Walking down Berlin’s streets, you’re breathing art. Style and creativity is everywhere. Walk along Berlin’s streets to discov er for yourself the constantly changing urban illustration. Old and new, famous or just beau tiful pieces of pure creative work. It’s almost everywhere: on buildings, fences, advertis ing posters, walls, trains, gar bage bins, windows, nice white vans, spread all around the city.
There are many differ ent types of street art:
1. Stencils – The stencil is the name given to illustrations that are sprayed or painted on walls, usually using a tem plate or the so called “sten cil”. This technique was first established in the 80’s in Paris by ‘Blek Le Rat’ with his life-size stencilled characters.
2. Cut-out – Cut-outs are made on cheap and resistant paper, cut around the outline of the drawing and then glued with wallpaper glue to some crucial ly fitted surface. The surface is important for the delivery of the cut-out’s message. Many artists prefer this type of art because it is easy to remove – the artists cannot be sued for wilful damage to property.
3. Marker – The perfect marker should be permanent, water proof, good ink flow, sealed tightly, crazy colour, and it should be by your side at all times, just in case you want to express yourself at any given moment. The produc tion of markers made brands such as Maontana, Edding or Molotow expand their colour and texture offers.
4. Postal stickers – Are resistant, difficult to remove, and found for free in post offices. They are suitable for some mes sage, drawings or stencils. Famous and emerging artists are communicating to the peo ple through written messages (a bunch of penguins carrying a slogan “go home” to a big ship with ‘Shell,’ ‘Esso’ and other transnational companies on it; or “I don’t wanna be your friend on facebook”); commu nicating rhetorical questions that make you think: “ how long is now?”; angry thoughts of revenge and revolution (“the fist” which is almost everywhere) and the expres sion of continuity given by the creator of the famous “6” (ap parently there are more than 650.000! all around Berlin).
Knowing it is illegal, many artists still choose to do it. Some important names in Berlin’s street art include: ‘Fuck your crew’, ‘Faile’, ‘550 Flies’, ‘Cupk’, ‘Dolk’, ‘XOOOOX’, ‘BO130’, ‘D*Face’, ‘AEM’, ‘The London Police’, ‘Klub7’, ‘Swoon’, ‘Nomad’.
For those of you interested when arriving in Berlin, I rec ommend you take a €15 guid ed ‘Alternative Tour’ of the city (alternativeberlin.com). It is usually a three and a half hour walking tour ending with some practical part. After the tour you are able to do your own stencil that you spray by yourself and take home. You might find out then that you want to rethink your life…
Christina Frentiu Socolescu
Schlagwörter: alternative tour, Art, Berlin, Business englisch, citytravelreview, curso24, Edinburgh, gap, medien, reisejournalismus, street art, studium
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