Street Art Hub Berlin – of birds and numbers

TEXT: CORNELIA BRELOWSKI

Everyone knows that Berlin and graffiti, or the more sociably accepted term street art, go hand in hand – indeed, graffiti here work as a global indicator of where you are.

The former Wall remains in Mauerpark have long been accepted as a weekly renewed canvas for creative residents or travelling street artists, while every house facade, no matter how fresh the paint, bears its own share of less reputable throws and, well, sometimes simply meaningless scribble. For the real enthusiasts, I can reveal that there is a hidden stretch down the Mauerweg path between the Bornholmer Straße and Wollanckstraße stations – but you have to find it in the bushes by the Overground tracks (bring your machete). Most people can glimpse the designs from the S-Bahn trains, the perspective for which they are created.

It was in the years after the fall of the Wall, both the nineties and the noughties, that some new Banksy type-artists started roaming the streets of Berlin. One of them was 6, also dubbed as Mr. 6 or The 6-Artist, who famously took his old bike around former East Berlin to mark the structures of to-be-gentrified or torn down buildings with a simple 6 – leaving his message open to interpretation. A more official one was the yellow banana, marking a pop-up-gallery. Some of the well-situated galleries in Mitte still bear the yellow banana sign.

Aside from notorious West Berlin stars like Jim Avignon, or US skater-scene icon Shepard Fairey, who has left numerous murals and large-scale art works behind during the second decade of the new millennium, less publicly operating people like The 6-Artist remain stubbornly in the heads of residents who have lived here since the reunification. They belong to a less obvious yet persistent tribe, whose existence is simply shown through repetitive yet unassuming patterns – for example a still operating collective responsible for the numerous bird graffiti cheerfully splattered across town.

Street Art Hub Berlin – of birds and numbers

Left: Kreuzberg. Photo: Evelyn Csabai. Right: Prenzlauer Berg. Photo: Cornelia Brelowski

I don’t know how many years ago I stumbled across my first street bird, but there are several styles, and The Birds Crew that signs (or rather doesn’t always sign) responsible, claims to have been here for no less than 25 years. The birds tend to unexpectedly lighten up the Berliners’ daily travels – especially since they are unobtrusive and not bearing an obvious political message other than a good dose of humour.

For those who love their street art curated and set in context, I should of course mention the Museum for Contemporary Urban Art, humbly named URBAN NATION, near Nollendorfplatz at Bülowstraße; the Obey Giant (Shepard Fairey) office – well-hidden near the Fischerinsel area at Inselstraße in Mitte (blink and you’ll miss it) and – if I must – the East Side Gallery on the party mile between Ostbahnhof and Oberbaumbrücke, a much overrated stretch of the Wall, which nowadays presents nothing more than a mild nuisance to any long term resident – due to the hundreds of tourists on e-scooters taking snapshots of ‘original’, multiple sprayed-over Wall graffiti.

Back to our more unassuming friends such as The 6-Artist and The Birds: you will glimpse traces of the two street art veterans in Mitte, Pankow and Prenzlauer Berg, as well as Kreuzberg. I hope they will give you some sense of gravity, in this town of graffiti.