Documentary Films: Exploring Graffiti, Street Art & Urban Art

Yesterday, I was asked whether I know a video of famous stencil artist Evol creating one of his proper stencil artworks. And yes, it came into my mind that I posted such an video about an year ago on an other blog! For me, the most impressing thing about Evol’s stencil artworks are the details. It’s amazing with which precision he forms interesting urban scenes by using several stencil layers. Sometimes it’s impossible to imagine how he did it and that’s why this video is that great. Now you are able to get an idea about the complex development process! ...

In 2009, a very interesting graffiti book called “Subway World” was published by Dokument Press, which somehow past my attention. Anyway, here is the article about that clean book about international train graffiti… Subway World is a book about graffiti on subway trains all over the world. What started in New York in the seventies has become an worldwide artform with thousands of artists. The tradition of using subway cars as canvases has been preserved and has become an integrated part of the graffiti movement. Subway World takes you through more than 70 cities and four different continents. (dokument.org) ...

Do you know Tumblingerstraße? It’s a very nice small street with nice pieces on the walls and crazy cars on the street, where graffiti writer could paint without trouble…You think that sounds like a dream? You’re wrong, it’s a mini graffiti animation I found today! The impressing two minutes stop-motion film was part of an thesis at the Design-school Munich and is a sight to see. The film shows, how a miniature graffiti writer creates a new miniature piece on a highly frequented miniature street. ...

Readers of this urban art blog should already noticed the Skalitzers Gallery in Berlin, where for example the Cope2 and the Babou, L’Atlas, Sun7 and Tanc exhibitions took already place. Skalitzers is a new contemporary art gallery located in Berlin, with an international focus on new artists and art forms. (Skalitzers) Recently the “Finding Berlin” project visited the gallery and its owner to talk about graffiti and tagging culture in Berlin and of course about the idea behind Skalitzers. The final result is an nice, but unfortunately short video interview, including some interesting statements about the feeling on the streets in Berlin…I guess, when I’m back in Berlin I will pay a visit to corresponding tagging shop! ...

True Colors is a brand-new and amazing stop motion film by Tomislav Topic, which shows the power of combining different urban art disciplines in one great artwork! When I saw the video first I was really impressed by the fantastic ideas and the kick-ass outworking. Tomislav mixed wall painting, tape art, fire extinguishers, 3D-objects and some other crazy things and tells in that way a nice and creative urban art story… ...

Another kick-ass example for the multimedia ability of urban space: Andreas Heikaus from Hannover created a state of the art motion tracking system to project a speedrun of Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. along a sidewalk. My first idea when I saw it, was that it would be even better on whole block of houses…fantastic idea, thumbs up… This video was part of my Bachelor thesis at the University of Applied science and art Hannover. The Super Mario Bros. game, released on the Nintendo Entertainment System, is not longer bound to the television size and get interactive with a new environment. The emphasis of my thesis is on the matchmoving work. It is the process of matching CG elements into live-action footage. (Andreas Heikaus) ...

One of the most famous mural artists around the world, the Bologna-based urban artist Blu, recently published another new wall-painted animation…its name: “Big Bag Big Boom”! As Blu describes, the video shows “an unscientific point of view on the beginning and evolution of life … and how it could probably end” and looks really amazing, but that’s nothing new after his fabulous collaboration with David Ellis at Fame Festival last year or his re-known animation “Muto”. ...

Yesterday, Babelgum informed me, that they published the new, outstanding 60-minute “Guerrilla Art” documentary by Sebastian Peiter, which tells the urban art story from subway graffiti to international big business. “Over the last few years Street Art has established itself as an art form. But where can this street-based movement go from here, after works by Banksy have been boarded up, chiselled off the walls, to be sold on eBay for money far exceeding the gallery prices?” (Tim Marlow, narrator of Guerrilla Art) ...

Andre Merilo caught some great impressions of New York City when he traveled the Big Apple together with his JVC GZ-HD7 camera in April! The two-part high-definition film he created shows the details of that great, loved and hated city and facilitates its power and dynamic… New York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over global commerce, finance, media, culture, art, fashion, research, education, and entertainment. (Andre Merilo) ...

Berlin-based stencil artist Boxi is in addition to Evol, Czarnobyl, Orticanoodles and C215 one of the most famous stencil artist in Europe and the entire world. Yesterday, I found an amazing video which documents the alternation process of one of his most recent artworks, a “six layer hand-cut paper stencil and spray paint on photograph by Ross Morrison.” It looks quite gorgeous how he creates the reflections in the visual cover of the helmet - That really floored me! ...