With “Auf dem Weg zu Weltkulturerbe-Weltmeister:innen” ("Road to Becoming UNESCO World Heritage Champions”), Pegasus Product undertakes an ongoing research and art project that provocatively proposes one of Germany’s most notorious travel rituals, the yearly five-day trip to Mallorca, the so-called Ballermann, as intangible UNESCO cultural heritage. What might first strike viewers as absurd is, in fact, a sharp interrogation of how cultural value is defined: What counts as culture? And who is in the position to decide this?

In the exhibition Weltkulturensohn, this inquiry takes visual shape. Twelve works layered with sand, glass, and drawing echo ancient Egyptian reliefs, interwoven with staged scenes from Ballermann culture. This unlikely pairing links contemporary mass tourism with the ancient “Beautiful Festival of Drunkenness” of Bubastis, revealing surprising continuities in collective euphoria across time.

Installed as a visual Polonaise — itself recognized as UNESCO heritage — the series highlights the blurred lines between popular rituals and officially sanctioned tradition.

By suggesting Ballermann as a candidate for cultural preservation, Pegasus Product exposes the arbitrariness of cultural hierarchies. The project invites viewers to rethink what counts as heritage, and how even seemingly frivolous practices embody identity, continuity, and shared experience.

Most recently shown at Berlin Art Week, the project also includes the artists’ self-produced Ballermann anthem Weltkulturensohn, merging celebration and critique in equal measure.