious Federal Office for Crisis Protection and Economic Aid , which they established under the umbrella of the Federal Ministry of Economics . They contacted companies - including Helios Kliniken and the Vonovia real estate group - by email with the sender of the alleged federal office or by phone and asked for talks with CEOs . They pretended that a new stimulus package was being prepared and tried to find ways out of the crisis. For the Kampnagel Summer Festival 2020, Peng! an installation and a video report about the action.

Trivia and positions

The team and topics on the collective's website change each time the page is reloaded. On March 19, 2015, Peng was on the cover of the newspaper Der Freitag .

If it has too much power, the group wants to break up.

If the political sphere no longer enables work like von Peng due to the shrinking scope of action for an active civil society ("shrinking spaces"), it is necessary to offer political activists "asylum" in the production of art and culture.

Part of a better society is "the abolition of the capital ratio, including all that it brings with it in terms of exploitation, poverty, inequality and alienation."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. On the longing for tender sabotage, interview
  2. Interview with Jean Peters, an activist of the Peng Collectives
  3. THE POPULIST. In: www.populisten.com. Retrieved April 27, 2016 .
  4. Manifesta 12: The Dark Heart of the Biennial Shows Human Suffering Out of Control. Accessed August 27, 2018 (English).
  5. ^ Adrian Searle: Manifesta 12 review - plant sex, puppets and a dial-a-spy booth. June 20, 2018, accessed August 27, 2018 .
  6. Admin_ab4 | Athens Biennale. Retrieved August 27, 2018 (American English).
  7. Theater Kampnagel Hamburg: PENG! Collective: Call a Spy. Retrieved August 11, 2016 .
  8. ^ DISCREET, the Intelligence Agency of the Berlin Biennale - artnet News. July 15, 2016, Retrieved August 11, 2016 (American English).
  9. ^ Kunsthal Charlottenborg: Whistleblowers & Vigilantes. Retrieved April 2, 2018 (UK English).
  10. Aachen Peace Prize for Peng! and human rights activists. In: tagesschau.de. Retrieved September 2, 2018 .
  11. Lisbeth Schröder: The last price for the wrong CDU. In: taz.de . September 2, 2018, accessed September 3, 2018.
  12. Shell's Berlin 'Science Slam' Event Reportedly Disrupted By Anti-Drilling Activists (Huffington Post)
    Protest at the "Science Slam": Dirt fountain against Shell (Spiegel Online)
    Oil Spill in Nigeria: Activists prank Shell, hijack “Science Slam” in Berlin # SlamShell (Premium Times Nigeria)
  13. Satire website of Horst Köhler Consulting
  14. Köhler and his cuckoo clocks
  15. The Horst Conspiracy (Metronaut)
  16. Content-related rumbling and winking
  17. 4th BDI raw materials congress: Responsible and sustainable supply of raw materials (BDI website) ( Memento of the original from March 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bdi.eu
  18. Fake BDI campaign page
  19. Big theater around Google (Golem.de)
  20. Big theater around Google (Zeit.de)
  21. ^ How Activists Fooled The Internet With These Convincing New Google Nest Products (Fast Company)
  22. Google Nest Parody Protest Site Holds A Funhouse Mirror Up To The Search Giant (TechCrunch)
  23. Google Nest Spoof By German Activists Promises Eerie, Data-Driven Future (Forbes)
  24. Google employees resign #googlenest
  25. ^ "Dear Google: Parody Is Not Trademark Infringement" (Corynne Mcsherry in an open letter from the EFF)
  26. Activists send fake Christmas cards from the CDU (Berliner Zeitung)
  27. It would be unchristian to take in "too many" (world)
  28. Christian deportation (time)
  29. Berlin action artists blow up AstroTV live broadcast (Berliner Zeitung)
  30. Protest group "Peng!" Blows up Astro TV broadcast (Bild.de)
  31. Report at Stern.de on the second video of the AstroTV campaign
  32. "The Sinn Winners", Zeit.de
  33. Martin Kaul: Polar Bear? Not fucked. In: taz.de, March 23, 2015.
  34. ^ Website with the letter to Natalie Portman
  35. Rolling back against the sexists , Süddeutsche Zeitung
  36. This is how sexist Twitter users are trolled by bots , Buzzfeed
  37. Steineke's tweet on the RBB's false report
  38. "False report promises Vattenfall involvement in Lusatia", RBB Online
  39. "Successful fake. Kreuzberg activists announce Vattenfall's withdrawal from lignite", Tagesspiegel, including a video
  40. Background information on the campaign , VICE
  41. ^ Website for the Fluchthelfer.in campaign
  42. ZEIT "Article dropout program for spies"
  43. Netzpolitik article "Intelexit shows the way out of the surveillance juggernaut: First successes with the exit."
  44. The Intercept article "Drone Flies Over NSA Complex in Germany, Dropping Leaflets"
  45. Spiegel Online article "Drone drops leaflets about NSA complex"
  46. Golem article "We'd fake something, but don't have to"
  47. ^ Damien Leloup: Peng, le collectif qui veut aider les espions à raccrocher . In: Le Monde.fr . ISSN  1950-6244 ( lemonde.fr [accessed April 22, 2016]).
  48. heise online: From whistleblowers and vigilants: Resistance in the digital age. In: heise online. Retrieved April 22, 2016 .
  49. ^ Exhibition in the Dortmund U - Figures of Digital Resistance. In: Deutschlandfunk. Retrieved April 22, 2016 .
  50. ^ DISCREET, the Intelligence Agency of the Berlin Biennale - artnet News. July 15, 2016, Retrieved July 18, 2016 (American English).
  51. Article on the Do What Counts campaign at the Huffington Post
  52. Article in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung on the Bundeswehr campaign ( memento of the original from November 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / Jetzt.sueddeutsche.de
  53. Article on Peng and the Bundeswehr campaign in Stern
  54. Twitter post from the Peng collective with screenshots of a Google search
  55. ^ Taz article about the anti-Bundeswehr campaign
  56. Campaign page and letter of confession for the cake campaign
  57. ^ Article in the Berliner Zeitung
  58. Bayerischer Rundfunk on the throwing of the cake
  59. HNA.de
  60. Hannah Weiner: "Death threats for throwing a cake" TAZ from March 1, 2016
  61. http://deutschland-sagt-sorry.de/
  62. Video on Youtube
  63. Twitter message from Schauspiel Dortmund
  64. ^ Fictitious local association of the CDU Schwenke
  65. artist group mocks media. Wrong feelings in the CDU . Fact finder from the Tagesschau on May 3, 2017
  66. This fake CDU politician lays the whole world in - with an important message . Report on bento.de
  67. German pranksters epically troll multi-million dollar arms manufacturer by starting recall panic in the US ( mic.com [accessed on 15 August 2017]).
  68. Jump up ↑ So activists have been trolling the German arms industry for months . In: BuzzFeed . ( buzzfeed.com [accessed August 15, 2017]).
  69. Real arms dealer is looking forward to a false peace prize . ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed on August 15, 2017]).
  70. Martin Zips: satirical group starts action against arms industry . In: sueddeutsche.de . May 5, 2017, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed August 15, 2017]).
  71. Patrick Gensing: Alleged exchange of votes - The "VoteBuddy" is a fake. Tagesschau from September 8, 2017
  72. Lars Wienand: Scandal site VoteBuddy.de is a dummy of "Peng!". Berliner Morgenpost from September 8, 2017.
  73. The spirits of the rented call back. Retrieved December 5, 2017 .
  74. Peng: Haunted Landlord - The Return of the Entlietten. Retrieved December 5, 2017 .
  75. David Böcking, Nicolai Kwasniewski: Call to Shoplifting: Stealing for Humanity . In: Spiegel Online . February 28, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed March 5, 2018]).
  76. Peng: Germany is stealing. Retrieved March 5, 2018 .
  77. Bizarre: BVT is now investigating an art project . April 4, 2018 ( oe24.at [accessed April 14, 2018]).
  78. STANDARD Verlagsgesellschaft mbH: artist collective Peng provides members of parliament with email encryption . In: derStandard.at . ( derstandard.at [accessed April 14, 2018]).
  79. ^ Austria: Austrian Parliament. Retrieved April 14, 2018 .
  80. ^ Robyns Lifehack Palace: FPÖ MP Michael Bernard comes to pick up his PGP key. April 4, 2018. Retrieved April 14, 2018 .
  81. Ewa Dziedzic on Twitter. Retrieved April 14, 2018 .
  82. Bang. on Twitter . In: Twitter . ( twitter.com [accessed April 14, 2018]).
  83. An artist collective shows security gaps in the Austrian parliament . In: Vice . April 4, 2018 ( vice.com [accessed April 14, 2018]).
  84. Jan Böhmermann on Twitter . In: Twitter . ( twitter.com [accessed July 29, 2018]).
  85. ^ Federal Ministry for Homeland: Initiative Seebrücke des Bundes. Retrieved July 29, 2018 .
  86. sz-online: Liefers speaks for sea rescue . In: SZ-Online . ( online [accessed July 29, 2018]). Liefers speaks for sea rescue ( memento of the original from July 29, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sz-online.de
  87. tagesschau.de: Tagesschau 21.07.2018 20:00. Retrieved July 29, 2018 .
  88. Bang. on Twitter . In: Twitter . ( twitter.com [accessed July 29, 2018]).
  89. Bang. on Twitter . In: Twitter . ( twitter.com [accessed July 29, 2018]).
  90. That should be satire: leaflets with Rostock coat of arms. Retrieved July 29, 2018 .
  91. Raphael Thelen, Judith Horchert: Biometric passport photos: activists smuggle photomontage in passport . In: Spiegel Online . September 22, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed October 4, 2018]).
  92. Raphael Thelen: Face recognition: activists want to send Libyans forged passports . In: Spiegel Online . September 25, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed October 4, 2018]).
  93. Y-Kollektiv: Fake ID - How the artists of the Peng-Kollektiv manipulated passports I Y-Kollektiv Documentation. September 27, 2018, accessed October 4, 2018 .
  94. a b International Summer Festival 2020. Bang! Collective: prank in capitalism. kampnagel.de, accessed on August 11, 2020 .
  95. Falk Schreiber: "We are happy to continue brainstorming". In: Nachtkritik.de . August 7, 2020, accessed on August 11, 2020 (interview).
  96. a b Peng! Collective tricks companies with a fake federal office. In: Ze.tt . August 6, 2020, accessed on August 11, 2020 .
  97. Facebook post from the editor-in-chief on Friday
  98. 1LIVE Talk with Jean Peters and Ruben Neugebauer (1Live) ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.einslive.de
  99. Q21 creative space at MQ Vienna: Bang! - The artists' collective provides members of parliament with email encryption. (No longer available online.) April 12, 2018, formerly in the original ; accessed on April 14, 2018 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / vimeo.com  
  100. How to Resist: Click or Break the Rules? In: The daily newspaper: taz . July 12, 2017, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed April 14, 2018]).