With the foundation’s Dr. Hans-Michael Brey doing the intro, with YAP’s Sam Walter in the audience along with our show catalog contributor Christian Omodeo, and us in the front row – it was a great way to end our “Martha Cooper: Taking Pictures” exhibition at Urban Nation by looking forward at library plans while surrounded by the best team ever.
On our last Friday night in Berlin, we celebrated inside the exhibition with a live panel discussion featuring the evenings host Nika Kramer, and her guests Martha Cooper and the German graff writer and abstract painting powerhouse MadC. During a far-ranging discussion before a two-room audience in the museum and a live audience online, the three spoke about the graffiti/street art/mural scene from personal and professional perspectives – and how often the street has intersected with contemporary art in the gallery setting over the last decades.
The occasion was an inaugural MCL Talk that officially begins another component of programming related to the research library that we’ve been working on here, now open, called the Martha Cooper Library at Urban Nation. We will aim to make it the premier research library of graffiti, street art, and related urban art: the first place you think of when you need to begin your investigation into this remarkable global democratic people’s art movement.
There was a lively discussion of MadC’s evolution from being an artistically inclined child to one who would develop a signature style as she traveled worldwide to paint increasingly complex and massive walls. Creative challenges and cultural roadblocks were discussed and hard-earned philosophies were described; giving an opportunity for greater appreciation for the routes these people took to participate in, to put their mark on, the graffiti/street art environment. Ms. Kramer skillfully steered to parallels in the pioneering photography and documentary career of Martha Cooper. In the open and inclusive way that Cooper’s career has always been, many questions from the audience were welcomed, considered and addressed as well.
After the talk ended and people mingled and chatted with one another, we took one more quick walk through the museum to admire the wealth of materials and deep dives into history guests could learn about Ms. Cooper. We hovered above the table, looking from the 2nd floor walkway down to the lobby where the three women signed the exhibition catalog and MadC’s new hardcover for patient fans. Finally we left the museum and hung out on the sidewalk in the spring night air with new friends and old and many fans of the night’s special guests at UN.
Thank you again Berlin.
MC Library Presents Martha Cooper, MadC & Nika Kramer. From Street to Canvas. Urban Nation Museum Berlin. (photo still from the video)
Originating or traveling from places like Romania, Greece, Essen (Germany), Sweden, Poland, Turkey, France, Finland, Slovenia, Hungary, Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom, nearly every artist has the immigrant experience in one way or another here at the Fresh A.I.R. Residency at Urban Nation.
The current theme for this sixth edition of the residency, “Reflecting Migration,” naturally strikes a chord in each – but that is where the similarities stop in this widely varied and complex examination of the immigrant experience.
On a recent visit to the current exhibition on the second floor of a well-illuminated historical Berlinian building on Bulowstrasse inSchöneberg, the works and installations in separate galleries reflect the span of interests and disciplines. Thanks to a wide selection of artists, the story of the immigrant experience here is told from multiple perspectives. Participants in the “Migration” exhibition draw from the fields of education, photography, independent art spaces, architecture, data technology, science, philosophy, fine arts, graphic design, and film. The show gives a well-rounded collection of viewpoints, with various routes of expressing those observations.
The storylines can be quite personal, such as the installation by Romanian artist Denise Lobont, whose own parents labored as an itinerant worker in Germany “because there was not enough work available in her small hometown.” The long mounds of soil are planted with printed screenshots of social media postings of fields and workers, bringing a historical capitalist reality to the current moment. The timing seemed especially appropriate as Berlin is brimming with the annual white asparagus crop – appearing on grocery shelves and restaurant menus for a limited number of weeks every year – dependent on migrant labor to make it possible.
Elsewhere the Essen-based documentary photographer and performer Andreas Langfeld features interviews with and photographs of persons familiar with racist attitudes and behaviors of the dominant German society directed toward them in ways obvious and subtle. His frank observations are refreshingly open in the project “Encounters in a post-migrant society (which unfortunately is not able to overcome its racism,”. Here Langfeld uses his experiments, public performances, and observations to move the social discourse forward on those and related topics, including sexual and other minorities in a pluralistic, evolving society.
One of the more striking examples of migrant life includes no physical representation of migrants themselves but the places they live and work, rebuilt painstakingly in miniature by Ecaterina Stefanescu, a UK-based architectural designer and artist. Visitors can lift the roof off and closely examine her models of homes and businesses she has mapped here in Berlin belonging to Romanian immigrants, revealing detailed environments that respond to the inhabitants’ cultural, psychological, and physical needs. She calls the project “Rooms.”
By carefully recreating these “intimate portraits of their interior spaces and possessions through a series of large-scale models and paper collages,” she says she illustrates the “liminal identity of immigrants and how this is expressed through their material culture.”
Here you glean a better understanding through “the transient domestic places they inhabit, the objects they surround themselves with during their migratory experience.”
Using techniques as varied as film, sound, gouache, painting, illustration, photography, and sculptural installation, the artists at Fresh A.I.R. present the impact of migration on people and societies from a great range of perspectives. One sees colder, harder themes of data collection, xenophobia, survival, and sacrifice contrasted alongside more inspired viewpoints of liberation, independence, equality, – and even the development of bohemian culture. Clearly, one can take away something meaningful from this migration experience.
“I didn’t know Christian and Patrick personally at the beginning of the project,” says graffiti writer/artist EGS, “but then we met and went spraying together.”
So many relationships on the street begin as easily, but this one is in service of a greater contemporary art effort – The Versus Project.
Now unveiling Part 2 of their collaborative canvasses exhibition here at Urban Nation’s special project space, Munich’s Patrick Hartl and Christian Hundertmark (C100) have combined their more painterly efforts as Layer Cake since 2015.
Reaching out to long-term and newer associates from the graffiti scene, they have been trading canvasses and ideas, and techniques for the last few years to discover how to work with others in a unique collaboration quest.
“The work on the canvases was very slow,” says EGS in the printed description of his participation in this second exhibition here. “One applied a layer of paint and then waited months again until it went on. But I wanted to take this time because the project was very close to my heart.”
“I’m super happy with the finished paintings and don’t even know who painted what in the end – that feels super. Working on the canvases together and sending them by mail seems extremely important to me in this age of digitalization, where everything is about speed It’s nice to send and receive art that’s measured by weight – not gigabytes.”
Here is a selection of the canvasses on display in the gallery now – each has its own fusion of minds and methods, an encoded presentation that contains the mark of two, presented as one. “In this way, an artistic dialogue is created,” say the project leads, “the canvases become the platform for a discussion on a painterly level – in this case by artists currently or formerly active in style writing from different generations, countries, and continents.”
The Versus Project 2 presented by Urban Nation and Layer Cake is currently open to the general public at Urban Nation Project Space in Berlin. Click HERE for additional information.
It has been a somewhat delirious spring week in Berlin-town as we cope with that special blend of bliss and dysphoria that envelopes you – mixing intercontinental jet lag, blooming cherry blossoms, birds chirping, aerosol spraying, and the chaos and grief of war at the doorstep. The shadow of war was never far from conversations.
All week we have been gratified, elated, to see the spirit of creativity everywhere- murals, tags, stickers,pop-up gallery show; but friends and colleagues speak of institutional failures, inflation, and fears of war spiraling. Notably in three conversations Berliners told us they expect America to re-elect Trump and that the US will soon be convulsed into war.
But the art! The streets! The spring! The murals in the rag-tag parks here that are dotted with skater half-pipes and blooming lilac bushes, the smell of piss and marijuana and cherry blossoms – it is all here in gritty and eclectic Berlin. People help point you in the next direction, and you discover more. The new real estate developments tend toward towering glass, and some previously artist neighborhoods are decidedly gentrifying, but the balance with the creative sector is still healthy, or so we think.
Today we are back in dirty old Brooklyn, but we already miss our sister-brother Berlin and the beautiful people we spent time with.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: 1UP Crew, Nafir, CMYK Dots, Anchor, Emikly Strangre202, Andrea Villanis, Andioh, Liz Art, Tobo Berlin, Devita, and Mash.
In a triumphant finishing act, we slapped a few stickers on the board this week to say goodbye to our exhibition, Martha Cooper: Taking Pictures at Urban Nation museum in Berlin. The original sticker board in the gallery area had become overloaded and layered with stickers from visitors to the show and also from sticker artists who mailed them to the museum, so we had to replace it with a new one that is filling up as well. Of course we had to slap one in the wash room too to join the visual chorus of tags and stickers always propagate there as a nod to the restrooms in clubs and concert venues all over this city.
Our sincere thanks to Martha for entrusting us with her history and her hundreds of photographs, ephemera, and personal effects so that we could tell the story 7+ decades and 100+ cities traveled to snap pictures. Thank you to the artists who allowed us to exhibit 80 original artworks that reinterpret her photographs and to pay tribute to her.
Thank you especially to film director Selina Miles for her 16 screen visual poem made specifically for this exhibition, to street artist Seth for his original mural painted directly on a two-story wall in the exhibit, to street artist AIKO for her mural on the facade of the museum, and to artist Shepard Fairey for creating a new Martha Remix collaboration artwork and for producing a 550-print release of it with us and Martha and Urban Nation. Thank you to the entire team at YAP for skillfully bringing the exhibit to fruition and to Urban Nation for entrusting us with the entire museum for this unprecedented show of the photographer’s career.
People like Martha Cooper only come around once in a while and her uncanny ability to capture many of the benchmarks in a changing culture give us collectively greater understanding and appreciation for it. Speaking of the many youth she photographs for her “street play” projects, she may as well be speaking of all the graffiti writers and street artists she captured as well. “”As I photographed these kids, I came to admire their creativity, energy, humor, and willingness to share.’” We are forever grateful for Martha’s willingness to share what she captured with all of us as well.
Martha Cooper: Taking Pictures is currently on view at the Urban Nation Museum Berlin. The exhibition will close this May 15th. For more details click HERE.
You could watch the Olympics on you screen – and who doesn’t love those amazing athletes? So inspirational. Problem is there are so many reports across the media that Beijing is quashing dissent (NYT, Human Rights Watch, The Guardian) so its hard to separate the place from the event. The banner for this week’s collection is a sticker we saw in Berlin in October – and it’s small but shocking.
Meanwhile here in the city we’re dropping indoor masking in a number of places, and Covid cases are dropping like Kamala’s presidential expectations. So people don’t have to wear masks, but deer do? Our new Vegan mayor is giving school children Vegan Fridays for lunch and taking the bus to work – at least in his new commercials. Think Bloomberg did the same with the subway when he began too. Also, guess he called white people “crackers” way back in 2019.
No wonder our street art is frequently conflicted – full of beauty, rage, disgust, confusion, fear, flaunting, hope, and poetry. It’s a mirror to us collectively, individually.
And here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week in Berlin, New York and Miami, featuring Tona, Batmanxi, Lahoedealer, Artist Diaz, Anne Baerun, Tinkers Trumpf, FCK WRS, C.M.B., Kiez Miez030, Huckleberry Fuckup, and Roberto Rivadaneira.
More than a hundred thousand or so visitors have come to our exhibition at Urban Nation in Berlin which takes over the entire museum. 350 photos, a few thousand more digitally, black books, drawings, ephemera, cameras, film slides, toys, miniatures, a mural, a complete timeline from 1943 to today, 70 original artworks, a 16 screen film collage by director Selina Miles… this is an endless collection of Martha’s personal and professional work and collections for all visitors to see.
The traffic is beginning to increase now that the end of this unprecedented life-spanning exhibition is nearing its end in May of this year, and we want to show you a few of the hidden gems just in case you have a free afternoon to visit the museum. It has been our honor and privilege to share this exhibition, to work so closely with the photographer herself, and to mount the first exhibition at Urban Nation that features the career of one artist – and thousands of artists.
Cey Adams, AFRO, Andres Art, Blanco, Mark Bodé, Bordalo II, Buster, C215, Carja, Victor Castillo, Cosbe, Daze, Jane Dickson, Owen Dippie, Ben Eine, Shepard Fairey, Freedom, Fumakaka, Futura, Grotesk, Logan Hicks, HuskMitNavn, Japao, James Jessop & Dscreet, Nicolas Lacombe, Justen Ladda, Lady Aiko, Lady Pink, The London Police, Mantra, John „Crash“ Matos, Nazza, Nunca, Okuda, Os Gêmeos, Alice Pasquini, Phlegm, Pixel Pancho, Dr. Revolt, Seth Globepainter, Skeme, Skewville, Skolas, Chris Stain, Tats Cru (Bio, BG183 and Nicer), Vhils, Ernest Zacharevic.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. BSA & Martha Cooper Discuss the Opening of MCL at UN
BSA Special Feature: BSA & Martha Cooper Discuss the Opening of MCL at UN
IN CONVERSATION WITH MARTHA COOPER, STEVEN P. HARRINGTON, AND JAIME ROJO (BSA) AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE MARTHA COOPER LIBRARY AT URBAN NATION BERLIN.
In November 2021, Martha Cooper was in Berlin together with Jaime Rojo and Steven P. Harrington of Brooklyn Street Art for a viewing of her exhibition “Taking Pictures”. Simultaneously the three announced the official opening of the Martha Cooper Library. They were each presented with the first MCL library cards in the MCL Reading Room at the Museum. With this, the library was formally inaugurated and has been open to the public since the second of November.
With Chief Librarian Eveline Wilson at the desk and Library Director Dr. Hans-Michael Brey leading the way, we are pleased that BSA’s vision and Martha’s vision of establishing an unrivaled library resource for scholars and students of graffiti and street art and related art movements across the globe will now have a dedicated collection for all.
Already, we are growing. Through the contact of Sascha Blasche, Hitzerot, we received a generous donation from the Dutch Graffiti Library in January of this year. The Dutch Graffiti Library was founded in 2018 by the twins Marcell and Richard van Tiggelen. Together with Sanne van Doorn, they built an extensive private collection on graffiti with a focus on the Netherlands and published several publications on the subject. Books from the Dutch Graffiti Library can be found in the OPAC. We also received an interesting donation from Kathryn Nussdorf. During a VHS (Berlin’s community education university) seminar, she created a fan book about the Berlin graffiti group CBS with many photos. In an exchange with the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy we have also received more catalogs. And in April there will be the first event: “MCL presents…”
Together with Jaime Rojo and Steven P. Harrington of Brooklyn Street Art, UN interviewed Martha Cooper about the opening on its very first day – about their common ideas, wishes and visions for the library.
We’re pleased today to show you the new article about our exhibition and book “Martha Cooper: Taking Pictures” at Urban Nation – this one from the German Monopol magazine.
“Her voice on the phone is friendly and warm. But Martha Cooper, this is clear, does not want to be bored. Naturally not,” begins journalist Silke Hohmann in her article for Monopol.
Martha Cooper: Taking Pictures. Urban Nation Museum Berlin. Monopol Magazine
“Otherwise she would not have climbed on a motorcycle in 1965 to ride from Thailand to England at the age of 22. Otherwise, she would not have moved to Tokyo as a young woman to explore and photograph a legendary and discrete tattoo scene and one of its masters at work. Otherwise, she would not become the first female photographer at the New York Post in the 1970s where she photographed life in the urban wasteland. Cooper’s photographs of Breakdancers from the 1980s are the first published pictures of a then still unknown dance form, essential for the emergence of Hip Hop culture.”
Martha Cooper: Taking Pictures. Urban Nation Museum Berlin. Monopol MagazineMartha Cooper: Taking Pictures. Urban Nation Museum Berlin. Monopol MagazineMartha Cooper: Taking Pictures. Urban Nation Museum Berlin. Monopol MagazineMartha Cooper: Taking Pictures. Urban Nation Museum Berlin. Monopol MagazineMartha Cooper: Taking Pictures. Urban Nation Museum Berlin. Monopol MagazineMartha Cooper: Taking Pictures. Urban Nation Museum Berlin. Monopol Magazine
Happy NYC Marathon! The trees all over the city appear to be at peak every year around this event – just check the aerial shot of the finish line as the runners cross it in Central Park today. Also, set your clocks back one hour today, or you’ll arrive late for work tomorrow. If you have a job, that is.
News this week that the prolific and cryptic text writer RAMBO has passed away. We extend our condolences to his friends and family. His passing follows quickly the death of the octogenarian Irish-New York street artist Robert Janz, whose street collages and text installations served as witnesses to ecological and social issues he felt strongly about, as well as were a commentary on the human condition in all its mysteries. Our condolences to all those who were touched by the work and the spirit of Mr. Janz.
Our interview with the street today includes Adrian Wilson, ERRE, Fernsehturn Berlin, Jim Avignon, Layer Cake, Miss Glueniverse, Peter Missing, Praxis, Ron Miller, Sara Lynne-Leo, Joanna Wietecka, Styro, and Toxicomano.
Today at 10:00 AM PDT Shepard Fairey will release his newest print and collaboration with Martha Cooper, “People’s Discontent”. Shepard’s long friendship with Martha has brought several collaborations throughout the years with Shepard remixing some of Martha’s most iconic photos from her Street Play series from the mid-’70s. The print already saw its European release in Berlin last Friday, October 30th at the Urban Nation Museum in Berlin with us and Martha in attendance.
“I teamed up with my good friend and documentary photographer, Martha Cooper, on a new print release called “People’s Discontent.” Martha Cooper has been photographing creative kids in action on city streets since the mid-1970s. I remixed one of Martha’s iconic photos from her book, Street Play, titled “Hitchhiking a Bus on Houston Street” that she shot in 1978 in the Lower East Side of New York City. There was no advertisement on the back of the bus in her original photo, and since disco was the rage in the late ’70s, I thought it made sense for me to add a disco radio station with the slogan, “Listen To The Sounds of People’s Disco.” I added the “DISCO-ntent” and the spraypaint can in the kid’s hand as if he sprayed that on there. It’s a nod to that era but also to what’s going on now with the unrest around social justice issues.”
“This limited edition print was first released through Urban Nation Museum in Berlin as part of their current show “Martha Cooper: Taking Pictures” curated by Jaime Rojo and Steven P. Harrington of Brooklyn Street Art and will soon be up on my website this Thursday at 10 AM PT. Check it out!” – Shepard Fairey
Venezuelan-born, Munich-based SatOne has graffiti-writing credentials dating back to the early 90s. Over time his letters went post-graffiti to imaginary worlds and science-fiction-inspired abstractions. Employed by big lifestyle, sport, and automotive brands over the last decade, his own work is full of movement and visual adventure-seeking.
Here in Berlin to participate in the Urban Nation One Wall initiative in the neighborhood of Spandau, SatOne (Rafael Gerlach) says he thinks of it as “Coming Home”, and names his new massive mural the same.
“The strict, vertical lines of the balconies can be interpreted as overlapping plateaus or levels,” says the project description. “They are arranging themselves in a dynamic pictorial composition on the surface, and just as life itself they seem constantly in motion.”
With stunning new shots from Nika Kramer we bring you the newest piece by SatOne, who says “Thanks to the daredevils Samuel, Flo and Michelle.” You know who you are.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
