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An Exhibition About the Bicycle as a Utopia.

A moving exhibition touring Berlin on all weekends in August and September.

The Easy Rider Road Show is an exhibition about bicycles on bicycles. It is dedicated to subcultures which revolve around pedal-powered bicycles. The Easy Rider Road Show exhibits 6 photography projects by international photographers on 5 modified cargo bikes. It presents the bicycle as a medium carrying a promise of freedom, as a source of happiness and a utopia.

The mobile exhibition will tour Berlin on all weekends in August and September and will stop at previously announced locations. The starting point will be Märkisches Museum on most days, we encourage everyone to join the exhibition and ride along.

Every cargo bike will show 6 photographs. Folded out like the solar panels of a spaceship the bikes transform into a photo exhibition amid the urban space. All photo projects on display share the intention to portray communities which rely on the bicycle as an essential part of their reality.

The Photo Projects

The photographer Tod Seelie already took photographs of the first New York Bike Kill in 2002. Since then, he has never missed a single annual meet-up celebrating the »mutant bicycle«. In this regular event punks present their self-made bicycle constructions and compete against each other. Seelie, a bicycle enthusiast himself, also takes part in the Easy Rider Road Show with another series about riding bicycles as a community and also the Cuban bike enthusiast Félix Ramón Guirola Cepero. The latter builds record-breaking penny-farthing bicycles.

Julie Glassberg accompanied the members of the Black Label Bike Clubs for years which organise the Bike Kills. This was the only way that she was able to portray this media-weary group behind the scenes and to show the anarchist community known for the wild performance of the Bike Kill.

The Bike Wars that take place in Berlin Kreuzberg are similar to the competitions of the Bike Kill. Here, too, only one person will be left in the saddle by the end of the contest. The Bike Wars are the equivalent of dancing pogo on a bicycle. Christophe Gateau documented punks doing just that.

The London BikeStormz have long outgrown their subcultural nature. Thousands of young mostly male participants join this ride. This movement has the objective to keep adolescents from drugs and violence and motivate them with acrobatic biking. »Knives down, bikes up« is their slogan, an allusion to the many youths who fall victim to stabbings in London. Adam Corbett documented the wild style of the London Bike Life.

The Chilangos Low Bike Club presents its own bicycle aesthetic. Mexican immigrants in the USA modified their rides and transformed them into chrome-plated »lowriders«. Coming from the poorest boroughs of Mexcio City the Chilangos are against crime and drugs. They ride through the city every Sunday to take a stand against the stereotype that all inhabitants of the slums are criminals. The French photographer Jeoffrey Guillemard also accompanied the members of the club in their everyday lives

The Easy Rider Road Show is a project of the musuku (Museum of Subcultures) in cooperation with the Stadtmuseum Berlin Foundation. The Easy Rider Road Show will also be on display as a special exhibition at the Märkisches Museum in Berlin-Mitte from November 12th 2021 to March 27th 2022. It will also include screenings and discussion panels.

Framework program

Bike tours & rolling exhibition through Berlin, on various dates during August & September 2021.
Tour dates

Aug — Sep 2021
Tours: see musuku website

musuku – Museum der Subkulturen e.V.

Sophienstraße 18, 10178 Berlin
[District: Mitte | Borough: Mitte]

Admission free