If you already had have a look at my photo-collection of the Herakut live-painting, you should know how great live-paintings are. One of the greatest or maybe the greatest art space for urban-inspired live-paintings and other creative things is the “ProjectRoom” project by Jaybo, also known as Monk. One of the latest live-actions in the “ProjectRoom”, which is mainly based in Berlin, was the collaboration of Jaybo and Remi/Rough. By the way, also the kick-ass Herakut action took place there… ...

This weekend, the second edition of the “Public Provocations” graffiti art exhibition, which brings together A-list artist from around the globe, will open its doors at the Carhartt Gallery. 14 internationally well-known artists, including Delta, Mode2, Pisa73, Smash 137 and A1one, will present their interpretations of contemporary street art and graffiti. Walls, backyards and contemporary city landscapes are hardly imaginable without all kinds of artistic forms of expression. Through colours, shapes and conversion artists claim the public space to be their sphere of expression and not only of provocation. Over the years new techniques, materials and platforms found their use. Thereby the art work was more and more respected and finally found its way into the galleries. ...

Haha, what a great action! The New York-based urban intervention group Improv Everywhere, whose aim is to cause scenes of chaos and joy in public places did another great mission. They created a so called “Tourist Lane” at the corner 5th Avenue and 22nd Street. That “Tourist Lane” separates the sidewalk into two different walking lanes - One for real New Yorkers and one for slower tourists. Amazing! To make it work as an IE mission, I knew we’d have to add a performance aspect to create more of a scene. We came up with the idea of having agents pose as Department of Transportation employees directing pedestrian traffic to really bring the lanes alive. (improveverywhere.com) Before enjoying the video, please tell me what do you think about that intervention. Discrimination or useful idea? In my opinion it would be nice in some situations to have such a Tourist Lane… ...

It would be a torture to write down all the participating artist of this year’s issue of the Berlin-based Papergirl project. 238 different artist from all over the globe joined that alternative street art project, which was held the first time in 2006. They ride their bikes, carrying rolls filled with collections of art, throwing them to lucky catchers on the street, in their cars, other bikers, people who might not normally be exposed to urban art. In addition a Papergirl USA project recently launched and new projects are sprouting up in over a dozen cities around the world. (coolhunting.com) Papergirl’s basic idea is to bring art into the public space in a different way than usual. For that reason, the project includes an exhibition, an urban action (hand out the artworks), a bicycle workshop and a party. It’s a wide range the organizers have to cover, but in the fifth year everything should work fine. ...

As you maybe know, Portuguese artist Pedro Matos opened his solo-exhibition called “Reality Show” four days ago in Lisbon. Today he sent in some first photos from the opening evening at Montana Shop & Gallery… In my eyes, Pedro’s style is really mad! I love these dirty backgrounds and the highly detailed portraits in the foreground. It’s a very special combination of quick spray-painting and marker techniques on the one hand and traditional oil and acrylic painting techniques on the other hand. ...

Do you remember that great mural art event which took place in Lisbon two weeks ago? Blu, Sam3 and Os Gêmeos painted two abandoned houses in the city of the Portuguese capital! Spanish street artist Sam3 just released the time-lapse video which was created while he painted his huge “La Noche” mural artwork. In addition to my sympathy for the street artworks by Sam3, it’s really interesting for me to see the development process of large-scale, kick-ass artworks like that one. Big paintings have just their attractions, right? ...

Last Saturday, the main action day against Mediaspree took place in Berlin. Mediaspree is a group of investors, which is in the act of building high office blocks and luxury apartments on the former free spaces in Berlin’s city. A broad alliance of left-winged people, local residents, students and other Mediaspree antagonists, brought their protest with two big demonstrations, free space occupations and parties to the street. I joined the mass-demonstration through Kreuzberg and took among other things some shots of the occupation of an waste, private piece of ground on the banks of the spree. I guess there will be some other free space actions around the Spree in the near future… ...

Last Friday, the slightly different street art exhibition by urban artist 1010 opened in Berlin and presents really interesting, strange and minimalistic paper artworks. For about 15 years, 1010 is an active part in Germany’s street art scene. Therefore, the Hamburg-based artist is one of the last still active street art veterans. Although the media he uses ranges from wall paint to paste-ups and paper cuts, you can find similar elements in each of his artworks. ...

The oil flows and flows and flows and no one seems able to do something. And also the pressure on the BP Group keeps within a limit… For that reason, creative people started to organize their own protest against BP and its negligently offshore oil-drillings. There are a lot of BP fake press releases, ironic videos and other creative works in the internet. The most recent I found today are nice BP ad-busting illustrations by Imp Kerr & Associates, NYC. ...

Before you end your day today, enjoying the bright summer weather, I give you interesting lecture tips for the weekend and some nice inspiring urban art impressions. This week was characterized by some really amazing solo-artworks, new announcements of attractive street art exhibitions and of course a lot of new mural artworks… This is this week’s urban art eye candy: Vhils & JR big in Los Angeles - The both urban artists Vhils and JR did a great new mural artwork in the city of Los Angeles! ...