BELLEVILLE IS BURNING DONUT & MARIE - Highlights.nu

magic art from a forgotten era
IANS
the kool kieth
of graffi ti
BELLEVILLE
IS BURNING
graffi ti in a riot
DONUT & MARIE
the secrets of fi nnish style
FUZZ
ONE
will rack up your woman

Mr Nais Guy, 2005
Pimping Stockholm graffiti since 2001
Left page: Ians, december 2005 photo by Torkel Sjöstrand
With shining style and highlights in all the right places, Ians
has impressed the rest of graff Sweden.
One cold November night, we talked about graffiti, Stockholm
and color combinations with the president of Players Club.
Ians moved to Stockholm, bought a dope ride, pimped graffiti
and burned himself out
Text: Torkel Sjöstrand
Photos: Ians
Ians turns off the engine and gets out of the
car. He’s got to have the dopest car in Swedish
graffiti. He says it’s “fat but discreet”. That’s
how you could describe his graffiti. His style
doesn’t stick out a mile, but it’s really good.
So good that in the past year, Ians has sailed
on to become one of the very top writers in
Stockholm. Ians latches onto what’s happening
and does it perfectly, develops it, and inspires
others.
“I don’t think I’m doing anything special,”
he says humbly, and it becomes obvious
that the Swedish tradition of humility is still
alive and well, even in the ego trip known as
graffiti.
After having tried to meet him several
times, I am finally led to his apartment, south
of town. The apartment is full of stuff, and he
is sitting fiddling with his new Ipod.
“40 gig,” he grins, while the tv is showing
The West Wing. Ians has 40 different channels,
but says he watches less tv now than he did
when he had 10. A guy is sitting sketching at
the coffee table. He says hi, then makes his
departure. “He comes over here to sketch
sometimes,” says Ians. “He’s starting to get
really good, he’s got something.”
Ians comes from one of those towns barely
counting 100,000 inhabitants two hours
north of Stockholm, the kind of town you
always get confused with the neighboring one.
He says that there is only one restaurant there
that doesn’t serve fillet of pork with béarnaise
sauce, and that’s a Sushi restaurant. In this
béarnaise-soaked town, Ians first tagged his
initials when he was barely in his teens, at the
back of the 11 bus. To make a long story short,
by the late 90s, he was the most active writer in
town. Then he moved to Stockholm.
He has lived there for nearly five years
now.
“I like it here. It was a tossup between
Stockholm and Gothenburg when I left. But
Gothenburg’s too far away from my friends
and family. Also, back then I was in the habit
of traveling to Stockholm on weekends. I’d met
some writers from the suburbs of Vallentuna
and Nacka. So I went writing, partying and
getting drunk there.”
“Already in my teens, I knew I wasn’t going
to stay in my home town, so I didn’t mind
moving.”
“It’s in my bones. Some people play golf, I write graffiti.”
In the meantime, his grandmother died
and left him some money. Thanks to that, he
could move to Stockholm and start his own
business* with some friends.
“I told my mom to hold onto the money
for me, so I didn’t waste it. So later, when I
was offered the chance to become a co-owner
of the firm, it felt like the right thing. The
alternative was to leave off stealing and selling
booze, which wasn’t very tempting.”
The work proved to require a lot of car
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Mar, Don in Vaasa
The Finnish state of mind
Finnish graffiti is an unknown quantity. No graffiti magazines
are regularly published in Finland, and few cities are as
sterilized as Helsinki. On the other hand, Finnish graffiti
offers a large selection of fresh, innovative styles and a great
influence on Swedish graffiti.
Text: Tobias Barenthin Lindblad
Photo: Donut & Marie
When the Finnish winter hits and temperatures
reach 25 degrees celsius below freezing, you
may want to put your spray cans on the shelf.
up took this opportunity to ask a few questions
to Donut and Marie, two writers from Vaasa
who live in Helsinki and Turku.
There are so many good writers and yet so
few who know about it. How can Finland be
such a treasure trove of graffiti?
Marie: I can imagine that, for an outsider,
Finnish graff is mysterious and fresh because
it’s not so well documented. Finnish graffiti is
good but, it’s nothing to get all excited about.
The grass is always greener on the other side.
Donut: I agree on that there are a great number
of good writers in here. Finland is quite
hidden from graffiti media. I think that many
younger writers in Finland are inspired by
crews like cdc and ftc these days. They keep
it up with their example and influence to the
younger ones.
What’s special about Finnish graffiti?
Marie: The difference between painting in Finland
and Sweden is the social aspect. We Finns
mostly keep to ourselves.
Donut: I try not to be provoked by the authorities’
policy. I haven’t been writing as
long as some others, but I know that a writer
has to be able to adapt. The circumstances
change all the time. In Vaasa for example,
a lot changed in the last few years. Many
people started to hit the trains in this small
town. Some got caught and we lost Finland’s
biggest legal Hall of Fame, and soon everybody
weren’t hanging out together anymore.
In Helsinki and the capital area things are
made a bit harder for writers. Here the situation
has been bad since the late 90s. Worse
than it has been in Stockholm. This has to do
with the zero tolerance policy in Finland but
it’s also a part of the Finnish state of mind.
Marie: In my town, whether it’s Vaasa or
Marie
Turku, graff is seen as something negative. I
believe that most people don’t have an own
opinion about graff, but have rather been
handed one. Some people think that tagged
places are dangerous and might even try to
avoid them. This is of course a result of the
idea that media gives of who graffiti writers
are.
Your styles look very 70s. What are your
influences?
Donut: The funky 70’s are important to me.
Still, I’ve mostly been influenced by Scandinavian
and particularly Finnish writers. When I
started with straight lines, writers like Kaput
and Jeans made a big impression on me. Today
I like Lucy, Trama, Syno, Chile and Vamp
amongst others. There are so many writers
to look up to. I also like many Swedish writers,
and my favourite is grand master Sken.
Marie: In graff you can take influences from
anywhere. For me it’s mostly about tradition
and trying to give back some of what
I’ve taken. I’m into oldschool New York and
Nordic style kings like Nug, Sken and Egs
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Fame crew in Barcelona, Spain. Winter 2005.
Trans-Europe Express
Graffiti writers from all corners travel worldwide to
paint. Trips around Europe and to New York have been
a longstanding tradition, whilst Asia and South America
are becoming more usual destinations in later years. For
hardcore practitioners it’s all about painting as many trains
as possible; whoever paints the most subway systems wins.
Text: Torkel Sjöstrand
“See you at the station,” says Rage on the
phone.
My traveling companions and I are sitting
in a car outside Hamburg. Most of the bridge
foundations along the road are covered in
graffiti, many with DSF pieces: Die Staats
Feinde (Enemies of the State), which is Rage’s
crew. Barely thirty minutes later, we have
found the station and hear someone calling.
Rage is standing a bit further away with two
friends, waiting for a wholecar they did earlier
that day.
Traveling to another city or country as
a graffiti writer is different from the usual
tourist’s jaunt. To the initiate, tags and pieces
communicate directly. You attentively note
whose pieces are most visible, whose are
baddest, or whose can’t be seen at all. And the
hope of getting your own tag up grows. “I had
a few hours to kill over there and saw a couple
of trains. So I jumped down and did a few
tags and throw-ups,” says the American Merc
One about his visit to Mannheim, Germany.
In the mid-80s, he bombed letterlines in New
York. European graffiti tours of today have
their origins in the mid-80s. Zebster, Loomit
and Chintz were some German pioneers, who
went writing in Stockholm in the late 80s. For
Swedish writers, Copenhagen was the first
stop on the European tour.
Todays European traveling is widespread.
Thanks to the opening of the borders, graffiti
writers move around quickly and smoothly
like anyone else. The most popular means
of transport so far has been by train on the
Interrail card system.
Rage has taken us to a party on the
Reeperbahn Boulevard. The stairwell is
bombed. Familiar tags from both Hamburg
and Berlin make an appearance. There are
a lot of people, beer and drunkenness at the
party. By the time we leave, it’s getting out
of hand. The host is starting a fight with a
drunk guy from Saarbrücken, which ends in
an enraged pillowfight. Lamps and furniture
are smashed.
24 hours later, we follow the crew Colors
On Steel (COS) into a tunnel shaft leading to
a subway yard. But the cleaners are working
slowly, and the guards won’t leave. There’s
no painting that night. The following day, we
travel to Liège, in Belgium.
Travel in Europe became even more
common during the mid-90s. Crews were
formed, bridging cities and national borders.
Phone numbers were exchanged, then email
addresses. Appointments were made at train
stations. People would look for a face to
match the broken English known only from a
phone call. Graffiti enthusiasm was sufficient
to bring the most different people together.
By the late 90s, graffiti had grown strong
in southern Europe, and many East European
countries started laying the foundations for
graffiti scenes. Berlin writers visiting the Czech
Republic and Poland made strong impressions
on the nascent local scenes.
One reason to pack your backpack is the
chance to be ‘all city’ in a town other than
your own. Early this decade, O’clock, the
notorious Paris bomber, had been visible in
Brussels and Amsterdam, not to mention New
York. “That French boy, O’clock, he was here.
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Que and Ebony in Amsterdam, Holland, 2005
Trc and Mbee in Austria, 2005
He made a lot of mess,” says Merc One. New
Yorkers, otherwise known for looking no
further than their own nose, had noticed the
young Frenchman.
We wait for Nutmeg at a café on Rue de la
Madeleine in central Liège. The area is pretty
shabby, and the landlord lights a giant spliff
after serving our coffee. Nutmeg laughed a bit
on the phone when he said Rue de la Madeleine
would be a good place to meet. When we meet
him later, he says the street is in the middle of
Liège’s red light district, and doesn’t think we
should keep our car parked there.
Nutmeg says he feels warmed up and wants
to go and paint a train. He speaks English with
a strong French accent, and uses sounds and
gestures when he can’t think of an English
word.
The next day, he shows us an abandoned
building where they often paint. The house is
big, and Nutmeg mentions that it is easy to
get lost in. There are tags everywhere, often
with the thought-out tags that characterize his
crews, Toy and Ers.
Most traveling graffiti-writing Europeans
want to paint trains in other cities and
countries. One of the first questions the
train writer asks is about how well-guarded
the trains are and what happens if you get
arrested. The latter event occurs regularly. In
Stockholm, police seem to have no guidelines
Uze in Athens, Greece, 2005
concerning the arrest of foreign writers. In the
late 90s, an Italian was apprehended for two
weeks, while a year later, a German got four
weeks; a Spaniard got away with eight hours.
To the chagrin of plainclothes subway guards,
one Frenchman they caught was immediately
released by the police after his arrest.
Subways are the hottest destination.
Nowadays, fewer people bother to contact
local writers. Instead, all their time is spent
painting subways, sleeping in parks, painting
another subway, and then getting the train to
the next city.
After a ten-hour drive, we arrive in Milan.
The city is scorching hot, and humid, smogfilled
air lies like a second skin over your body.
We are met by a friend of a friend, and follow
his scooter through the chaotic traffic that
distinguishes Italy.
Later, we meet Sand, who has been part
of Milan’s train-painting core for some time.
Sand shows us around graffiti stores and parks.
With him, we also meet one of Milan’s most
active young train painters. Alternatives for
painting the subway are discussed. In one final
desperate alternative, a complete kamikaze
action is spoken of. There’s about a one-in-ten
chance the guards won’t come, they say.
It ends with a painted interregional train.
It goes smoothly. The only encounter we
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Möe
Skate Music, character by Chess, Josh
Tom
Möe
Möe
Step Chess Möe
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UNDERGROUND PRODUCTIONS 33 [2006]

Möe painted in a shower
“Toys have more style than us”
Ironic, naivistic and attractively ugly graffiti has been around
for more than ten years, but you can still cause provocation
with styles that question our notion of good graffiti. Möe is
a Norwegian crew that takes ugly graffiti to new heights of
beauty.
Text: Malcolm Jacobsson
Photos: Möe
It started at a party on New Year’s Eve of
2000, when Ussr mentioned a new word he’d
invented: Möe.
His friends liked it, and they decided to start a
crew. Möe had no exact meaning. Sometimes it
means ‘Children of Our Times’, other times it
means ‘Concrete Kings’ or ‘Street Warriors’.
What’s so special about Möe?
“We have several different styles and
ways of practicing graffiti. One of us might
paint some subways in very simple style,
while others break off from the traditional
understanding of what a tag or piece can be.
We use a lot of humor and self-irony, and our
approach to graffiti is relaxed. It’s just one of
the many things we do to feel alive,” says a
Möe member.
Möe is a gang of friends who work a lot
together. They inspire each other, but also
compete within the crew. Sometimes they
experiment, each sketching up every other
letter or exchanging sketches. They get
inspiration from amateur graffiti and 70s
or early 80s New York graffiti. But also
Norwegian graffiti, like oldschool legends
Mack and Bits and todays All crew.
Josh
Ekaf
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