Meet the Street

I’ve been stalking an individual quite by accident.  I didn’t set out to be obsessed; it just followed naturally.  First I took notice, then I started taking photographs, discreetly at first, then more planned and executed.  Then I found out the name of my subject was just an Alias.

You can see the works of street artist ‘Alias’ all over Berlin.  His works are fresh but familiar, political without being arrogant, and invasive while still within the context of the environment.  If you’ve lived in Berlin for a while you may have seen his works.  I’ve even used some shots of his work in previous blogs when I’ve run out of pics of donuts or beer.

I’ve always been fascinated by urban decay.  I’ve taken so many pictures of cracking walls, peeling paint, chipped bricks and rusty metal to completely reconstruct a 20^th century city completely from my images.  I’m drawn to the way that the Earth takes it all back in spite of the best construction materials we can stack in stony rows.  In the midst of all of this decay, some no-talent kids like to steal a spray can or two and leave their mark—like dogs pissing on each wall they pass.  Others make it a point to beautify their environment, to cover the corrosion with the bright colors of a vivid imagination.  These people are street artists, and should in no way be associated with common taggers and vandals.  A street artist uses the cityscape as his gallery, effectively bypassing the entire nepotistic and ego driven ‘what is art’ gallery world largely run by elitists.

Alias is one such street artist.  He works with stencils based on photographs; he applies these stencils and paper stickers in amusing locations and vanishes.  The image can be of a boy sitting on a bomb, a boy morphing into a cat or—one of my favorites: a screaming woman with the words ‘Don’t be afraid, it’s only gentrification!’

A while back I went to the opening night of an Alias exhibition of new paintings entitled ‘My Belly Is Mumbling.'  Apparently when he is not spraying and pasting up city walls, Alias plies his trade in more tried and true venues.  At the show I wondered if Alias would show his face, since the legal status of street art is dubious at best.  At the West Side Gallery, I was pleased to see a variety of well-executed Alias pieces committed to canvas, wood and rusty metal doors.  This gave the effect of viewing pieces which were ripped from the city walls and brought into the gallery.

The place was abuzz with the usual art people and fashion victims.  We sat and wondered if Alias was lying low, incognito in the midst of his audience, hiding just stage left of the spotlight.  Maybe it’s the guy with all the girls and booze around him seated on the couch.  Perhaps it’s the quiet dude with the paint-spattered pants leaning on a pillar.  We went to the gallery mini bar for a drink and plied the barman for information.  “Is Alias here?  Do you know him?”

To which the barman replied, “No…um…maybe….ummm…would you like a drink?”

For info on the upcoming Alias show:

http://www.street-lab.net/index.php?page=artists

A Flickr Alias group with more Alias art than you can shake a stick at:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/710677@N23/pool/

Habituation

"I have become comfortably numb."  - Pink Floyd

No, I am not loaded as I write this (for a change); but I DID have a donut this morning (go figure).  It's coming up on my 2nd anniversary in Berlin (January) and the process of habituation is nearly complete:  I no longer see Berlin as 'Ooh! Wow! Neato! Lookit!' and have become just another expat specimen consuming and excreting with Berlin as a fuzzy backdrop.

This affects my blogging; I was just talking with Lady Snooker about how I used to blog once a week--which slowly faded down to once a month.  Has my creative mojo gone?  Has my donut filling finally dried up?  No, I suspect that Old Rascal Habituation has done its thang on my eyes and ears.  It's happened to me before in other exotic locales:  London, Dublin and Prague.  Right about the time the traveler settled in to the routine; the study program (London), the jobs (Dublin and Prague) and the rent payments, the Buzz decreases, the new becomes familiar, then routine, then Old Hat.

I have noticed my best photographs of a location are generally taken within the first few months of living in a new place.  After that, things that were extraordinary become, well, ordinary.  This is a psychological process which allows us to protect our senses from the onslaught of new experience, disregard the mundane, and keep a lookout for new stimuli.   The wiki article on habituation mentions that soon after a human wears clothing, the sensations wear off.  Can you imagine if you could constantly FEEL the cloth chaffing you as you moved around?  I believe we would be batshit in about 72 hours.  Or city traffic and street sounds would make a New Yorker insane (scratch that; New Yorkers are NUTS) in weeks.

But what is basically psychological protection is damned inconvenient if you are a writer or photographer.  The details we pick out as unique and noteworthy start fading into the background.  So this is when we need to focus more.  Berlin is pegged as an ever-changing city; a city evolving before our eyes. Fortunately, if you look hard enough, you can see the paint drying:  the constantly shifting street art, the ever-changing rotation of festivals, events and goings on.  I now have more time on my hands than usual (my slow season for work), so my lack of money coupled with my excess of time gives me the perfect opportunity to slow down and observe.

I would like to also point out that many of the things I mention on this blog are cheap or free: Karaoke in Mauerpark (see: Return of Melvis) only requires a bit of nerve and/or liquid courage (and in Berlin, liquid courage is 60 cents per bottle).  Taking snaps of local street art is free if you shoot digital.  I have been following certain Berliner street artists and noticing their styles.  So when the background just starts to get a bit fuzzy, sometimes a new stencil, poster, or art piece will appear in the cacophony of color that is Berlin.

So let me throw out some ideas and we can all be comfortably numb in Berlin--with or without the chemicals.

If you have any ideas for free/cheap things to do in Berlin that Google doesn't know about, please comment.

Festival of Lights photo by Craig Robinson Photography

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Death of an Artist

I went to visit my old neighborhood of Friedrichshain today. It was one of the few sunny days we’ve had in Berlin for a while and I was thinking it was about time we had some summer.

I stuffed the camera in the backpack and headed out.

Friedrichshain is changing—of course. It became ‘hip’ and therefore it is doomed to gentrification, higher rents, overdevelopment, displaced creative types and worse yet: yoga joints and sushi bars. Well, that shit had already begun when we decided to leave, and thankfully, it’s still gonna be a long time before the punks let the yuppies push them out. Whenever the punks want a can of spray paint to tag an SUV they can contact me here. I’ll buy the fucker.

The old squats on Rigaer strasse were still holding out; new posters plastered everywhere suggested that the battle was being lost. It’s as if the squats were a slowly sinking ship with corporate raiders on the stern and fenced-in youth hanging on the bow, swinging bottles and laughing and living in spite of the hull breach.

I was shooting some pics of the street when our Russian artist friend suddenly took us on a detour off the street through a passage to the back of some flats. I was preoccupied with shooting various kiddie rides in a playground overgrown with tall grass. My girlfriend said that our friend was taking us to meet her American artist friend. She said she was very impressed with his paintings. He was also from California, so naturally she thought I should meet him. I said why not. Nadja pushed the buzzer and I continued shooting. I’ve never been a fan of dropping in on people unannounced. And I don’t like it when they do the same to me. I like pre-arranged fun. But I was following the leader, so gate crash we did.

 

I heard Nadja shout “WHAT?!!? I CAN’T BELIEVE!!!” A middle aged woman stood on her second floor balcony with a red-headed girl of around 7. The woman said the artist had died of a heart attack last week. It was unexpected and the man was only 42. I heard the girl say “mein papa ist tot.” Nadja was emotional. She said that she couldn’t understand it. The girl, upon hearing Nadja speaking English, simply clarified: “my papa is dead.”  I felt like I had swallowed a brick.

These are the kind of moments when perspective smacks you square in the face and all of the little things you bitched about all week—late trains, bad lunches, flat beer—seem like a complete waste of breath.  I suddenly felt self-conscious of the fact that I had a camera around my neck. I put my camera back in the bag. I said I was sorry. I’ve never liked the failure of English language to express any real emotion. All I could say was “I’m sorry.” Why? I didn’t kill the guy. But all you can say when someone has lost somebody close is “I’m sorry.” That’s what you say when a mourning woman and her young child are looking down on you from a 2nd floor balcony of the flat of a dead artist. And then you walk away.

Bring Out The Pimp

And the third Prez makes a hat-trick.

Kennedy, Obama, and Clinton. They all have a special place on my blog. They came to Berlin. They saw. They bought a donut. They dunked it.

I love Berlin Graffiti. You will see a lot of it on these pages, all three of you who read them. The one thing I love more than graffiti in Berlin is political graffiti in Berlin. Not 'Anarchy,' 'Fight da Power' and all that tired bullshit.

I like the graffiti that states an obvious yet frivolously humorous fact. Perhaps we can call it 'wikiffiti.' Fact: Bill Clinton is a Pimp. In the hip-hop sense of the word. Like, 'he da man, da playah, all dat and a bag a chips.' Not to be confused with an ACTUAL pimp, i.e. the purveyor of female flesh to the oldest customers of the oldest profession. Not to say that Big Bill peddled flesh of the back of the White House when he was The Dude In The Chair.

But I wouldn't put it past him. I mean, why not? He's da Pimp.

Word.