柏林的街头艺术

Over in the German capital, street art is a big industry. It’s not 100-percent legal yet, but the city’s title of UNESCO’s City of Design has kept the authentic flavor of graffiti and urban art alive. Now the city’s raw side has attracted numerous visitors, and has become a profitable hot spot for local tourism.

Art critic Emilie Trice called Berlin "the graffiti Mecca of the urban art world". From huge mural paintings to smaller graffiti, the German capital is a hotspot for the temporary, and often illegal, art form.

Back when the city was divided between East and West Berlin, the western side of the city’s wall became a large mural, where artists from around the world would write messages and paint pictures.

And after the fall of the wall, the vast open and largely abandoned spaces of East Berlin became an empty canvas that gradually became filled with art and graffiti.

Alana Richards, tour guide, said,"There’s a lot of street artists, graffiti writers from around the world that are travelling to this city. Some of them stay long term, some of them just passing through. But they put up a lot of work throughout. Of course a lot of the abandoned buildings that are all over Berlin, this makes it very very attractive for a lot of artists to come here."

Alana further explains that traditional "graffiti" has to do with marking a territory by writing a name, or a tag, on a space, while "street art" is more versatile, it can include putting up posters, painting large paintings on walls or even building large sculptures.

The Berlin street art tour and workshop has been running since 2006, and has become a tourist attraction in itself. Each year around 2-thousand people take part in the Alternative Street Art Tour of Berlin. participants usually get a hands-on lesson as well.

Alana Richards said,"We go through a lot of the most notorious Berlin-based crews to a lot of the most international street artists as well. But we will look at the smallest pieces to the biggest murals in the city."

The tours are exclusively in English, but around half of the participants are German, the other half from all over the world.

Susan Rezlek, Swiss tourist, said,"Berlin is very famous for this and I think it’s just a part of Berlin when you come here. It was very exciting and interesting."

Lars Anderssen, Danish tourist, said,"It’s very good. I learnt a lot of new things about street art. So maybe I will go home and search for more information about it."

The 5-hour long tour runs 4 times a week, all year around. And with the ever-changing street art landscape, the thoughtful tour guides will change routes for visitors, depending on where the best works are visible.