Travel Impressions of Berlin

Berlin boosts quite some amazing street art and graffiti. So rather than boring you with Tourie pictures I bundled some shots of pieces that caught my eye during my last visit.

Top location for street art lovers are  Kreuzberg, the area around Ostbahnhof (incl. East Side Gallery) and the 'Mauerpark' in the north of the city. You could also try out the Hidden Path tour.

Fabulous wall at the Gleisdreieck Metro station in Kreuzberg.

I LOVE YOU - Am Ostbahnhof  

Graffiti wars

Channel 4 made this great programme about the graffiti wars going on between graffiti and street art artists.

"In London over the past 18 months the tension between the camps has played out in a battle of spray cans between freehand graffiti writer King Robbo and his nemesis, the stencil-using street artist Banksy.

The graffiti war between the two men began in the early 90s but was re-ignited by what was widely seen as an unforgiveable transgression of strict graffiti rules by Banksy.

It was an act that pulled 80s legend King Robbo out of retirement to retaliate in the place where it all began, the streets.

The film goes behind enemy lines as the war escalates, until tragic and unforeseen circumstances bring about an unexpected ceasefire."

found via @michaelvdm

Shadow Art by Newcastle Brown Ale

Newcastle Brown Ale, or better their agency Vitro, commissioned NY artists Ellis Gallagher and H. Howard to make a shadow art installation for the beer brand in San Diego. At night, a spot lights some 4000 caps and throws a shadow on the billboard, ensuring a lot of attention from the partypeople around in the nightlife district.

Here's the making of:

Open Air, a street art documentary

“In 2006, we created this short for the University of Southern California’s Public Arts Studies Program.
This documentary explored the studios and methods of six of the top street artists in America: Faile, Skewville, Mike De Feo, Dan Witz, Espo and Tiki Jay One.
Official selection of the Coney Island Film Festival and the Freewaves International Film Festival.”

A Triad Film by KNOX

via www.stencil.ro

Tout s'achète, il suffit de payer le prix

Robo Rainbow

Complicated technical solutions to help in the random act of vandalism.


robo-rainbow from mudlevel on Vimeo.

Banksy genomineerd voor Oscar beste documentaire

Banksy en Jaimie D'Cruz zijn genomineerd met "Exit Through the Gift shop" voor de 83ste Academy Award van Beste Documentaire. De film die een beeld schetst van de street art scène door de camera van een kluns die zichzelf ontpopt tot commercieel boegbeeld "Mister Brainwash", verdient zonder twijfel deze erkenning.





Het verhaal wil dat Banksy de beelden van ene Mr. Guetta zou gehermonteerd hebben tot deze meer dan degelijke documentaire over street art. De scepsis en ironie is echter nooit veraf en de documentaire voelt daarom ook meer aan als een aanklacht van de meester zelve dan wel een reëel inzicht in de street art scene, ondanks de spannende beelden van artiesten als Neckface, Swoon, Cheez,Coma en Space Invader.

ID918 - Interactive Street Art in Cologne

Two weeks ago I passed in Cologne, Germany.

I first spotted a 'traditional' Space Invader in the Hohe Strasse.

Now, Space Invaders are nothing new, however fascinating, they've succesfully invaded Germany years ago.

More interestingly, I found a QR code in the same kind of mozaic style, just next to the Dom. (Should we call it QaRt)? When you load this picture in Google Goggles, it takes you to a blog that's under construction. For good usability that was actually already painted below anyway, so you shouldn't be too dissapointed.

Painting Video

Video painting. The multimedia duo SWEATSHOPPE (Bruno Levy and Blake Shaw) has some clever ideas...Combining LED technology with camera projection and movement tracking software (also outputting the X-Y coordinates for the projector), they are basically able to paint video on the wall.

In this video, 'the landing', they showcase their work.

(via Dsgnworld)

Car free, Care Free

I'm a bit late with this post, cos the 'car-free-sunday' in Brussels was already more than a week ago, but as the summary is based rather on what I saw than on the actual fact of having a virtually car free city center that day, i judge it less important (to my own convenience, you understand).


Anyway, as I have no bike (in Brussels) I was forced to jump on my skateboard as only means of travelling. Lukily I did have a cycling companion to take care of the uphill parts. A logic pleace to roll down to was the skatepark at La Chapelle (Kapellkerk), where Brussels FM had installed their truck to pump some beats. Ragga at my time of arrival ,I remember. Nice.






After a beer and hanging around around we continued our way to Bar Recyclart, where some customizing was going on for bikes and skateboards. Also some fine skateboarding as a matter of fact. I took the opportunity the check the inside of the heavily painted station again and took some pics to document.


It was a nice day and a nice initiative to ban all cars out of the city for a day. Therefore I must disagree with the nerdy chit chat about Brussels being even more dangerous when the cars are banned... Car free is care free :)

T Rex in the street

Passing by the Chaussée de Wavre pretty regularly, always enjoy this one at the Museum of Nature Sciences. Dinosaur street art.

Street Art from around the corner

As I'm moving out in a couple of days, I thought it useful to take some pic's from the (street) art that I see daily on my way out. They became familiar to me and I guess they are worth sharing with you. Goodbye Anneessens.

Banksy vs Bristol Museum

‘This is the first show I’ve ever done where taxpayers’ money is being used to hang my pictures up rather than scrape them off.’

Great teaser video to go and see Banksy's works in the Bristol Museum.
Found on http://www.woostercollective.com/.

Why Streets Look Nicer with Graffiti

Source: Make My Mood. Well yes, these things would surely cheer me up on a random strawl through the street. Though they are not called hidden beauties for nothing. Anyway, spray can art at it's best if you ask me.

Have you Spotted a Space Invader?

Conquering the world with a very apart style of street art. Meet the space invaders!

From LA to Varanasi , from Berlin to Tokyo. You can find them,thousands of them are already around the world. They sure did an interesting job.

space invader - NYC

camouflage space invader - Avignon

space invader -Barcelona

see the worldwide space invasion happening at www.space-invaders.com

Art Revolution - Virtual Berlin Wall

A cool initiative is worth spreading and I like this one: http://www.artrevolution-berlinwall.de/

The point being to create a virtual berlin wall online, archiving street art in all it forms and appearances. Nicely ordered by style, origin and searchable by artist. Could deliver a great resource for street art.

Images are not saveable, so I got a screenshot:

I did visit the real Berlin wall as well though , some years ago already. The longest remaining part being a 1.3km long open air art gallery. Cool stuff. Defintely a tip if you go to Berlin!

Due to damage over the years the open air gallery, originally painted by 118 artisits, is now getting a makeover.

Another view on Advertising

Selected works from Banksy, giving another view on advertising...

The Fall of Man :)

Martha Cooper, hip-hop photographer

Browsing through De Hop page I discovered Martha Cooper, previously unknown to me, therefore the more fascinating. Apparently she was one of the first photographers to document street art and graffiti artists in NY city, as early as the seventies.

Though that's not all she did, through her photos she gives an insight in the life of the NY children, playing in abandoned building sites. It's actually those early pictures that made her acquinted with the hip-hop culture and graffiti scene.

She bundled her work in several books: The Hip-Hop files, Subway Art and the more recent Street Play (2006). Defintely something I'll be looking for in the second hand book shops around Anneessens.

When Street Play was published Martha Cooper came to Brussels to speak about her photography and sign her book.

>Watch the video here

photos from Flickr

More about Martha Cooper on wikipedia

Brussels Street Art

I have seen this 'live' from the train and remember being very impressed.Thanks to Stencil's nice blog about street art I found the youtube video.

Belgian made street art.love it.
Etterbeek station, Brussels.réprèsente :)

Reverse Graffiti - Eco-Friendly Art

As much as one can love street art and graffiti, the environmental arguments stand strong and might trigger opposition to the art on the wall. Not so anymore it seems, as creative minds have found a solution, even for the detrimantal effects of the spray can.

Reverse Graffiti it is called. For this eco-friendly form of graffiti only soap and clots are needed to make little pieces of art on cars and walls in the city. By removing dust and dirt on polluted walls, great art works emerge and give life to otherwise forgotten and ugly city walls.

One great example I came across is the one of Alexandre Orion, who in a tunnel in Sao Paolo, Brazil, m ade a huge and beautiful piece, only by removing black dust. Though temporary (see

 video) his reverse graffiti deserves all the attention it can get. At least he caught the attention of authorities and forced them to thoroughly clean all the walls he had flourished with his skulls.

Other Reverse Graffiti artists include Scott Wade, who goes crazy on dusty cars:

Reverse Graffiti in San Francisco by Green Works:

Original way of advertising, by means of reverse graffiti, London:

(source:www.environmentalgraffiti.com)