Bundeskunst[skate]halle/ Federal Art [Skate] Hall

[Fotos: Alexander Basile | Video: Janosch Pugnaghi (additional Filming Jan-Peter Horns) | Sideshots: Stefan Schwinghammer]

The federal art gallery in Germanys former capitol Bonn is a venerable museum which inhabits more than 220 exhibitions. If you go there as a skater you will likely have to leave your board at the wardrobe. Anyways, visiting the Karl Lagerfeld exhibition "Modemethode" you will really be wanting to skate there. A street scenery was installed, featuring a Berlin street tunnel photograph. Still, the housekeeper would get mad at people for just taking some snapshots on their phones so even a flat Ollie seemed too ambitious.

But not only skaters were pretty keen on skating the facility, graffiti artists shared our interest in re–using the space, too. Luckily, the officials understood the spots potential and invited some big names to hook up the walls with some extra paint (among others Delta and Erosie from the Netherlands, Aris from Italy and Jeanspezial from France). The result was the Bundeskunsthall of Fame.

Paco Elles – Backside Nosebluntslide in front of a Delta piece

For the exhibition's closing event photographer Alexander Basile came to Bonn and immediately got stoked on the spot's skateability. Even curator Allan Gretzki and Johanna Adam, a federal art hall official, who Alex contacted right after his first visit, were excited about the idea right away. That was when we got a call, asking if we wanted to skate the museum. Obviously we were in on first sight. We quickly got a crew together and there we went. The day before dismantling the exhibition we had twelve hours to tear it to shreds.

With a lot of lighting and even more experience Basile, who works as an artist but has roots in skateboarding, impressingly captured what went down. The scenery was reconstructed from the ground up, but except from a picnic table nothing else was added. We recycled the Lagerfeld exhibition gone graffiti jam and made our own out of it. Upcycling at it's best.