Public Art: Exploring Urban Creativity & Expression

Yesterday a massive paint attack happened in the heart of Berlin! The Rosenthaler Platz, which is the center of one of Berlin’s creative areas (a lot of street art and nice galleries can be found around it!) was repainted. The whole action took only a few seconds: …bikers had poured paint from big boxes in front of cars that waited for green lights. So the cars and their wheels, if the driver wanted it or not, became the brush tool for this guerrilla public art piece. (dkomm.wordpress.com) ...

I don’t know whether you watched regularly the 2010 Winter Olympics - I do not. For this reason, I don’t realized that great light art spectacle: “Vectorial Elevation” was a light art project in Vancouver, which allowed people around the world to light up the sky over the former Olympic Games city with their own light shows. This was made possible by using 20 robotic searchlights located along English Bay. ...

Some time ago, I wrote an article about the fantastic “Total Rewall” project in London, which connects graffiti, street art and photography in an public, urban context. “Total Rewall” started on Friday December 4th in the infamous Leake Street Tunnel, which was once the home of Banksy’s Cans Festival, with the claim “on collaboration, not only between the photographers organising the exhibition and taking of photos (of places graffers normally would not be able to work on) – but also with street artists themselves, a vital part of the cog.” ...

A very interesting concept of creative urban participation is the “Total Rewall” project, which connects photography and graffiti. About twenty photographers posted up giant photographs on the walls of the famous Leake Street tunnel in South London, which became open canvasses… “Total Rewall is bringing photography into the world of graffiti, by giving artists and creative types alike, for one whole week, a rare chance to work their magic on otherwise forbidden territory. ...

I regularly ask myself, how to renew and use abandoned places, like old industrial areas, dead railway lines or uninhabited houses in the cities around the world. A flagship project is the underground skatepark in London. Do you know? It’s called “White Grounds Skate Plaza” and open since April 2007. It’s located in an old, formerly disused service tunnel close to London Bridge station and was designed by the “Side Effects Of Urethane” crew. ...

Did you ever heard something about the “Book of Urbanism” before? I do not, but I like it! “Book of Urbanism” is a projects platform for interventional art projects in urban landscapes, temporary architecture, media architectures, architectural art, public art, interdisciplinary projects and city development projects. The central question is how public spaces will looks like in future? Everything is about urban design, city interior and art in the public space! ...

“Lueneburg gets redesigned”! This was the headline of an article I wrote some weeks ago about the street art event “ARTotale”, taking place in the German small town Lueneburg. ARTotale - Leuphana Urban Art Project on ekosystem.org Today, this outdoor group-exhibition event starts! More than 35 internationally known urban artists, including Akim, Victor Ash, Ben Eine, Brad Downey, Boxi, Bronco, Dave the Chimp, D*face, Faith47, Flying Förtress, Herakut, Loomit, DAIM, 1010, Mode2, Swoon and Zevs will redesign the public space of the city of Lueneburg and the university campus. ...

There were a lot of photos, videos and documentations about the Berlin Wall and its East Side Gallery, but I have rarely seen such beautiful pictures like this! “The East Side Gallery is the longest preserved stretch of the former Berlin Wall. It is the largest open-air gallery in the world with 106 original mural paintings on 1.3 km-long created by artists from all over the world after the collapse of East Germany. ...

Some days ago, I read an nice article about urban sports in Berlin in a Berlin-based newspaper. The author of the article gave an introduction into new “in” sports like parkour, freerunning and an interesting one, I never had heard before - Bike Polo: “Polo is thought to be the oldest team sport known to man, dating from the days when Persian warriors first rode horses into battle. Bicycle polo evolved a bit later, having had to wait for some clever chap to invent the modern bicycle. ...

Two week ago, Chris Weeks published his street photography documentation series, which is simply named “Street Photography: Documenting the Human Condition”. The three parts of this documentation give an insight into the manner of taking photos in the urban, public space and tries to get to the bottom of how street photography changed the view of seeing the world around us. “I think I started to forget things and […] when I’m taking a picture of something it helps me not to forget. I start to shoot a lot. I started to shoot people […] I just need to save it somewhere. An dif you have a photo you can also share it to others. That’s a good thing about it. You just share, what’s happening in your world, what’s happening around […]. So I think, everybody who takes street pictures has their own view of it.” (Severin Koller, photographer) ...