Bayerisch Gmain: Police remove poster of artist collective Peng! – Munich

A large-format poster just 20 meters from a Bavarian-Austrian border crossing. “This border does not exist” reads four times in English, Arabic, Ukrainian and German. In beautifully curved handwriting it says “Welcome to Bavaria.” Because the federal eagle hovers at the top right and a signet of the European Commission is emblazoned below, the poster looks wonderfully official, even if it noticeably does not fit the usual tone of announcements at Bavarian borders. The friendly poster, a work by the Berlin art collective Peng!, was only allowed to hang in Bayerisch Gmain for four days. Then the police removed it.

The poster was part of an art campaign curated by the conceptual artist Peter Kees, who was awarded the SZ Tassilo Prize in 2021. His “Embassy of Arcadia”, founded in 2006, had invited eleven well-known artists to design public billboards throughout Bavaria with Arcadian messages, of course on properly rented advertising space.

For Kees, the self-proclaimed ambassador of Arcadia, the idealized Greek landscape represents the longing for a perfect existence in this world. Even if this condition never really existed, Arcadia is, in his opinion, an ideal model for a more just social future. Arcadian messages address the “burning issues of the present” (Kees), drawing attention to climate change, war or poverty, for example.

The action “Shout it out into the world”, subsidized by the Free State, started on September 9th in Munich with a work by Germany’s most famous poster artist Klaus Staeck. Frenzy Höhne in Erlangen, Susanne Bosch in Lindau, Manaf Halbouni in Starnberg, Andy Webster & Derek Tyman in Munich, Hans Winkler in Rosenheim, Kees himself in Ingolstadt, Timm Ulrichs in Nuremberg, Mads Lynnerup in Furth im Wald, Elisabeth Ajtay in Passau and Ottjörg AC in Neu-Ulm. Peng! in Bayerisch Gmain on November 4th.

After four days, the police removed the poster.

(Photo: Peter Kees)

But the collective’s poster only hung for four days instead of ten. Kees arrived just in time to document the hanging poster on November 8th. “A coincidence,” he says on the phone. When he drove past the billboard again an hour later, the Arcadian message had disappeared. “It made me suspicious that everything was taken down so cleanly, there weren’t any scraps of posters lying around,” he recalls. When he stood in front of it, amazed and taking photos, a police patrol stopped next to him and wanted to see his papers. Kees identified himself as the curator of the action and filed a complaint, which he believes was recorded. “But I haven’t heard anything about that until now.”

The press office of the Oberbayern Süd police confirmed the removal of the work. The Bad Reichenhall inspection responsible had secured the poster as evidence and started investigations “against the person who hung the poster in Bayerisch Gmain”: on suspicion of a crime of official presumption (§132 StGB) and an administrative offense (§124/I OWIG – including the use of the federal eagle) and a possible violation of the Bavarian press law. According to the press office, no other persons are currently being investigated. The public prosecutor’s office in Traunstein will later decide whether a crime, an administrative offense or both has occurred after the investigation has been completed.

Accusation of official assumption: There is now a summons for official assumption on Peter Kees' desk.  For Kees, the process is a massive encroachment on artistic freedom.

There is now a subpoena for usurpation on Peter Kees’ desk. For Kees, the process is a massive encroachment on artistic freedom.

(Photo: Christian Endt)

Even if Kees neither hung up the poster himself – “I hired a company” – nor designed it, there is now a summons on his desk for “official assumptions, etc.”, he is to be questioned as a suspect. “For me, the removal of the poster is definitely a massive encroachment on the freedom of art enshrined in the Basic Law,” he says. Kees, who lives in Steinhöring near Munich and in Berlin, wonders why he or Peng! were not asked to remove the poster. There was probably no imminent danger. “Therefore, we see the arbitrary actions of the police as illegal.” In the meantime, however, he has hired a lawyer.

Other Arcadian messages had also caused a stir in the media in recent months. For example, when Deutsche Bahn refused to display Kees’ Panzer poster with the inscription “Idealist wanted” at Ingolstadt’s North Station. And the poster, on which the artist Frenzy Höhne reflects on the disappearance of individual retail trade, met with resistance from the property owner, the Kaufland company, in Erlangen. In both cases other locations were found.

In any case, Kees, who has always had a talent for attracting public attention, sees the media whirlwind as a success of the campaign. In any case, Klaus Staeck already congratulated him, he says. “He thinks it’s a small miracle that we in Bavaria still manage to provoke with just posters.”

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