2023-04-20 17:04:10
For the “Our Weapons” campaign, the artist group used the insignia of the military counter-intelligence service. Is that covered by artistic freedom?
The artistic director of the “Centre for Political Beauty”, Philipp Ruchdpa
The public prosecutor’s office in Berlin has brought charges against the unnamed 42-year-old founder of the “Centre for Political Beauty” (ZPS), the authority reported on Wednesday. It will have to be clarified before the Tiergarten District Court whether he is guilty of presumptuousness and the falsification of data relevant to evidence. The most prominent founder of the ZPS is Philipp Ruch (“If not us, then who?”), According to Wikipedia, he turned 42 on March 18.
A genuine component of ZPS art is playing with criminal offenses and exploring the limits of artistic freedom. In this way, the center gets the authorities and the media involved in their actions and makes them participants. In “Refugees eat” (2016) the accusation of blackmail was raised. The theft was involved in the theft of the memorial crosses for the Berlin Wall dead “First European Wall Fall” (2014). The “Holocaust Memorial Bornhagen” (2017), where the ZPS erected memorial steles next to Björn Höcke’s house, was accused of surveillance and coercion. According to its own statements, the ZPS was involved in 30 court cases “in the name of artistic freedom” and lost none.
The current indictment is about the art campaign “Where are our weapons?” from October 2020. The ZPS has set up a whistleblower website that is intended to help find lost weapons from the Bundeswehr stocks. With impunity, you could either return weapons yourself or report gun thieves on the website for a reward. According to the narrative of the art campaign, the reward was offered by the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD). “In order to appear more official, the website is said to have been provided with a self-description of the MAD, the national emblem of the Bundeswehr and alleged letters from the MAD, including to the then Federal Minister of Defense,” according to the public prosecutor.
The accusation is made considering the fact that this was the actual artistic twist of this action. So it has to be decided whether it is art at all. The press release deals with a similar case against the ZPS, which commissioned the distribution of AfD election campaign flyers as “Flyerservice Hahn” and then did not deliver the printed matter on time. At that time, the Berlin Regional Court (534 Qs 17/22) denied in the appeals process that this was covered by artistic freedom. It has become “priority [um] a striking action and not a free, creative design in which the artist’s impressions, experiences and experiences are brought to life through the medium of a specific formal language”. The ZPS will also document this press release and this expert judgment for posterity.
#Centre #Political #Beauty #indicted