Urbanism

Squatting | With the help of axes, saws and a battering ram special forces of the German police invaded the creative living project “Liebig14”, one of the last squatted houses in Berlin. Outside, about 1,500 left-winged protesters, students and creative folks demonstrated against the eviction of the building, fought with the police and made a lot of trouble in Berlin’s creative stronghold Friedrichshain. The house was squatted in 1990, shortly after the Berlin Wall fell, when Berlin was a paradise for squatters from all over Europe because of the large number of empty buildings. For that reason it’s really pity to loose this traditional left-winged open space which was not just an alternative housing project, but also a center for alternative politics and a gravitation field for street art and other creative ideas! ...

It’s always interesting to see the own city from a different view or in a different style, especially when it shows the urban flair and nice details of the local architecture. I already showed you some rather impressing city portraits, like New York in HD or in tilt-shift, Vancouver as a time lapse, Tokyo and Yokohama by night or the street life in London, but today I will show you an fucking awesome tilt-shift video of the sexiest city on earth: Berlin! ...

Update: Here are the winners of the Urban Photo-Contest 2010… Now it’s time, the Urban Artcore’s second international Urban Art Photo Contest starts! It was a hard preparation, but finally everything should be fine and now it’s your turn: Street Art, Graffiti & Action What we (the jury and me) want to see are impressing photographs of street and graffiti artworks as well as urban artists in action or similar things like colorful atmospheres in abandoned areas, breathtaking impressions of public artworks, etc… Important to mention is that superficially not the artwork itself counts, but the photo’s quality (style, light, atmosphere, interesting angle, etc.). That means we want your top shots! ...

Update: Here are the winners of the Urban Photo-Contest 2010… As mentioned four weeks ago, the second Urban Art Photo Contest will take place this month, strictly speaking it will start next Monday, July 19th, 2010. But that’s not the only new info… The Jury I’m proud to announce the juror’s of this year’s Urban Art Photo Contest. These are two people, you probably all know: Luna Park - Luna, from New York, is a librarian, progressive street art and graffiti enthusiast and maybe one of the most active urban art documentors worldwide. ...

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) ...

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… ...

What an amazing spectacle and what a cheerful atmosphere - Germany’s capital is in a state of emergency, because of the fifteenth Carnival of Cultures Berlin! About half a million people are on the streets to catch a glimpse at the 4.500 dancers, actors and musicians who party the city and its multiculturalism… Carnival of Cultures - Karneval der Kulturen The idea of a carnival which presents the cultural and ethnic diversity of Berlin was developed in 1995, i.e. at a time when – as a consequence to the political and economic changes since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of the two German states – a lot of social, economic and cultural changes happened. Due to these changes, to the economic decline of Berlin and the different economic levels and social and cultural experiences of people in East and West Berlin, social conflicts became more evident and even increased. This state of change resulted, among other things, in a biased and prejudiced view on immigration, which was reflected in the public discussion. (about Carnival of Cultures) ...

Some days ago, I got an nice e-mail by the “Living Walls Conference”, which is a conference on street art and urbanism and will take place the weekend of August 13 at the Eyedrum in Atlanta. I think, that sounds very interesting: “The idea is to put the work of a very small subset of the population (street artists, graffiti writers, etc), people who actually interact with space, under the same roof with people who spend their time in a discourse about public space. Our intentions are simply to broadcast to the attendees a wide spectrum of ideas about public space. We hope that everyone leaves the event looking at the city, its walls, and how we interact with space differently. ...

Seven years ago, Andrew Faris took a lot of brilliant and unique Polaroid photos of New York City. Recently he revisited his stacks of Polaroids and started to share them as the “New York City Polaroid Project”. “This project began Spring 2003. At the time, I had just graduated from Kent State University and was ready for a new adventure. So I moved to NYC with my new acquired diploma and my parent’s Polaroid camera.” (Andrew Faris) ...

Sam O’Hare took about 35,000 photos and invested 5 days for post-processing for that great New York tilt-shift video. I was really astonished when I saw it some minutes ago! The video, which is called “The Sandpit - A day in the life of New York City, in miniature”, shows great impressions of the street life in New York in a technically perfect way, although it’s actually a fake tilt-shift… ...