Thousands of bikers stand on their rear wheels. They drive confidently through the streets of Westminster. Then they perform their tricks on the high streets of the East End, in Brixton and in Croydon. “Knifes down, bikes up” - “Knives down, wheels up” - emblazoned on their T-shirts. Many young Londoners are part of this unusual demonstration. They protest against the gangs' war. The “Bike Stormz” want to set an example and show young people a way out of crime, according to the movement's manifesto. It was founded in 2014 by the bicycle activist Mac Ferrari and the art cyclist Jack O'Neill. Her work is documented by Adam Corbett, who photographed the teenagers' stunts in impressive black and white images.His pictures of the “Revolution on Two Wheels” will now be shown as part of the “Easy Rider Road Show” exhibition in the Märkisches Museum in Berlin.

Kevin Hanschke

Volunteer.

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The show, which was conceived in cooperation with the Museum für Subkulturen, celebrates the bicycles as instruments of freedom and resistance and shows pictures of cyclists from all over the world.

It is about depicting cycling as a way of life and a form of protest and showing that it shapes subcultures, it says in the opening text.

But in the initial phase, around two hundred years ago, the bicycle was initially a toy for the nobility and bourgeoisie.

It was not until the turn of the century that it became a symbol of a social movement - among the suffragettes.

With the help of bicycles, women could travel alone and break free from the Victorian dress code.

Historical recordings from London and New York show this.

To tell the story of bicycle culture, the museums have gathered more than a hundred photos and models of bicycles.

Many of the exhibits are bizarre, but they show how the bicycle initiates changes, "transformations", as it is called in the exhibition, be it in socialist bicycle workshops in Havana or at bicycle nomad meetings in Colorado.

In the self-image as anti-consumerists

Particularly impressive are the shots of Tod Seelie, who photographed the “Bike Kill Festival”, a freak show by the “mutant bikes”, at which bicycle fools from the United States come together and show their unusual bicycle designs. The bicycles in the pictures look like sculptures - sometimes they are two-meter high high-profile bikes made of thin metal, sometimes souped-up mountain bikes with thick tires, sometimes devices that are operated by hand. Often the participants are costumed themselves. In the evening, the hobbyists demonstrate their constructions and express their personality in the process.

The festival organizer is another bike enthusiast institution - the Black Label Bike Club, founded in 1992 by Jacob Houle and Per Hanson in Minneapolis.

The club is dedicated to the penny farthing.

One and a half meter high models of bicycles show the photos of Julie Glassberg, a documentary photographer from France who met with the members over several years.

In the spirit of the steampunk and do-it-yourself movement, they build their own wheels and then destroy them again.

In anarchic fighting spectacles, the hobbyists swing on their high-powered bikes, ride into each other with padded lances and fall on cotton wool and styrofoam.

There is drinking and partying, and yet the club is also political.

The members see themselves as anti-consumerists.