BELLEVILLE IS BURNING DONUT & MARIE - Highlights.nu

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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 mi<strong>nu</strong>tes 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 <strong>nu</strong>mbers 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. 34 UNDERGROUND PRODUCTIONS 33 [2006]
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 UNDERGROUND PRODUCTIONS 33 [2006] 35
Page 1 and 2: magic art from a forgotten era IANS
Page 3: Mar, Don in Vaasa The Finnish state
Page 7: Möe painted in a shower “Toys ha

BELLEVILLE IS BURNING DONUT & MARIE - Highlights.nu

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