King ADZ - Street Knowledge

At this time there wasn’t any commercial side to the graffiti movement, and Alife has been based on the art side of things from the beginning. Back then they didn’t make clothing, they didn’t do footwear — just a space for art, and after they had made enough noise from that, did they think about producing clothing and everything else that they do now.

‘Everything that we’ve done has been a learning experience from having no experience of owning a business to running businesses and independently promoting all the shit that we do. And then having big corporations come and, like, mimic the shit that we’re doing but with big fucking budgets. Once in a while there is some interesting shit that goes on out there, and the people that evolve and are not following any shit, any trend — that’s the kind of people we like to involve ourselves with. Where I see us going is hopefully the money is going to get bigger and with the bigger budget do more powerful, widely seen things for the public. Using the clothing and the footwear to bring the money in to do the shit that we really like to do — the creative shit.’

Wherever Alife is going you can be sure of one thing: that Alife will continue to create and produce art clothing whatever, with a real connection to the streets from which it came — New York City streets, and that is the one place that is King of street culture.

www.banksy.co.uk

Back in the 1980s when graffiti was just crossing over into the New York downtown art scene, somewhere in Bristol, some kid called Robin was going to school and having fun. Years later, mirroring the past (just like the old-school New York graffiti ‘writers’), Banksy began his career as a graffiti writer and attempted to get up on every wall of the borough of Easton, where he was from. The Banksy juggernaut began rolling with his first ever exhibition, which was held in a block of council flats. He sold four canvases to the band Massive Attack. He then progressed to using stencils, as it was a lot quicker to apply and created a harder impact, something that has always been important for his work. A well hard impact! And the resulting attention to detail is one reason why Banksy is responsible for the popularity of street art right now. He is the undisputed leader of the movement and his work is by far the wittiest, most accessible of any artist of the last 50 years. This is because everyone gets it. He gets up somewhere and the resulting piece makes the front page of newspapers all over the world because the work is beautiful, topical, cheeky and extremely accessible.

Although Banksy hails from Bristol, his artistic home is the streets of London (and later LA, New York, New Orleans, Bamako and the West Bank) for it was here that he built up his name with his stunts such as installing his illegal 25-ton statue opposite the Law Courts, or stickering police cars with ‘Legal Graffiti Zone’ written on them. Shows from Shoreditch to Mayfair showcased his unique brand of street art. Banksy is undoubtedly responsible for the rise of the art movement, as he has taken graffiti out of the streets and into the hearts and minds of the public with his witty, spot-on pieces all over the world. No-one would be making a living off their street art if it wasn’t for Banksy.

www.kelseybrookes.com

Kelsey is a contemporary painter whose work has been inadvertently influenced by the street. I first met Kelsey when he was working as a scientist in some lab in San Diego and had tracked him down as I wanted to show his killer work in ‘1 percent’, a free online PDF that I used to edit all about urban creativity. He was doing something completely different and fresh, and was a sweet, out-there guy. I then ran ‘The 92024 Report’ in which Kelsey would tell us about his life on the West Coast in Issue 3 but the column never really developed, as it was the last ever issue of the mag.

So eight years later he’s blown up and is a full-time fully paid-up member of the global artistic community, and having exhibitions around the world. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

‘My work is about what I see when I close my eyes. It is about spirituality and the unknown. Others are calling it “Neo Shamanistica”, I call it what I do when I’m not eating. It’s evolved by means of random mutation and natural selection. In this case I am both the mutation and the selection, which really accelerates and distorts the evolutionary process.’

www.ninabraun.net

Some crazy shit going on here. Nina creates art by using tactile, unusual techniques such as knitting and sewing. It’s totally fresh and I love it. Nina Braun is a European artist who was born in Italy and then raised mainly in Germany near Cologne by a Dutch mother and a German father. She had a good childhood moving a few times as a kid, living in the Netherlands and Hamburg, with the result that today she doesn’t feel rooted to any one place. She now lives and works in Berlin.

‘I love to mix supposedly outmoded handcraft techniques with contemporary matters. I take the liberty to explore different materials and processes. I produce sculptures, installations, textile pictures and paintings, objects and cartoons.’

Back inna day she studied Visual Arts at art school in Hamburg.

‘It was there that I received the impression that art is not allowed to be fun and should not be pleasing to look at. I left the academy before the exams, partly disappointed, but partly for the benefit of (skateboarding company) Sumo, that expanded with rapid strides back then. My “education” continued on the streets and I improved my skills in urban disciplines. I finally entered the ‘real’ art world, but I keep my background—urban culture — visible in my work by using an iconic picture language and characters to tell my stories.’

Berlin has been one the finest cities for the urban generation for the last ten years and will continue to do so for some time, as in the grand scheme of things Berlin is a total infant as it has only been one city since 1989. The streets are plastered with graffiti and street art (only recently outlawed) and the Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, and Prenzlauer Berg areas are where it’s at for street life. This is where the young and the restless hang and the great-quality, cheap places to eat, sleep and drink are in abundance.

Because of the number of youth in the city there is a lot of cheap entertainment on offer. There are too many clubs and venues even to think about listing and every genre of music is catered for. In the Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain neighbourhoods there are many small bars that open up and attract boho crowds that are seriously unique. This is the place where the doner kebab was invented. Forget what you know about the doner, in Berlin they are one of the most delicious things you can eat.

A short walk from the Ostkreuz station is a really great street called Sonntagstrasse, which is a great place to spend an evening. A lot of students live in this area as it is cheap and not-yet developed. There are a few hostels and cheap hotels here and many bars and restaurants.

The Mitte area has been almost completely rebuilt since 1989 as this was where the wall ran its course with large parts mainly no-man’s land between East and West Berlin, and a lot of the fashion industry and boutique hotels are situated here.