Peng Collective

The Peng Collective is a group of culture jamming activists based in Berlin.[1] Through actions of tactical media,[2] the Peng Collective wants to inspire other activists and civil society organisations to be more courageous in their campaigning methods. “Let’s learn from our enemies,” one of their members says in an interview. “If you look at the economics of corporations, their state of mind is: ‘let’s look at every possible gray area of laws and use them.’ And NGOs just don’t do that.”[3]

Projects

googlenest

Paul von Ribbeck and Gloria Spindle speak as Google employees at the Re:publica 2014.
The Peng Collective create an oil spill at a Shell event in Berlin.

They got international media attention, when they held a presentation called "Your data, our future" in the Name of Google at Europes largest tech conference re:publica in 2014. All presented products where designed to gather more data from the consumers, claiming that this is in their best interest.[4][5] After Google threatened them to take down their parody website,[6] the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) supported them legally:

Unfortunately, Google's skin was not thick enough to withstand this relatively gently ribbing. The company wrote a polite note to the collective, expressing their sincere respect for political commentary—but nonetheless demanding that Peng! revise the site and assign the domain name to Google. Note to Google: polite trademark bullying is still bullying.

EFF responded to Google on Peng's behalf, explaining what should be obvious: the site was pure noncommercial political commentary. Trademark owners should not and cannot punish activists simply because they happen to use trademarks in the course of that kind of commentary.

— Corynne Mcsherry in an EFF letter to Google: Parody Is Not Trademark Infringement[7]

Slamshell

Invited as fake persona to a conference of the Oil company Shell, they created an oil spill on stage instead of the expected presentation.[8][9] The evening was a Public Relations event organized by Burshon Marsteller in Berlin, where one member of the Collective could enter the stage because he claimed to have created a car that is cleaning the air.

Cooperation with the Yes Men and Pussy Riot

In 2015, the group infiltrated the Cinema for Peace Gala in Berlin with a fake polar bear and The Yes Men to go on stage and insist that divestment from fossil fuels is helping more against climate change than charity projects. Pussy Riot, who was invited as speaker to the charity gala came to support them, when the organizers of the event tried to silence them with security guards.[10][11]

Zero Trollerance

In May 2015, they developed a bot-script that scanns Twitter for abusive and sexist language. Once detected, plenty of automated Twitter profiles would reply to those tweets with an invitation to a self help program for trolls to become feminists. [12]

Footnotes

External links

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