UJOURNAL - issue #01

UJOURNAL

urban culture & trends from the jungle

Berlin

by Urban Jungle COLLECTION #01

“the greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine”

David Bowie, talkin’about Berlin.

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erlin is the European Capital of urban culture. The new fashion trends come up in the streets of the German city and then arrive on the catwalks of new emerging artists. Innovation and trends expressed from the Berlin Fashion Week to the Bread & Butter, are demostration of this creative power. Berlin’s atmosphere is always in evolution, new trends, vitality and style are at home. The areas where you can find these melting pots are Scheunenviertel, with Hackescher Markt and Schönhauserstrasse.

The Hackescher Höfe, a short walk from the station, are the famous courtyards, renovated in the nineties, with their lively mix of shops, offices, clubs, cinemas, cafés and restaurants. The area is full of small shops where you can go and look for the latest creations of young Berlin designers and independent brands, you can also find unique vintage clothing and design objects.

LAND ON BOOTH FEET the coolest places to skate in Berlin

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here is a long history of the skating in Berlin, especially in the east of the city.

The underground skating sub-culture emerged behind the Berlin Wall, in areas like Friendrichshain, where it grew up isoleted from the West. Titus Dittmann is considered the “Father” of the German skateboarding scene who started importing boards from California in the 1970’s.

Since then, skating has conquered a big part of the city: today, aside from the indoor Skatehalle which opened in 2003, skaters have many official parks outdoor where they can practise their skills, including the impressive Mellowpark. Among the most striking places, there is a pool edge and fun box in the skatepark in Prenzlauer Berg and rails, banks and a mini pipe in the council-run Bullengraben.

The plaza in front of the Kulturforum at Potsdamer Platz, the traffic intersection at Warschauer Straße and the Polish memorial at Volkspark in Friedrichshain are also the many ‘unofficial’ public spaces where the skaters are used to meet up.

“All that’s come out is a result of my happiness, my courage, my fantasies or my disappointments. All great artists are great not for their technique, but their passion.”

Mein Lieber Prost, Berlin-based Street Artist

WELCOME TO GRAFFITI MECCA

Discovering hidden masterpieces around the city

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erlin has been called “the graffiti Mecca of the urban art world” from the art critic Emilie Trice. This is in part true if you take a look around the streets but it’s not so radical as she say. An increasing number of tourists in Berlin choose alternative tour looking for XOOOOX, or BLUBLU artwork and now we can consider this ad a real industry. This is the reason why the authorities turn a blind eye on the most “bombed” city in Europe. Alle these influences, from the streets till the art galleries has trasformed the german city into UNESCO’s City of Design. This is a great success for a place that was in debt after the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

Mitte, Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg, military areas that the military had occupied became a new playground for the Western artists and became a new world for the Eastern artists who joined them.

Few doubted that the East Germans’ work was weightier. It wasn’t that they were better artists, but that they could express — with authority — the one concept close to the hearts of all people now living in the city: what it meant to be free.

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he East Side Gallery is an international memorial for freedom. It is a 1.3 km long section of the Berlin Wall located near the centre of Berlin on Mühlenstraße in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.

The actual border at this point was the river Spree. The gallery is located on the so-called “hinterland mauer”, which closed the border to West Berlin. The Gallery consists of 105 paintings by artists from all over the world, painted in 1990 on the east side of the Berlin Wall. The East Side Gallery was founded following the successful merger of the two German artists’ associations VBK and BBK. The founding members were the speche of the Federal Association of Artists BBK Bodo Sperling, Barbara Greul Aschanta, Jörg Kubitzki and David Monti. It is possibly the largest and longest-lasting open air gallery in the world. Paintings from Jürgen Grosse alias Indiano, Dimitri Vrubel, Siegfrid Santoni, Bodo Sperling, Kasra Alavi, Kani Alavi, Jim Avignon, Thierry Noir, Ingeborg Blumenthal, Ignasi Blanch i Gisbert, Kim Prisu, Hervé Morlay VR and others have followed. The paintings at the East Side Gallery document a time of change and express the euphoria and great hopes for a better, more free future for all people of the world.

Oskar - Narenda K. Jain - Fulvio Pinna - Kikue Miyatak - Günther Schaefer - Georg Lutz Rauschebart - César Olhagaray - Jens-Helge Dahmen - Gábor Simon - Siegrid Müller-Holtz - Ursula Wünsch - Oliver Feind - Ulrike Zott - Ana Leonor Rodriges - Muriel Raoux - Kani Alav - Muriel Raou x- Ditmar Reiter - Santoni - Bodo Sperling - Barbara Greul Aschanta - Willi Berger - André Sécrit - Karsten Thomas - Theodor Chezlav Tezhik - Catrin Resch - Irina Dubrowskaja - Dmitri Wrubel - Marc Engel - Alexey Taranin - Michail Serebrjakow - Rosemarie Schinzler - Christine Fuchs - Gerhard Lahr - Karin Porath - Lutz Pottien-Seiring - Wjatschleslaw Schjachow - Dmitri Vrubel - Jeanett Kipka - Gamil Gimajew - Jürgen Große - Christopher Frank - Andreas Paulun - Kim Prisu - Greta Csatlòs - Henry Schmidt - Thomas Klingenstein - Karsten Wenzel - Pierre-Paul Maillé - Andy Weiß - Gabriel Heimler - Salvadore de Fazio - Gerald Kriedner - Christos Koutsouras Yvonne Onischke - Peter Peinzger - Elisa Budzinski - Sabine Kunz - Jay One - Klaus Niethardt - Mirta Domacinovic - Patrizio Porrachia - Ines Bayer, Raik Hönemann - Thierry Noir - Teresa Casanueva - Stephan Cacciatore - Karina Bjerregaard - Lotte Haubart - Christine Kühn Rodolfo Ricàlo - Birgit Kinder - Magaret Hunter - Peter Russell - Magaret Hunter - Sándor Rácmolnár - Gábor Imre - Pal Gerber - Gábor Gerhes - Sándor Györffy - Gruppe Stellvertretende Durstende - Laszlo Erkel - Kani Alavi - Jim Avignon - Peter Lorenz - Dieter Wien - Jacob Köhler - Carmen Leidner - Jens Hübner, Andreas Kämper - Hans-Peter Dürhager, Ralf Jesse - Jolly Kunjappu - Susanne Kunjappu-Jellinek Mary Mackey - Carsten Jost - Ulrike Steglich - Brigida Böttcher - Ignasi Blanch i Gisbert - Kiddy Cidny - Petra Suntinger, Roland Gützlaf - Andrej Smolak - Youngram Kim-Holdfeld - Karin Velmanns - Rainer Jehle - Kamel Alavi - Kasra Alavi - Ingeborg Blumenthal - Youngram Kim*

*102 Artists presents on the East Side Gallery 1.3 km Berlin wall section

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