As if this year wasn’t already like a Kubrick film, mysterious monoliths like the one in 2001: Space Odyssey started appearing around the world. And I bet you didn’t know that Berlin had its own.
The first monolith, found in Utah’s Red Rock Country by some biologists surveying bighorn sheep from a helicopter, was placed there sometime in 2016.
photos: Abdulsalam Ajaj.
Artist Mischa Badasyan was at it again with one of his naked interventions. After the Viktoriapark waterfall and the subway he now took over the beautiful Körnerpark in Neukölln and filled it with naked human bodies during one of his actions. It was basically a nudist picnic in the park celebrating the liberation of the body, the human form and its connection to nature. What better place to choose than the dreamy ambiance of this special park in Neukölln.
But the new photos series captured once again by Abdulsalam Ajaj is just a glimpse of a much bigger project that includes several interventions in public places. For upcoming shoots, Mischa is always looking for more participants. So if you want to become part of the series you can get in touch with him by writing him an eMail. We are already curious about the next location and of course the big reveal of the entire project later this year!
Rows of shopping paper bags put up upside down in the middle of a busy street in a way that they resemble gravestones. Unfortunately, that’s not any silly Halloween action. On the contrary – the ”RIPMARK” bags, each with a cross printed on them in a familiar blue font, symbolize actual deaths of innocent people. The happening, organized by intervention artists Rocco and his Brothers in a collaboration with the street artist Hera from Herakut, is a bold gesture of protest against fast fashion.
photos: Abdulsalam Ajaj
Meet the Berlin-based artist creating his own, undressed version of the BVG’s ‘Because We Love You’ campaign.
Deliberately provocative, Mischa Badasyan is known for unusual art projects in photography, film or performance art. The Russian-born multidisciplinary artist is stepping over graphic, ethical and legal lines to move his viewer to reflect the society and the politics we live in. After moving to Berlin in 2013, his project “Save The Date” (2014) put him on the critics’ map, raising the age-old question: What is art, and is this art?
During his project, in between self-experiment, performance piece, and social study, he slept with a different man every day for a year. The project dealt with the absurd ways we seem to seek a brief feeling of proximity in blind dates and one night stands, that’s only followed by painful emptiness. “Only through pain we are able to learn something truly honest,” Badasyan told MAZ during the project.
Berlin’s iconic subway has gotten its fair share of street art interventions, such as the train filled with leaves or the one equipped with extra surveillance cameras. Our subway stations also got temporarily adorned with some bold graffitis like the big smiley or the two hands.
Berlin-based artist and street art interventionist Vermibus also once used the Berlin subway stations as a gallery. For his bizarrely obscured advertising posters of fashion and beauty products he changes the perfect models into demonic creatures by painting over the prints with dissolvent. His work also made its way through Europe in the following years. His latest series brought him to the Metro in Paris. What a perfect match these fashion demons are for Paris!
If you want to see his work up-close and personal you should come to his new solo exhibition In Absentia that will open this Thursday on November 9th 2017 at Open Walls Gallery and run through November 25. Enjoy a making of video of his Paris intervention below.
Who draws the line between privacy and policies aiming at public safety? Is it the people through voting and demonstrating or is it the governments, who are in total control of this somehow delicate matter? The fact that these questions cannot be answered with a simple yes or no, but need to be thought through first, before shaping an opinion is what it renders this issue one of the most controversial and exciting topics of this century.
We are currently living in countries that are constantly under the shadow of potential terror attacks. As far as Germany and more specifically Berlin is concerned, this has led to the installation of nearly 15.000 surveillance cameras around the city, the vast majority of which are part of the system of public transport. Their presence is discreet making the feeling of being monitored rather rare. One of the current governing parties, the CDU, has always pleaded for the presence of closed-circuit television. Yet one inconvenient question seems to linger: does this measure have a positive effect on people’s safety and if yes, is it substantial enough to justify the countless eyes following us in our daily life? Especially in light of the recent assault of a young woman in the Berlin subway this topic has come up in people’s minds again.
The intervention artists Rocco and his brothers have addressed the issue through the following brass initiative documented in this suspenseful video.
Their name fits Berlin’s quality of being a playground for grown-ups. Here you can try out all your crazy ideas and it doesn’t matter if you succeed or fail, it’s all about living it out. For the street art crew TOY this is true in the most literal sense.
Just last week we chuckled about their live intervention with an S-Bahn train that received some flower pots glued to their windows. And this week we received yet another, even more spectacular one: They filled up a wagon of the U-Bahn with Autumn leaves and played around in the fun mess. But how do you get dozens of huge garbage bags full of leaves into the train without being noticed? Their latest intervention video shows how it was done…