These questions where for a final dissertation entitled Reading Graffiti, at the University of Bristol, I am conducting interviews with numerous persons involved with graffiti from Europe, the UK, and the States.
1. What do you write, and for how long have you been involved with graffiti? Are you able to verify your Identity?
The "tag" I used in the last 12 years most of the time is a number: 108.
I started to write my names (i chenged tags too many times) in '91, when I was just a little skater and I wanted to leave my name in the spots. I'm been a tipycal writer until the end of the 90's, making tags, silver pieces... my work as 108 started in 99.
"Are you able to verify your Identity?" - what do you mean???
2. How are you feeling today?
I'm a bit frustrated as most of the times, but anyway I'm not so bad.
3. Can you describe your first piece? Your most recent piece?
I remember very well my "first piece". I have a picture of it. It was summer, I wanted to make something bigger than a tag... so I went to a ugly place along the railway line, under a bridge. This place is still a typical place wher writers go to paint today.
Anyway I found 2 spraycans, black and red and I made terrible thing.
4. What sort of pieces do you usually do, and how often do you do pieces?
I'm not a writer anymore, I mean sometimes I need to do a silver lettering, or stuff like that. But it happens 3-4 times for year right now. Anyway, I'm changed: my work now have nothing to do with what do you call "graffiti". Or better with the kind of graffiti that started in NY. I paint black shapes. My work is closer with magical prehistoric graffiti than to writing.
5. Do you consider your work to be in the graffiti style, and why? Do you consider yourself to be a graffiti artist?
It depends. As I told you if you think about graffiti as something spontaneus, without a commission, made in public spaces, than yes, I consider myself a graffiti artist. But I do other stuff too. If you think about graffiti just as a style of lettering or something to do on snickers or stuff like this than: no, absolutely I'm not a graffiti artist.
6. Is graffiti art? If so, since when and for what reasons?
I cannot reply to this question in few words. Sometimes graffiti is art, awesome art. Sometimes absolutely not.
7. What in your opinion differentiates ‘graffiti’ from ‘non-graffiti’? Could graffiti be broken down into subcategories (e.g. stencil vs. freehand etc.)?
I think about graffiti in a good way when I think about something painted, or scratched or I don't know... when I see something spontaneus, in public spaces and without a commission. In graffiti the aesthetic is just a port of the "thing". The division in to subcategories is not very important, it's just a media, you can do the same for any kind of visual art.
8. How would you describe your own style, and how would you say if differs from other peoples’ style?
Usually people call my style "abstract", that's right. Probably I prefere to call my stuff as non-figurative than abstract. The fact is that I create shapes, I'm searching for the perfect shape, I'm not reproducing something. Anyway, this is what I did in the last 10 years more or less, it's part of my research... I never stop to experimenting, so it's not something final. My "style" is not easy to be undesrtood, I'm sure that some people hate it, I don't care, this is my own research. Yes probably it's very different from the most of the other graffiti stuff.
9. What is the relationship between image and word in your work?
I don't paint images. Sometimes I write words in my works. Words and letters usual are part or the shapes. I really like the shapes of the letters. I hide messages between letters and numbers sometimes.
10. What is the relationship between form and colour in your work?
This is very important: all my work is about forms and colors. In the last years I found the black as the best color possible, expecially in public places. During 2010 I started again to experiment with colors. Black and colors have different roles. For example black is used for the main/regular shape, for the structures, it have a more rational role. Colors are for the irregular parts, the irrational, the connection with other kind of reality. It's not easy to explane... gods like Kandinsky wrote aboute these kind of stuff in Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and he was very better than me.
11. What are the steps involved in making a piece? How is working on a piece alone different from working in a group?
To be honest, I'm an individualist. Usually my shapes comes from an idea, an image that comes to my mind. Than I have to go out to find the right place and to paint it. It's like a magical ritual. My works are better when they are alone in a place. I don't like too much to work in a group, when I paint a wall. I really like to be influenced and to work in a group in an other way. I really like to work with many artist and friends, but to be honest I don't like to divide a wall.
12. What are the steps involved in looking at a finished piece?
Sorry I don't understand this question.
13. What makes a piece good or bad?
I can't tell exactly. Proportion I think, but in art for me it works in a different way. Again it's not a rational proces, it's something instictual.
14. Is there a significance to the design, colouring, shapes, and location of a given piece?
Absolutely yes: the first thing for me is the location, the connection between the location and the piece is too important.
The shape (the design) comes by it self, or better when the work go well... I must be very good to do the right shape in the right place, most of the times I'm not totally satisfied about it.
The colors are something different. As I told you I chosed the black as main color, other colors have different roles.
15. What factors in your life have most influenced your work? How do you feel your own work has effected others?
Too many factors, I can name just a few. Right now my work is me. First of all I think that the main influences are the place where I'm born and where I live and the time, I mean this age. Year after year I saw that my city and the region where I live influeced me so much. I mean old rural graffiti, or strange enigmatic drawings that sometimes I saw in the walls here where more fascinating to me than other graffiti. Same for some prehistoric art I found on the mountains and the hills here in my area. They are not just aesthetic... thay have something else. I can't explain. Same for this age: one day it was natural to me to go out and to paint on a wall.
16. What art, books, films, artists, games, or magazines have most influenced your style? What advice would you give to someone looking to learn more about the graffiti movement?
Art/artists: Primitive art, prehistoric art, Hyeronimus Bosch, Malevich, Kandinsky, Burri, Fontana, Stak, Peio................
Books: Euripides - The Bacchae, H. Hesse - Die Steppenwolf - W.S. Burroughs, Antonin Artaud - Van Gogh, The Man Suicided by Society, Aldous Huxley - The Doors of Perception..........
Films: Fellini: Giulietta degli spiriti, Casanova, Satyricon... David Lynch: almost everything, David Cronenberg: expecially from Videodrome to Existenz, Tarkovskij: Stalker, Myiazaki: everything, The Wickerman (1973).................... I don't like games, magazine, I don't know... maybe Underground Productions in the 90's, I'm allways been influenced by diy fanzines.
I don't know about giving advises, maybe to lookwhat do you see around your home, to check everything you see when you walk... it's the best thing about graffiti.
17. Any further comments?
I think not!
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