Stylefile.Graffiti.Magazine.Issue.18.Liquidfile.Preview.pdf

#eighteen/07.2005/X/209/185/liquidfile

history in general and especially with the history of your city.

To me the most important thing during my 22 year long career

as a writer is when I got afﬁliated to the UA by SEEN. In my

own evolvement in style I was inﬂuenced by him (like half of

the world I guess). Throughout the years some other inﬂu-

ences came from New York and also Denmark, France and the

Netherlands. Parallel to it I worked on my characters.

In my opinion this is the only way to ﬁnd your own style. Eve-

ryone steals in the beginning, that’s a fact. Just don’t get

yourself caught.

Many writers still do, and sometimes that

obvious that it hurts. If I would start now

who’s biting whom, I would not get to an

end. Take a look at the different chapters

in writing and you will ﬁnd trends that come

and go. But it has always been single wri-

ters or crews that set the trend and others

followed them.

ment System to it. This way every member is responsible by

himself for his part of the site. I hope to get a page that is

updated almost every day. My personal site www.cantwo.com

is going to be redesigned this year as well as the one of my

brand www.stickupkidz.com.

Who really knows who had done when and where the ﬁrst tags

or throw ups in grafﬁti history? Or who put the ﬁrst arrows to

his letters and so on. Sad but there are the most different

statements about that. With all the senseless grafﬁti books on

the market, I wish someone would really do some research on

this part of history. You surely should have the urge to know

what’s going on with your hobby (or even ideology).

Infos: www.stickupkids.de / www.stickupkidz.com

www.cantwo.com

It is April, 4th 2005. I am sitting in a hotel in New York, the

birthplace of a phenomenon which had caught me 22 years

ago and did not let me go ever since. I am on a mission with

ATOM, SMASH, KENT and DASH. New York has got this tre-

mendous energy which you can feel as soon as you arrive

at the airport. Once you have been here, you know why a

movement and even a culture evolved from here which had

inﬂuenced music, dance and art like no other.

Everyone should have his own deﬁnition about grafﬁti. Mine is

that a piece should always look great, even with two colours

only. In the end everyone has got his own life to live and puts

up his own rules to it. The most natural and original way of

writing is still the NY writing of the 80’s until the end of the

train era in the end of the 80’s. To me that is a fact. I can also

understand someone who thinks differently, but it is not grafﬁti

anymore - simple as that.

Innovations, like those from DELTA and DAIM are important,

no question. But for the purpose of a grafﬁti writer I can set

the street art movement aside. The problem is that it pushes

itself into the grafﬁti scene. But street art is no continuation

of grafﬁti; it has nothing to do with the art of lettering. I don’t

want to deny that street art itself includes some artists, but I

think it is sad whenever writers mutate into street art artists.

I simply lose my respect. A cobbler should stick to his last.

Another huge chapter in writing history are

magazines and the internet. In this place I

give credits to STYLEFILE which I think is

the most important and best grafﬁti ma-

gazine around. It would be unbeatable if

there were not so much street art in it.

Just like I said before, street art is nothing

for a grafﬁti magazine. It is in the wrong

place just like household tricks or the la-

test paparazzi ﬂixx from some royalties

in a magazine like this.

For me everything started back in 1983 in Budenheim, Germa-

ny, close to Mainz with a ﬁrst night trip equipped with a silver

and a black spray can. The following years I did some intense

drawing and scribbling as well as travelling throughout Germa-

ny. In addition to that we started break dancing. As a result

we were invited to jams in different European countries, up to

requests from continents all over the world. In case someone

will ask me how to get fame like that, there can only be one

answer: steadiness and travelling.

I do not want to put up the impression that I am an absolutely

closed minded grafﬁti fanatic and not open to new techniques,

evolvements and styles. But when it is about new trends (like

designer toys) or new technical possibilities (computers for

example), you should use them to carry on classical writing

with different ways and surely keep it alive within these new

trends.

The internet has also an extensive inﬂuence to

the grafﬁti scene world wide. Without it there would be loads

more individual styles evolving. Before we had the internet it

was possible to point out certain styles to a country. This does

not work any more. Judge by yourself if that is good or bad.

Travelling to foreign countries, no matter if I was invited or

not, pushed me concerning humanity and writing. It simply is

a great experience to meet people from other countries who

give their lives to the same passion.

A complaint you automatically hear as an old school writer

goes like this: ”…eh, his pieces always look the same. No

evolvement within the last years.”. You should take something

like that as a compliment. It shows that you found your style

and by that cannot to be mixed up with someone else in the

big mess of all the writers we have nowadays. Some years

ago I painted a garage wall with LOOMIT in Switzerland. We

changed our names, he did a CAN2 and I painted LOOMIT.

It would have been sad if no one had noticed it. That would

mean that we do not have a personal style and that we would

be exchangeable.

Five years ago I founded the clothing label “Stick Up Kidz”.

My intention was to spread my name in other ways than

the common media like walls, trains, video or photographs,

with the side effect to earn some money for my living. The

euphoria which dominated in the beginning and the urge to

move something, lost ground to a tough reality of a growing

hip hop clothing market. It is hard to position yourself bet-

ween labels which have been around for so many years now.

Along with that I rely on my strong will. Let’s see where it

takes me.

And steadiness is what most writers are missing these days.

To set your heart on something, and that over a long period

of time. I’m never really satisﬁed with my pieces. Maybe I am,

in the ﬁrst moment, but when I take another close look, I’ll

always ﬁnd things which I could have done better or different.

I believe this is a good way to become better, at least with

quality.

Life in general is fast moving, which also reﬂects in grafﬁti

movement. Names come and go. Who can say he has got the

total knowledge of what is going on? SMASH had put it to the

point the other day: For every writer the history of grafﬁti wri-

ting only exists from the day on he starts painting. Everything

that had happened before is somehow blurred and intangib-

le. Connected to that it is important to deal with the grafﬁti

Imagine how it would be if BOMBER painted like DARE, or

DARE like QUIK, QUIK like DAIM. It just would not be authentic

at all. All of these named writers (including me) have found

their way and are times ahead from sayings and discussions

like that. You should always keep your individuality and try to

step out of the masses. If it is classical writing or grafﬁti in

other ways, that is secondary.

Throughout the last years I held back photo material to have

good stuff for my soon to be released biography and to

have exclusive ﬂixx for the calendar that comes out every

year. The 2006 edition is going to be another CAN2 – ATOM

calendar with 12 never to be seen productions from my

number one homie and me.

Finishing I have to tell that DESK7 and I redesigned our home-

page www.stickupkids.de and added a Content Manage-

ﬁrst row:

nasty. beet: gifhorn.2005 / beet: gifhorn.2005 / nasty: hamburg.2005

second row:

agroe. beet. nasty: gifhorn.2005 / nasty: gifhorn.2005

third row:

beet. stok. rhok: gifhorn.2005 / nasty: gifhorn.2005

subways in paris. hamburg. berlin. athens. brussels. genua. napoli. praha. rotterdam. london

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