On July 15, the police searched the Berlin office of the Bang!Collective as well as the apartments of two of its members. The reason for this: The artist collective had together with the Initiative Black People in Germany the website TearThisDown.com unlocked, which gathers “colonial places” all over Germany, that is street names, memorial plaques, statues that are uncritical, romanticizing, heroic to this day, reminding of places of German colonial times and crimes. The public prosecutor’s office in Berlin is investigating public calls for criminal offenses against Peng !, finally, on the website, calls are made to “remove” the places, street signs and statues. The searches were justified with property damage to some Berlin street signs and monuments, all of which were noted on the interactive map.
Now, at the request of the Berlin Left MP Niklas Schrader, it came out that the LKA Berlin had reported the call and the damage to property to the Joint Extremism and Terrorism Defense Center (GETZ) of the federal and state governments, with the result that the Peng! Collective now is listed there. The GETZ was founded in 2012 to ward off right-wing extremism, left-wing extremism, foreign extremism and espionage, the main reason being the faulty or lack of cooperation between various authorities in investigating the NSU murders. The artist group is now on a list with Islamist groups, citizens of the Reich, right-wing radicals and terrorists. Her lawyer Lukas Theune says he has “no understanding of the procedure and this listing of the website as a terrorist or extremist act”. All statements on TearThisDown.com are “clearly covered by freedom of expression and artistic freedom”. The whole procedure is “disproportionate” and only serves to intimidate.
Peng sees itself as a collective for subversive action art. The group was represented at the Berlin Biennale, Manifesta and many other exhibitions and was awarded the Aachen Peace Prize in 2018.