If you’re into time-traveling, look no further than to Hamburg, Germany: Not far from the city‘s mighty BSTN Store, the exhibition “Eine Stadt wird bunt” (“A city turned colorful”) currently takes you back right into the 80s when a handful of Hamburg teenagers got infected with this new thing called ‘hip hop’ and consequently changed the cityscape forever. Their weapons of choice? Spray cans, dancing, slang, rhymes and tirelessly talent for improvisation.
With the help of hundreds of rare exhibits, including a fully-decorated 80s children’s room, “Eine Stadt wird bunt” illustrates how hip hop and its four elements – graffiti, breakdancing, DJing and rap – helped young people to make Hamburg and its gray post-war architecture more colorful and consequently turn it into one of the epicenters of the graffiti and hip hop scene in Europe alongside Paris, Amsterdam and BSTN’s hometown of Munich.
The pioneering spirit that made a virtue out of necessity is particularly tangible in the exhibition: While hip hop gave the German b-boys and fly-girls a new identity, they couldn’t simply emulate their U.S. role models via online tutorials or matching outfit purchases.
We’re talking the 80s and pre-online-shop-days, when the internet was merely a mysterious place in a Sci-Fi movie for most. So name belt buckles and baggy clothes got DIY’d, magazines were painstakingly put together with a photocopier, and for lack of bold markers for tagging, parental shoe polish was put to good use. And the city never was the same.
The exhibition “Eine Stadt wird bunt. Hamburg Graffiti History 1980-1999” is on display at the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte until January 7, 2024. It includes nearly 500 exhibits, including photos, texts, sketchbooks, spray cans, newspapers, magazines, records, physical and digitized fanzines, and video interviews with Hamburg hip hop pioneers (including English subtitles).
