Public Art: Exploring Urban Creativity & Expression

Bosso Fataka, that is a group of four Berlin-based artists, being well-known in town for using cling wrap as adhesive to turn trash into sculptures in public spaces. Recently, the world’s largest international multimedia news agency Reuters did a nice video feature on them, entitled Berlin artists turn trash into sculpture… Their pieces remain no longer than a couple of weeks, until municipal workers remove them, leaving photographs on their Facebook page as the sole documentation of their activity. ...

Anna Borgman and Candy Lenk realized the installation Luftschloss (cloud castle) on Alice-Salomon-Square in Berlin-Hellersdorf. The temporary urban intervention is the result of the examination of the fragmentation and incompletion of the space and the disappointed hopes for permanence and wholeness. The installation is 2300 m³ in size and is divided into four phases, showing different stages of transformation… I really like the idea, but what’s even more interesting is to see the exaggerated carelessness of the pedestrians. It’s like nobody notices anything; no one questions the installation, or wonders about it. It’s unbelievable… ...

Benjamin Gaulon, aka Recyclism, has an interesting hobby: For his 2.4 GHz project, he installs wireless video receiver in public space to hack into wireless CCTV cameras… This device (which is now part of consumers popular products), can be used for wireless surveillance cameras, but it can also be used for parents to monitor their children. Such systems are becoming more popular as they get cheaper. But what most users of those devices don’t realise is that they are broadcasting the signal. (2.4 GHz Project) ...

It’s been a long time, since the last issue of the iconic sticker magazine Klebstoff (German for glue) was published, but recently I received the new fourth issue! First published in 2009 by German Wildsmile Studios, the Klebstoff mag soon became popular in the German sticker and urban art scene. The clue: Each page of the mag consists of real stickers by real artists, what allows you to have a lot of fun with it - I for one decided to entirely cover one of my bookshelf in stickers… ...

Almost a year ago, French photographer, street artist and TED Prize winner JR started his Inside Out project and since then, the large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic works went worldwide! Whether in Haiti, Brazil, Greece, Israel, or Mexico, people are participating and paste their faces in the streets of their cities. Now it was time to look back and summarize the first year of turning the world inside out… ...

Looks like companies are going a step further with their urban art ad campaigns. After using stencils for guerrilla advertising, paying graffiti artists to paint some backdrops or planning large action street theater, they are now willing to let their ad agencies install impressing advert sculptures… Belgian paint manufacturer Levis (Akzo Nobel) recently came up with an urban guerrilla paint sculpture! The installation, planned and created by Belgian ad agency King George, consists of an XXL Levis paint pot mounted onto an existing lamppost eight metres above the ground so it appears to be floating. The post itself has been painted red, creating a stream of paint that looks like it is coloring the car park where it is situated, as was described on designboom.com. ...

French/German photographers duo Lucie and Simon created with Silent World a great series of deserted places in cities like Paris, New York or Beijing, well-known around the world for the incredible amount of people usually populating public spaces. It seems, the photos capture entirely deserted cities and they make us somehow understand that what makes a city a city is not just the man-made monumental buildings, but the temporary elements within… ...

I have a big foible for abandoned amusement parks. One reason - and it doesn’t matter whether the decaying park is located in the US or even in China - is the somehow scary atmosphere of old, often broken attractions, archaic Western buildings and roller coasters. Another reason is, that those abandoned parks, providing never ending impressions, are perfect playgrounds for urban explorers and photographers like me… Kulturpark - A Public Art Project in Berlin In Berlin, a group of cultural developers and activists together with experimental architects from Berlin, researchers from Harvard, and placemakers from the Urban Art Institute plans to re-open the abandoned amusement park Spreepark, located in the sprawling Treptower Park, as a creative camp. The group’s aim is to utilize the process of producing artistic site-specific visions, combined with ideas and memories of publics, to create a grassroots proposal for the park’s future, what sounds like a really great thing for Berlin! ...

Imagine a total usual small town somewhere in the heart of Europe (in Belgium actually), a average quiet square with a big red push button and a sign with the text Push to add drama inviting people to use the button. And now watch and… …just think WTF?! ...

The massive paint attack which took place two years ago at Rosenthaler Platz in Berlin, was one of the most impressing urban art interventions I’ve seen so far in town. Organized and executed by Dutch performance artist Iepe Rubingh and his team, the so-called Painting Reality project recently was the force behind a similar paint attack in Sao Paulo… Painting Reality in Brazil As a part of the Baixo Centro Festival which took place during the last week in Brazil’s biggest metropolis, a group of activists tipped out several buckets of colorful paint on a much used junction and started in that way the great process of an urban live painting, using cars, bikes and pedestrians as brushes, spreading the paint all over the streets! Again it’s just amazing to see how easily you can color your city and have a lot of fun. ...