"About letters, about trains, about fame - getting up" "I always emphasized letters because that's what graffiti is all about." "Its about style." "It's style - it's spraycan, it's public space and possibly illegality." "For me graffiti comes from Hamburg from the railway line." "Of course graffiti comes, earlier on from the markers of those people.." "I had around me at the age of 13 or 14." "That's where graffiti came from." "Some years later then, graffiti came out of New York." "The old New York subway graffiti has strongly influenced me, because I try to this day, to emulate the letters they did back then with the same flavour and feeling," "and to add my personal touch to that, to develop that a bit further." "And New York is where graffiti comes from, so it's always been a source of inspiration." "When the whole thing came over to Europe and Germany, many impulses originated from here." "You could realize that... because many impulses from Germany went back to the US again." "That means, first of all, to pick it up here and of course to copy a lot... and to see how it has been done there to develop it here... and of course to give something back as well." "I think that writing your name and to gain a certain recognition through that, a certain fame that is involved, is surely one of the main motivations to start writing." "And that is most efiective, if you write your name, if you are dealing with letters." "And so I got into style fairly quickly." "But then to apply the photorealistic techniques" "I learned and tested in doing characters... to put those into practice with style, was a challenge." "And that was something new in the early 90s." "And that is where I put my focus on." "It is the illegality, the artiorm, the sense of community, the travelling, the cohesion... especially in the illegal scene where it's also about coherence and so on." "And I guess that's one of the main reasons why the whole thing went around the entire globe so fast..." ".and by now, there is almost no country without graffiti." "For me a tag is the purest form of writing your name." "If your tag doesn't have style, you don't have style in your piece either." "Beacause if you start a tag you have to pull it all the way through." "You cant just stop in the middle of writing a letter to think about what to do next... it's one ﬂux, one ﬂow." "It's like a signature or something." "Yeah, simply a signature." "Signature, right?" " Right right!" "Sometimes my tags look good and sometimes they suck." "It's a matter of ﬂow, if it ﬂows or not." "You need a lot of tags to make sure that the city stays within an appearance... which is not so clean that it can easily be purged with the emergence of new tags or graffiti." "You can do a hundred tags in one night." "That means you can be 'up' within one night, if you do it right." "If you tag the right places, everybody will talk about you everybody will see your tags." "A tag has to be placed right." "A tag doesn't belong just anywhere." "For example a tag doesn't really belong on new things, new buildings." "I like old, somewhat neglected things, that don't really have an owner anymore." "Especially abandoned factory buildings, railway lines, highways, for me, those are the places where this belongs." "And those are the places I enjoy painting the most." "Like an old factory building." "I get a lot out of walking around an empty factory building all day, to do tags there, throwups, a piece and to discover things." "Nobody is interested in places like that, because for most people such a place is dead anyway." "Maybe to them it is as much of an eyesore as for most of the people graffiti is... but we writers give those places life again, we care about those places once more!" "Well, before you paint on it a wall is just a wall... but after you painted it, it becomes a piece of art somehow." "That means you bring the wall to life." "And that is still the motivation tor me to paint pieces." "Well, I think the fascination about graffiti is first of all... the thing that makes the people go out on the street... first of all the action that is involved, the adrinalin rush... something is happening, there is productivity and action." "The reason why I paint...?" "I have really no idea what the trigger is." "Certainly the need for recognition is part of it and of course the fun that is involved." "And I've been doing this for such a long time now, I cant really imagine doing anything else." "I don't really think about it too much, I breathe, I eat, I paint, it simply is..." "I don't really need a reason for it." "When there was a tag, a name somewhere it was obviously from this guy..." "BAM... this is from that guy, and that's still what I want to achieve." "I want people to know my name, everybody." "Not just the people in the scene, everybody should know my name from A to Z." "That's my goal." "And I also want them to associate my name with something good... with something fresh and alive, something colorful." "Maybe like a wild animal in the city, that's how people should think about me." "And not that I am wasting my time with vandalism." "You have to be able to express a feeling within typography." "You have to be able to paint vigorous letters aggressive, benign and soft letters." "It you have studied typography tor a while, you have achieved your repertoire eventually." "I see characters, faces and life within my letters, as a layman can only see in Donald Duck or in Mickey Mouse." "That's what my letters express to me." "I can see it the letter is aggressive, elegant, content, it it pushes the other letters away, it it moves... all of that I can see in my letters." "And therefore I am satisfied with letters." "I don't need anything else." "You have to ask yourself, why do people pick letters'?" "Why does every writer start with letters and searches tor a name?" "Everyone starts with the same precondition, and everyone creates something unique out of it." "A silver piece is the purest form of a piece you can do." "You can't hide anything, you can see clearly if a guy knows how to work with letters or not." "I'm not into silver pieces too much, but still, my letters stay quite readable and simple" "That means even the common man, or let's say the people that don't know much about it... can still see it a guy knows how to handle letters?" "You can clearly recognize the letters, how did he bend them... why did he do them the way he did?" "For me good letters also have something to do with the character the writer puts into them." "They have to have swing, boogie, they have to have life to them... and it you write your name and you have tour-five letters, the letters have to work together like a family." "There has to be life, a movement in them." "I think it's important to seize public space." "The public space reflects the thoughts and feelings of the people who live in it." "Ultimately lam ajoint owner of this public space." "Even though I don't own the buildings, I own the public space as much as the state owns it... or, it doesn't belong to me no more than it does belong to the state." "And thats why I take the liberty of changing it." "And I think that I am conscious enough to pick the right spots... that I don't write in places where it doesn't belong." "I want, with my art, or my creation... well at least when I am painting pieces, to valorize the environment." "For example if I see a wail or a building, or a moving object that I like," "I refrain from painting it, if I don't think it will look better afierwards." "So I'm conscious about which spot could use some color and which one doesn't." "I try to paint where I think 'this is an ugly wall'... and that it could become a beautiful wall through my creation." "We don't want Berlin to end up looking like Munich." "Maybe that's a way to interfere with this super clean aesthetics... so that Berlin has to stay dirty!" "And dirty is a good thing." "Dirt is freedom!" "Yeah!" "You cant imagine Berlin without it." "It's so common." "No matter where you go, you see it everywhere." "When you walk through the streets it's like a constant humming." "You don't really notice it, but it's there." "It there is a name, a slogan, an advertisement or something like that..." "If it's widely spread, people will remember." "You can't imagine Berlin without it, because it's simply everywhere!" "I'm pretty much a loner." "I used to like exploring subway tunnels." "Not necessarily to paint, but to be there and to be alone." "It's somehow like being on a roof," "You're right in the middle of the city, although you're not really there." "You're either below or above the people..." "You're like a ghost in the city." "Oh... sorry." "But there was a naked woman in the window." "It I look up the wall I've done, maybe a spot that I pass regularly... and I look at how the letters fit together." "Maybe I messed it up?" "Maybe not?" "And I see what I should do better next time." "I like large scale work." "Because large scale is good." "Most people ask themselves:" "'How did he do that?" "!" "'" "That's the big mystery." "There is the myth that people abseil But I think that's very rare." "Few people are aware that these techniques have slowly developed." "Like leaning over a roof with a six meter pole and bitumen." "It's actually not that difficult." "It's not as dangerous as it might look." "In the beginning I was afraid of heights." "But not anymore." "I've never heard of anyone who fell, yet." "Those pieces are the ones that last the longest." "There is so much going on in Berlin." "The sheer quantity of it!" "There are new things every day." "It's unbelievable!" "Every day!" "Incredible!" "It's complete madness!" "Of course we do value the buildings." "Especially me..." "I would never say that I hate my city." "On the contrary, I love my city and I also love the people that live here." "I don't want to harm anybody here." "I think the other way around, I think with my pieces I give something to the people," "I make them a present." "And I hope that there are people who are delighted about that, and I'm sure that people of my age, are keen to see graffiti." "Lets put it this way, it I would break into somewhere and steal things, then you would know that you do harm someone." "But if I paint a piece on a concrete bridge somewhere, I don't really harm anybody." "I neither harm the substance, nor do I harm the people that see the piece." "Thats why, in my eyes, graffiti is not really a crime." "One merely puts paint on an existing surface and well yeah... you do it without asking and on your own initiative, but like I said," "I can't really see anything criminal in that." "I don't really have an inspiration and then go painting... but it's the going out and paint that inspires me." "Visually aware beings process what they see, otherwise there would be no art." "Because art is always taking ingredients you already know and stirring them up into a new dish." "What helps to gain a Brazilian identity in graffiti is to improvise." "You start a piece with latex... and when it's empty you switch to a difierent type of paint." "That way you unintentionally evolve a personal style." "It's difficult for me to talk about it." "Most of the things I paint are introspective." "Even the places I paint are not accessible for everyone." "My pieces have a short lifespan." "Mostly they are gone after a week." "Most of my work doesn't really have an explicit meaning." "A lot of it is about poetry or politics... but I believe that it you get too factual you loose another aspect." "The viewers attempt to understand your work." "It can also go the other way round, but that's my way." "Mainly my goal is... to connect my work, the city and the way I think." "Everything else happens as a result of that." "Like in most countries the majority of people paint to enjoy the moment." "As if the city was a big playground." "I like that, because it gives the city its own movement." "But everyone approaches it differently." "They see the street as a laboratory... which is not only limited to the street, but has its universal language." "That way the local people can look at it... but also people with difierent associations can try to evaluate and understand it." "I think... what motivates me to paint on the street... is howl see and experience it." "The way the people dress... the way they talk, the way they act and the culture they've automatically internalised." "All of that." "I think my work acts upon the city... and puts itself and the city-life into question." "In my case, like many others, it's about looking for diversity." "You do many things and you try to make them work." "You can either write your name, or express a political opinion... even something naive without really thinking about it." "People don't understand styles, but they do understand imagery... statements, themes and pretty things." "I am a hundred percent sure that graffiti, respectively streetart is the artform of this era... and that it's just a mailer of time until this artiorm will also be shown in museums." "Because there are so many people that want to publish my work and like my pieces," "that at one point it raised the question:" "'How can I make some cash with it?" "'" "And this is only possible if you make the piece portable, if you put it onto something you can move, exhibit and sell." "And that was the point where I started to paint on canvas." "But I had to realize that the canvas is a totally difierent medium, that you have to approach and process it in a completely difierent way." "There has always been the dream... to be able to only concentrate on that... and finally earn your money that way." "Not doing the classical remittance work... but to do exhibitions and work as a fine artist... and finally sell your work." "I think for parents it is difficult to see their children expose themselves to such a danger, but on the other hand, graffiti is only a mirror of society." "And metaphorically speaking, life as such is dangerous."