Peter Kees has a sense for promising, subtle project titles. He must also have it as an ambassador for Arcadia, a place of longing. “42 or the world formula” is what the concept artist called his latest project. Sounds tempting. Perhaps Kees will find a different answer than the supercomputer during the announced 42 organ performances at 42 churches Deep thought in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
The answer to the question “about life, the universe and all the rest” after 7.5 million years of computing time simply with the number 42. As far as the world formula is concerned, the term, since the physicist Werner Heisenberg erroneously believed in 1958, has a superordinate one To have developed “Uniform Theory of Elementary Particles” and the media hailed this for the discovery of the world formula, a rather stale aftertaste. It has still not been found either. But now you can just get on Peter Kees and hope his organ improvisations.
The concept artist has not yet performed as an organist, here at the first concert of the cycle in the St. Sebastian Church in Ebersberg.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
The 56-year-old artist, who was awarded the SZ’s Tassilo Culture Prize this year, has not yet appeared as an organist. Rather than someone who is not afraid of provocations and irritations. For him, art must have a social relevance, he reacts with his often very funny actions to the questions of the time. When, for example, the unemployed were encouraged everywhere to set up I-AGs, he took the term literally. According to the motto “I live, so I taste”, in 2002 he sent invoices for a lifetime to all possible authorities, but also to the then Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He describes himself on his homepage as a “chronicler and surveyor of social and human phenomena”.
On the road as a self-proclaimed ambassador of Arcadia
In 2013 he discovered Arcadia, a place of longing for himself, not a shepherd’s idyll, but the idea of a place free from civilizational constraints. For him a model for a fairer social future. He made himself the Ambassador of Arcadia and in this function has already “landed” in many places in Europe: one square meter each is staked out, occupied and declared to be Arcadian territory.
Why is he now trying his hand at being a musician? Quite simple, says Kees, who lives in Steinhöring near Munich and Berlin. “We are in a very fragile time, we have a lot of problems with climate change, social imbalances and totalitarianism around us.” An explosive mixture for which no solutions have yet been found. Therefore he wanted to comment on current events with his organ improvisations, i.e. with atmosphere, rhythm and timbres.
The musician’s profession is not entirely alien to him. In his “original life” (Kees) he learned the piano, violin and viola. The affinity for classical music is almost inevitable, says the 56-year-old. After all, he grew up in Bayreuth and performed regularly as an extra on the “Green Hill”. The music has already left its mark on his pictorial work when he conducted operas with a graphite pencil in his hand and transferred the movements onto paper and converted the sound into drawings. He also has the video “Violin” shot in which a violin is totally crushed in a press, an apt comment on dealing with artists in Corona times.
In autumn 2020, Kees invented the “Concerts 1 to 1” as an improvising pianist in Ebersberg, also a reaction to the lockdown: a musician and a listener, two households. On the other hand, he has so far cultivated his passion for the organ in silence, only when he passed a church in the country and the organ was freely accessible. “I’ll sit down there and improvise.” At some point the idea of a 42-movement “Revolution Requiem Cycle” arose.
He has already completed three of the 42 concerts – “two of them were ecstatic, the third a rather slow movement”. In Ebersberg there were 30 people, in Oberndorf “fewer”, in St. Gilgen on Wolfgangsee about 20. But it’s not about the number of listeners. “I also play when nobody comes. I’ll pull it off.” So far, his improvisations have lasted between half an hour and three quarters of an hour. But it cannot be ruled out that he will play three hours at some point. “I have no problem with someone leaving.” So far, however, everyone has stayed, he then says, looking a little surprised. What he also didn’t expect is his stage fright. “Very extreme, but also good, because encrustations fall off.” He’s no longer nervous about his provocative interventions. “I know how it works.”
Sometimes he now suffers from the feeling that art devalues itself through the sheer number of offers. Every village has an art trail, every second a festival, he grumbles. Not that it does not contribute to this oversupply – this year, for the second time, he organized the excellent Arcadia Festival with the Kunstverein Ebersberg. “Occasionally I ask myself if it is not time for me to take a rest?” But he can think about that at the organ now.
Peter Kees: 42 or The World Formula. A Revolution Requiem cycle. Next concert on October 7th, 7 p.m., St. Gallus, Bahnhofstrasse 1, 85643 Steinhöring. Further dates: www.peterkees.de/42.html