At the beginning was a party, of course. When 5 design and arts students met to provide a kind of „living room“ for people from the creative branch, they took the usual way to solve the money problem. And the onomatopoetic word „Peng“, the german gun sound, was just the perfect thing to promote the first event. And immediately people seemed to love the combination of fancy art stuff and party.
Mainz, where all this is located, in 2006 was a smaller city in western Germany with many students and a not-so-good cultural scene. Especially design students were hungry to mingle, experiment and share works and information. Although Mainz surely lies in the more wealthy part of Germany, jobs still are rare and the outlook for creative freelancers rather bad.
So what to do? By the time the first party was over and the cash arrived, the guys registered as a friendly society to support arts and communication and had their first home in a run-down former bakery shop. The form of a charity organization provided just enough structure not to peter out again and was still not too strict. Because the ideology was always to be noncommercial and to provide space and infrastructure for any kind of cultural activity. And not to take entrance fees. This low-level approach proved to be attractive and today the club’s webpage still promotes an open space for students, pros and hobby artists.
Impact on politics
So once a week it was „Peng-Day“ when the living room was open and anybody could introduce and present themselves. After the first painting exhibitions, poetry readings, communication sessions and acoustic music nights the club made a lucky pull and moved to a former shop with big window fronts. This was an easily accessible and optically highly attractive gallery space with high ceilings in a central shopping area. So things started to grow and so did the manpower: The association still gathered quality and people, so the concept proved good as in fact there have always been enough helping hands around. The style was trashy enough for the artists and chic enough to attract the glamour boys. Important is that beer has always been given out for donation, not sold to anybody. So the first film making workshops started, bars were rented for parties and the club could soon provide money for publicity of exhibitions. Cooperations were made and guests invited. Especially documentary movies soon seemed to have a brood nest there.
After another relocation also the founding fathers departed to job life and family, but this was not really an obstacle. In fact the still growing group began to be acknowledged by local politics. Two phenomena turned out to be ever-present in Peng: Trouble with the neighbors and the association’s being rental nomads. It does not have a permanent space and all attempts to acquire some have failed until now. But the club with its enthusiasm has had a strong impact on the city: As people grew up, they settled down with publishing houses, freelance cinematography bureaus and an actual cinema. West Germany does not have much empty space, no factory or store halls, as in many parts of the east. The people are burgeois and wealthy, saturated in fact. So, although the project surely had no political intent, the collective now is an actor in the struggle for space in an urban environment. And, furthermore, the club promotes „critical zeitgeist“, serious discourse and is deeply rooted in the world wide web. So today the guys are talking about their present status as „civic art space“ with an „assignment for society as a whole“. All parties and fun aside – if this is not political, I’ll eat my hat.
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