When it comes to attracting public attention, Peter Kees has always been good. The performance artist, who was born in Bayreuth in 1965 and lives in Steinhöring near Munich and Berlin, became nationally known 20 years ago with the intervention “Ich AG”. A few years later he founded the “Arcadian Embassy”, as its ambassador he has since founded international consulates and declared individual square meters of land across Europe to be Arcadian sovereign territory. Kees has also drawn attention to himself with other campaigns, which is why he was awarded the Tassilo Prize by the Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2021, among other things. Now, together with eleven other artists, Kees is showing “Arkadian messages” on billboards throughout Bavaria under the title “Shout it out into the world”.
Even if the idealized Greek landscape is the inspiration for this project, Kees’ Arcadia is always about contemporary issues that concern, threaten, and frighten mankind – and terribly often just leave the individual indifferent. But indifference is not Peter Kees’ thing. The Arcadian poster campaign aims to draw the attention of passers-by to climate change, war, poverty and other socially relevant issues. Kees knows that not everyone likes it. But he was able to experience it first-hand when he obtained the permits for the action. The Kaufland company, for example, resisted the poster by the Leipzig artist Frenzy Höhne being hung in front of one of its branches in Erlangen because, as Kees says, the slogan “Greet is cool” can be read on it, among other things. Höhne’s poster is about poverty and social justice, now it can hang at the Erlangen train station.
Where, on the other hand, Kees was not allowed to hang up his own poster motif in the Nordbahnhof in Ingolstadt as planned. Deutsche Bahn, as the owner of the area, rejected the motif because a tank is shown on it. Would the DB also reject a poster from a tank manufacturer?
Frenzy Höhne’s motif was not allowed to hang at Kaufland.
(Photo: Frenzy Höhne / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022)
Deutsche Bahn didn’t want to see Peter Kees’ poster with the tank on it in Ingolstadt station.
(Photo: Peter Kees / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022)
The campaign “Scream it out into the world” starts this Friday, September 9th, with the motif of the graphic artist Klaus Staeck, who is known for his socially critical collages and photomontages on posters and postcards. It will be hanging in Munich on Schwanseestrasse, near Ständlerstrasse. This is followed at intervals of a few days – and only for a few days: Frenzy Höhne in Erlangen, Susanne Bosch in Lindau, Manaf Halbouni in Starnberg, Andy Webster & Derek Tyman in Munich, Hans Winkler in Rosenheim, Kees in Ingolstadt, Timm Ulrichs in Nuremberg, Mads Lynnerup in Furth im Wald, Elisabeth Ajtay in Passau, Ottjörg AC in Neu-Ulm and the Peng! Collective at the border crossing in Bayerisch Gmain. The promotion ends on November 14th.
shout it out to the world Arcadian Messages by Peter Kees, Sep 9 to Nov. 14, various locations in Bavaria