STREET KNOWLEDGE

KING ADZ

For Kaiya & Casius - My Inspiration…

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

FOREWORD

BEGiN HERE…

A1ONE

AMSTERDAM

ASBESTOS

JONAS ÅKERLUND

ADVERTiSiNG

ALiFE

BANKSY

KELSEY BROOKES

NiNA BRAUN

BERLiN

BROKEN FiNGAZ

CENTRAL STATiON

MARTHA COOPER

CTRL

CULTURE JAMMiNG

C215

THE CiTY LOVES YOU

COHEN@MUSHON

JAMES DODD

ARAMiNTA DE CLERMONT

DJ CULTURE

DESiGNERS AGAiNST AiDS

DR D.

DOT DA GENiUS

CHOLE EARLY

EELUS

RON ENGLiSH

ENDTRODUCiNG: THE ART OF THE SAMPLE]

JOHN FEKNER

FiLTH MART

FAMiGiLA BAGLiONE

FiLM

FAVELA PAiNTiNG

FESTiVALS

JEROME ‘G’ DEMUTH

KATE GiBB

GRAFFiTi RESEARCH LAB

GRAFFiTi AND STREET ART: A BRiEF HiSTORY

RiCHARD GiLLiGAN

HiP HOP

MR. HARTNETT

HABBEHRATS

HUSH

HOUSE OF DiEHL

HARAJUKU STYLE/JAPAN

PAUL iNSECT

iSRAEL

iNTERiOR/EXTERiOR

iBiZA — THE BiRTHPLACE OF RAVE

JAMAiCA/REGGAE

TAMA JANOWiTZ

JEREMYViLLE

MR JAGO

KNOW HOPE

TONY KAYE

HUGO KAAGMAN

THE KLF

DAViD LACHAPELLE

MANDi LENNARD

THE LONDON POLiCE

LADY AiKO

LONDON

LOS ANGELES

LOMOGRAPGY

MiSS TiC

MiXTAPES

ALEX MAMACOS

CARRi MUNDEN

MELBOURNE

MADCHESTER

NO NEW ENEMiES

NEW YORK

123 KLAN

OBEY

100PROOF

ONiLi

PiLPELED

GUY PiTCHON

LEE ‘SCRATCH’ PERRY

PYMCA

JiM PHiLLiPS

QUiK

QUEENiE YEHENALA/SHANGHAi

QUEER CULTURE

RAPH RASHiD/BKTM

ROADSWORTH

ROME

RADiCAL CROSS STiTCH

SWOON

ViNCENT SKOGLUND

TiLLEKE SCHWARZ

SNEAKER FREAKERS

SOMEOTHERGUY

SHAWN STUSSY

STREET FOOD

THE SKATEBOARD

TOFER

TOMATO

OLiViERO TOSCANi

CANDiCE TRiPP

REGAN TAMANUi

UPPER PLAYGROUND

UNDiSCOVERED TALENT

URBAN EARTH!

URBAN SPORTS

UNDERGROUND

VHiLS

VEXTA

ViNYL TOYS & CHARACTER ART

ViDEO GAMES

iRViNE WELSH

WiLMA $

NiCK WALKER

GARTH WALKER

WiCKED STUFF TO CHECK

XENZ

YOUNGUNZ

YOUTH/SUB-CULTURES

YO! MTV RAPS

BENJAMiN ZEPHANiAH

ZEVS

ZBK

BONUS FEATURES

THANKS

CREDiTS

CREDiTS

Copyright

About the Publisher

FOREWORD

One thing I can certainly guarantee anyone buying this book is that with the possible exception of those of you who have read King Adz’s previous work, you’ll wait a long time before you see anything quite like Street Knowledge again. You’ll notice how lavish and vibrant both the text and illustrations are, and how comprehensive and off-the-wall the book is.

King Adz makes no distinction between so-called ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, nor between the backgrounds of the diverse artists he includes in this work. Whether their point of exhibition happens to be in the corporate world - in terms of advertising campaigns or products produced by multinationals - or resolutely ‘underground’ - written on the walls and bridges of our urban environments - makes absolutely no difference to him. The only thing that matters is impact and visibility on the street. Adz defines street culture as ‘an ever-evolving influence on daily life. It can’t be held, but it can be seen, everywhere. It cannot be bought but it is often used to sell everything from video games to haute couture.

King Adz sees ‘street’ art purely in terms of its aesthetics and the impact it has on the people who experience it. So in Street Knowledge you’ll see a variety of art originating from right across the globe, culture depicted not only by fêted individuals who have become world-famous stars and consequently treated very well by capitalism, but also by resolutely subterranean figures who are little known outside a small group of perhaps largely local cognoscenti (and in many cases that’s exactly how they like it)-and just about everyone else in between.

Of course, the growth of the information highway and the continuing development of our cyberspace lives force us to consider the question of whether anything can truly be considered underground. As Adz says himself, ‘it’s 2010 and we’re all down with the latest everything. Nothing is hidden; everything is instantly accessible.

Art is created to be seen and enjoyed, debated and discussed. But while it can be accessed, it’s becoming an increasing myth that the Internet necessarily throws everything that’s good up into the light. For one thing, there’s just far too much going on for most of us to be able to care or spend the time sorting out the wheat from the chaff. In a disposable culture, we experience things in different ways. As for music, a young kid in the seventies and eighties might typically have bought a single every week and an album every month. These items were cherished artifacts, played time and time again, whose artwork and sleeve notes were poured over. Their counterparts in 2010 can immerse themselves in tracks from the 1930s or music that has been made literally minutes ago. And there is so much more of it made now.

This is where someone like King Adz comes in; he travels the world, checking out everything and everyone he’s heard of, been referred to, or stumbled across on the net. I personally rack up plenty of airmiles per annum, but I’m a positively stay-at-home, carpet-slippers individual compared to him. Look at the diversity of locations in this publication, he’s been to them all - from my home town of Leith where we took a leisurely stroll down the Walk to the Docks on a sunny day, enjoying the banter of some of the more colourful locals, to the Cape Flats of South Africa and beyond to the backstreets of Tehran. Evidence of his globetrotting is apparent throughout the book; Adz in your town, hanging out, taking in the visuals and the pulse of life.

If I was trying to get in touch with someone who didn’t want to be got in touch with, Adz would be the first person I’d go to, just in order to work out how to go about it. One of his great talents as an artist, compiler, networker and individual is his resolute refusal to see barriers where the rest of us have been conditioned into doing so.

Street Knowledge will turn you onto stuff that you would never ordinarily encounter in years of websurfing. I repeatedly found myself fascinated by stuff within its pages I’d hitherto had zero interest in, precisely because I had only had limited exposure. I tend to order books online these days. In some ways, this breaks my heart, because one of the great pleasures in my life used to be browsing in a bookstore, coming across something I didn’t expect to see. That pleasure is all but gone now, as when we walk inside it’s hard to escape the feeling we’re being force fed increasingly dull, corporate fare by marketing people, pushing us into sterile consumerist boxes: art, literature, travel, cooking, crime, romance, thrillers, classics. It’s therefore uplifting to come across something that intrinsically says, ‘fuck all that nonsense’.

So have some Street Knowledge.

Irvine Welsh

BEGiN HERE…

The images, sounds and flavours of the street have always been paramount to me. Ever since the age of eleven when I left the safety of a laid-back hippy-bippy Rudolf Steiner school and signed on at the local comp, I’ve been down with all things street. Okay so I had to deal with my first real taste of culture shock, but once I got to grips with the law of the jungle (or is that the law of the tumble?) and learned how to keep my head down at the same time as holding it high, it was a real eye-opener. I was hook, lined and sinkered. Soon, I became a Casual: Farrah slacks, Patrick trainers and Lacoste shirts were what went down, with my girlfriend (when I could get one) wearing ski-pants and an Ellesse jumper. I spent my time and money at the Haven Hotel Junior Disco each Sunday evening getting down to ‘Dr Beat’ and ‘White Lines’ (the Grandmaster Flash song - the drugs came later) and then I discovered Philip Salon’s Mud Club in Charing Cross Road and the world was my lobster. I’d get a train into town every Friday and queue up with the rest of the kids, but I soon got to know Philip and my eyes were truly opened to the club world. The music went from pop to go-go to hip hop and then to Balearic beats, and it wasn’t long before I went to the legendary Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design and became one of the resident artists at the Brain Club, the most happening, creative club in London at the end of the eighties.

I am an urbanist. Okay, so I’m from the green suburbs of London but that is just the point. It’s not about where you are from it’s about what you are in to. They call it ‘crate-digging’ (a reference to record buyers going through crates of vinyl), as we are all about what we choose to take from the many influences and references that circle in the cultural ether like a 747 in the stack above LHR. And it’s about what we choose to adopt as our own, to appropriate, just like the rise of the art of sampling (other people’s records). Some people said that it wasn’t music, but to me it was something that changed my life. DJ Shadow, DJ Cam, The KLF. Say no more. Most probably the same fuckers who said the Hip Hop was just a craze, that it would pass.

We are well into the twenty-first century and we’re all down with the latest in everything. Nothing is hidden, everything is instantly accessible. Urban street culture has influenced everything you can touch, see, smell, watch, buy, wear, listen to, download, upload, TIVO, record and burn. The concept of this book is to document the influences on urban culture over the last 30 years and chart its progression from its origins to where it is today; to pay respect and give the biggest props to those people, places, social situations, music, films and images that have made a difference and helped shape the ever-changing look and feel of the movement. And to look to where it is going.

What is street culture? It is an unconscious creative collective (in the fields of art, food, music, fashion etc) that is borne from the streets of the urban environment. It has its own visual language: a multi-ethnic, multi-disciplined, multi-media, stream of consciousness that has a unique look and feel which cannot be faked. The audio/visual is god in street knowledge. As is frequently suggested, sound and image is (almost) everything, and it is an integral part of its DNA. This visual language is an ever-changing montage of retro and futuristic images. The cyclic nature of the culture means that looking back is just as important as looking forward. But to see the future you’ve got to know the past.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

To create this book I used a Canon G10 Camera, a 24-inch iMac, a Sony HC9-HDV camcorder, a notebook and a pen. I flew around the world thrice times and had the I honour of getting down with many of my heroes and a lot of seriously talented and seriously generous human beings. The reason why I’m telling you this shit is that part of my M.O. is that knowledge should be shared and not hidden. There is no secret to what I do: I’ve just worked hard for years to get to this point. Okay, so you need to be able to write and have respect for your gut feelings when you see something good, and to be interested in street culture and the world and people around you. Like the man said, you have to work hard and be nice to people.

HOT SPOTS

One of the philosophies I want to spread with this book is to turn people on to new and unknown experiences, so at the end of each city entry there is a ‘Hot Spots’ list and at the back of the book you’ll find a list of reference points, further reading or viewings to use as a starting point when planning your own adventure, on or off line. Once you’re out there you will find out that these lists are just the tip of the iceberg and the real adventure is totally one of your own creation. This is the best kind of voyage: one you and no one else owns.

Please remember that this book is just my personal view of the world of street life and obviously I can’t write about everyone who has ever had an effect on the culture, so there are going to be some people, events and happenings that I’ve not covered. I’ve tried to document the epic journey I have taken in the last 25 years of my life to present the past, present and future of street culture, looking at street art, music, fashion, film, design, the media, photography, craft, retail, street food, spots to hang out in the coolest cities, websites, events, subcultures and movements etc.

All massive hear me now! Hold tight!

Peace+Love

A1ONE

www.kolahstudio.com

When it comes to Iran, there’s only one real street artist who is worth mentioning at the moment and that is Alone. He has been holding it down for many years on his own with no community support and is the most hardworking and dedicated street artist in Iran. In the west we know nothing about oppression and have been getting up (the process of putting up illegal art in the street) for as long as Alone has been living under an oppressive, watchful regime, something truly remarkable indeed. People disappear for much less and in 2007 Alone staged the first-ever stencil art exhibition in Tehran. Which says a lot about how he operates — the fact that he was the only person to stick his neck out and put on an exhibition dedicated to an outlawed art form. I have been friends with Alone for some years now and have seen him develop an original style: he started out just using stencils and now has allowed his work to be influenced by folk art and contemporary painting. I asked him who his influences are.

‘My work has been influenced by Van Gogh, Francis Bacon, Nietzsche, music, Blek le Rat, Logan Hicks, Jeff Soto…’

It is when I ask about his goals that I begin to underderstand about life in Iran.

‘Goals? Me? I really enjoy painting and finding more things from the act of painting and forgetting my urban self. To live and feel that I am ALIVE. In my social life I am trying to learn what I need and give what I have when I’m painting. I have many goals for my future and life but when I am at the desk I feel like I have no goals.’

AMSTERDAM

This is the old pirate island where back inna day you could buy anything you wanted and anything went. It has changed a bit in the last 20 years but there is still something for everyone in the city of madness. I always liken it to an adult Disneyland: a place chock-full of adult rides (sex and drugs) and fantastic sights and parades (check out Queen’s Day on 1 April for complete mayhem). The Dutch are a creative lot and Amsterdam is where the best of them congregate to get it on. They love their street art, stickers, good food, football, drinking, legal and illegal drugs, galleries, clubs and advertising. They aren’t hung up about much and so this leads to a free-and-easy atmosphere.

But that said, Amsterdam is changing slowly from an open-air adult-orientated museum into a city of pure creativity. For a while, the city’s inspirational talents were jumping ship in favour of Rotterdam, but that is now over. The tourists are still arriving in droves but they seem to be contained to one or two areas of the ’Dam, namely the red light district and the coffee shops. These tourist areas are in the east and the south central area of the city. Just a few hundred feet east of the Centraal Station you’ll find the Warmoesstraat, the beginning of the red light and coffee shop area, in which to lose your mind. The sex and spliff aspect of the ’Dam has to be experienced before you can make up your mind about whether it’s cool or not. I’ve spent many trips to the ’Dam getting wasted back inna day and stumbling around the red light district, but these days I’m straight and the place still rocks. Remember that all the guys selling drugs on the street are just trying to rip you off. Okay, the first thing you gotta know is that all hard drugs are illegal, but if you’re determined to buy drugs then stick to the coffee shops. If you want something that isn’t on the menu then ask the dealers in the coffee shop if they have any info. There is a heavy heritage of culture within the city and all aspects of creativity are respected and encouraged. There are some killer advertising agencies here now (>p104) and the fashion and arts industries are gathering momentum.

If you go off the tourist route slightly you will find the real Amsterdam — a clean, civilized place, almost the opposite to the red light district.

Around the Spui (a square slap-bang in the centre of the ’Dam) is the place to be for book lovers, as there’s a ton of bookshops and a weekly book market on Fridays. There are some great places to eat and traditional style bars in which to spend the evening. Which is exactly where I was when I last hooked up with Michel van Rijn.

Amsterdam is home to my old pal Michel — one of the world’s last true adventurers: art expert, stolen antiquities hunter, multi-millionaire playboy. He’s a larger-than-life character with a heart of gold, and I’m truly happy to see him whenever I go to the ’Dam. We always mooch off to a pavement bar where Michel begins to tackle a long line of double bloody Marys without any visible effect. He then fills me in on his latest accomplishments, none of which I can speak about, let alone write about here. Let’s just say that he’s got his fingers in a lot of pies and one of the biggest and most complete collections of religious art in the world. A true bon viveur!

HOT SPOTS

Best homemade fries in town: Vleminckx, Voetboogstraat

Wicked bookshop: The American Book Centre, Spui 12

Great ‘hood: De Pijp, take tram 16 or 24 or 25 to Albert Cyperstr then walk east

Good Bar: Café ‘t Spui-tje, Spuistraat 318 (old-school ’Dam bar)

Great Hotel: The Lloyd Hotel. Oostelijke

ASBESTOS

www.theartofasbestos.com

A few years ago I bumped into Asbestos while he was busy rubbing down one of his large-scale pieces of someone’s hand on somebody else’s wall in a suburb of Antwerp. I know his work but had never met the guy so I stopped to talk. It’s at moments like this that you know you’re gonna get on with someone and me and Asbestos click like a clockwork orange and that is it: Down for life, and so we hang out for a weekend doing the ‘street-art shuffle’ and generally getting down with some serious hang time and talk shop.

‘My art is defined by the people I meet and interpreting them, it’s about the human form and the environment that I live in’ he says. ‘I like to interact with the space that’s around me and the streets are ripe with opportunities to express yourself. Whether it’s a painting I’ve put up on a wall or a sticker on a lamppost, it all adds to the layers of dirt and personality of a city. My paintings are meant to become part of their environment and the longer they stay up, the more they blend in and integrate with the walls. Hopefully the odd passer-by will see the work and react to it. Positive or negative, any response is good for me — once work is out on the street it’s fair game to be loved or criticized, I release all control of it once I put it out there.’

What I like about Asbestos’ work is that his gallery pieces are all created on discarded material found in the streets, usually around where the show is taking place.

‘All my work is done on found objects, be it wood, plasterboard, metal or anything else I notice in a skip at 3 am. These objects have a history and a personality to them that cannot be faked. They’re a snapshot of the past and part of the fabric of the city which missed their chance of a quiet life in a landfill site.’

His art has evolved in a natural way. He has never jumped on any bandwagon or followed any trends in art whatsoever.

‘In the last year my work has been inspired by the use of the triangle and deconstructionist shapes that I’ve seen in architectural structures. The triangle has now become a central element in my work that ties together the dirty, random, found aesthetic that I’ve always loved with a hard and structured form of the triangle. Thinking about the triangle, I’ve come to realize it’s the coolest of all the shapes — circles and squares have nothing on it.’

The other side of Asbestos’ art is his Lost Series of stickers and posters that advertise random missing objects that are lost but may not need to be found.

‘This series has been a constant in my work over that last few years and provides me with a bizarrely fun outlet to interact with the public. I’m constantly getting amused and bemused mails from people who’ve spotted the stickers to tell me that they’ve found what’s lost or that they hope I find one of my errant objects.’

JONAS ÅKERLUND

www.raf.se

Jonas Åkerlund is one of the world’s most visionary and consistently innovative film directors. He’s created some of the greatest, most memorable music videos for the likes of The Prodigy, Madonna, Blink 182, The Smashing Pumpkins and Ali-G (respect!) and made the transition to the big screen seamlessly with his debut feature Spun — a film so dope that it made me want to start taking drugs again (after being totally clean for at least five years) when I last watched it! His Swedish sensibilities ensure that his work is always original, and bacon-sandwich-droppingly controversial. Way back when, Jonas happened to be working for a production company when he was presented with an opportunity to step up his game.

‘I was working in other areas of production when Swedish TV went commercial. We were one of the last countries in the world to have commercial TV and when it happened every company wanted a commercial. So I just started shooting commercials. It was the most natural thing for me to do.’

He then began to make commercials in Europe and then gradually moved into music videos, which is where he found worldwide fame. He blew up with his brilliant and controversial ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ video, which is still the greatest music video — ever.

‘I think being Swedish I have a different shock level than the rest of the world, so I honestly try and bend the rules. I know that you can’t show certain things. With the Prodigy video, the most shocking thing was how big it became. This was before the Internet so everyone was passing around videotapes. Everyone saw it you know, Jay Leno made jokes about it on his show for five nights in a row… It was the first time that I made something that seemed to affect people…’

I kinda wonder if the music video is still relevant now as it was back inna day, when MTV ruled supremely. I ask Jonas if he still feels the same when he is making the videos today as he was back then.

‘I still enjoy making music videos but the problem I have is that everyone is worried about the content. There used to be a time when the videos were creative and free from all red tape, the brief was ‘just do something that we haven’t seen before, something that sticks out that people talk about’. And today the brief is that it’s gotta be ‘Iconic’. Making music videos has recently become a bit more like doing a commercial, but with an inexperienced client. The thing with advertising agencies is that they know what they are talking about. They know their audience. With the music world they are all smart-asses who all think they know what they’re talking about — but they really don’t. Out of that inexperience comes great creativity, that’s why I still love it!’

Back in 2002 when he made Spun, no one would even send Mickey Rourke a script, let alone cast him in a movie; he was seen as box-office poison by the fools who run the show, but Jonas ignored all this bullshit and cast him as ‘The Cook’ — one of Mickey’s finest roles to date. I give him total respect for that action alone. Jonas has recently completed shooting a $25m horror film, Horsemen, and continues to create amazing music videos and commercials around the world.

ADVERTiSiNG

So I may be a bit biased (as I used to be an art director, hence the ADZ in my name) but advertising has had a massive influence on street culture and vice versa. In terms of audio/visual culture, adverts are not only massively influenced by street shit (usually they are always playing catch-up to what is really happening on the street), they also, once in a while, influence it. Okay, so right now the advertising industry is in a bit of a strange place as the Internet came along and changed everything. The web is a showcase of original ideas, created by everyone and anyone — it totally changed the way ad agencies worked, who were no longer an exclusive source of creative genius anymore.

Back inna day a full-scale ad campaign to launch a new product consisted of a couple of press ads, some outdoor and — the king of ads — a TV spot or two. Now all that has changed but some of advertising’s most respected players — and my personal heroes (Tony Kaye, Oliviero Toscaniro) — have made their names in advertising before moving on to bigger and better things. Take for instance the legendary Dunlop-Tested For The Unexpected TV ad from 1993, an advert that totally changed the face of how TV ads were made and watched. The most amazing visuals (an S&M mask-clad man, a grand piano on wheels driving across a bridge, black ball bearings), cut to a Velvet Underground song, it blew the genre apart. It showed that elements of street culture (the ad was drenched in pure street style and attitude) could be harnessed and used in the mainstream media without having to use the obvious images of things like break dancing youths. This ad was light years ahead of the game, and in turn influenced music videos, film which in turn had a direct influence on street culture.

‘The Dunlop TV ad was an incident where the stars all came together at the same point. I was working with a creative team from an ad agency Tom Carty and Walter Campbell — and they trusted me completely. I’d just come off making a terrible British Airways commercial which really went completely wrong, so I said to them, and their client — “If you want me to do this for you then you have to back off and let me do my thing otherwise I won’t be able to give you what you really want.” And they all did. Originally that script was “Open on a big frying pan with a car driving round the frying pan and it’s got these tyres.” That was what their idea was. And we completely changed it and got something out on TV that if it ran next week, it would be as radical as it was then.’

Tony Kaye

Advertising has now become an integral part of the street culture, as a lot of the new campaigns are what’s called ‘guerrilla’ — stuff that actually happens in the street, events that people can interact with and not merely watch. Advertising has become harder and harder to spot within the urban environment. Brands are hosting events, exhibitions, star-maker competitions, websites, publishing magazines, all of which appear to be non-branded, but are actually just vehicles for an energy drink, sneakers, or a pair of jeans, often using imagery, techniques and other ideas lifted directly from the sub-culture of the street. Sony executed a campaign where they used street artists in Berlin to advertise their PSP, much to the scorn of the Berlin public who worked out what was going on (they were being sold to by a huge corporation) immediately as the ‘street art’ went up. It didn’t matter how good the street art was, it was dismissed as it was just advertising.

But that said, advertising is part of the day-to-day whether we like it or not. There are direct lines of influence between street culture and advertising, but more recently it has been a one-way street with street culture (including its online presence) being absorbed, regurgitated and then spat out as advertising. This will change as society is always hungry for the ‘new’ and in the not-too-distant future it will be the turn of advertising to carry this torch.

ALiFE

www.alifenyc.com

The purest attitude and motives go into the creation of their constantly amazing clothing range and other amazing products and projects. Alife is the strongest brand that’s come out of the New York bombing movement. Alife started out as a creative space on Orchard Street in the Lower East Side. They chose this spot as 1) it was affordable and 2) it was an area that people from all the other boroughs of Manhattan would not be opposed to coming to. Coming out of bombing you have to think about this shit! I sat down with Rob Cristofaro the founder of Alife.

‘I used to write graffiti and I decided to start this new thing — workshop, retail space — I guess it was a store but never had any experience doing any of that shit. Me and a few other dudes were like “we’re gonna start something” as there wasn’t anything going on. We started the plans in 1998 and by ‘99 we found the space and opened up shop in the Lower East Side, Orchard Street, which was basically at the time affordable rent as nobody was really down there. We didn’t know what the hell we were doing and were just like “fuck it, let’s just try this new jump-off and see where it goes.“’

Once they opened the space, Alife became their new tag and their mission was to get the name out there in any way possible: stickers, T-shirts, magazines, the same shit as usual; self-promotion is all bombing really, with no budget. They don’t pay for advertising and everything is hand done, independent street promotion. That’s not to say that if they had a big budget to go do some serious marketing, they would be going large on billboards, as I’m sure they’d still retain that no-budget attitude.

‘That’s the graffiti way — it’s like, “king, shit, fuck everybody else; fuck all crews, we’re by ourselves, no respect for really anybody else out here,” and that’s our shit: We’re gonna king New York. Alife was based on the street and before we opened our space we put the word out to the graffiti community — who were the only people we were in touch with — that we were opening a platform, a workshop, a creative space, and we wanted them to be involved. We had a meeting before we opened the store with 50-60 people. These were all the creative people before the shit became what it is. This was people like Espo, Reese, Kaws, the people that were graffiti writers but ready to take it to the next level and at the time there was no other venue for it.’

At this time there wasn’t any commercial side to the graffiti movement, and Alife has been based on the art side of things from the beginning. Back then they didn’t make clothing, they didn’t do footwear — just a space for art, and after they had made enough noise from that, did they think about producing clothing and everything else that they do now.

‘Everything that we’ve done has been a learning experience from having no experience of owning a business to running businesses and independently promoting all the shit that we do. And then having big corporations come and, like, mimic the shit that we’re doing but with big fucking budgets. Once in a while there is some interesting shit that goes on out there, and the people that evolve and are not following any shit, any trend — that’s the kind of people we like to involve ourselves with. Where I see us going is hopefully the money is going to get bigger and with the bigger budget do more powerful, widely seen things for the public. Using the clothing and the footwear to bring the money in to do the shit that we really like to do — the creative shit.’

Wherever Alife is going you can be sure of one thing: that Alife will continue to create and produce art clothing whatever, with a real connection to the streets from which it came — New York City streets, and that is the one place that is King of street culture.

BANKSY

www.banksy.co.uk

Back in the 1980s when graffiti was just crossing over into the New York downtown art scene, somewhere in Bristol, some kid called Robin was going to school and having fun. Years later, mirroring the past (just like the old-school New York graffiti ‘writers’), Banksy began his career as a graffiti writer and attempted to get up on every wall of the borough of Easton, where he was from. The Banksy juggernaut began rolling with his first ever exhibition, which was held in a block of council flats. He sold four canvases to the band Massive Attack. He then progressed to using stencils, as it was a lot quicker to apply and created a harder impact, something that has always been important for his work. A well hard impact! And the resulting attention to detail is one reason why Banksy is responsible for the popularity of street art right now. He is the undisputed leader of the movement and his work is by far the wittiest, most accessible of any artist of the last 50 years. This is because everyone gets it. He gets up somewhere and the resulting piece makes the front page of newspapers all over the world because the work is beautiful, topical, cheeky and extremely accessible.

Although Banksy hails from Bristol, his artistic home is the streets of London (and later LA, New York, New Orleans, Bamako and the West Bank) for it was here that he built up his name with his stunts such as installing his illegal 25-ton statue opposite the Law Courts, or stickering police cars with ‘Legal Graffiti Zone’ written on them. Shows from Shoreditch to Mayfair showcased his unique brand of street art. Banksy is undoubtedly responsible for the rise of the art movement, as he has taken graffiti out of the streets and into the hearts and minds of the public with his witty, spot-on pieces all over the world. No-one would be making a living off their street art if it wasn’t for Banksy.

KELSEY BROOKES

www.kelseybrookes.com

Kelsey is a contemporary painter whose work has been inadvertently influenced by the street. I first met Kelsey when he was working as a scientist in some lab in San Diego and had tracked him down as I wanted to show his killer work in ‘1 percent’, a free online PDF that I used to edit all about urban creativity. He was doing something completely different and fresh, and was a sweet, out-there guy. I then ran ‘The 92024 Report’ in which Kelsey would tell us about his life on the West Coast in Issue 3 but the column never really developed, as it was the last ever issue of the mag.

So eight years later he’s blown up and is a full-time fully paid-up member of the global artistic community, and having exhibitions around the world. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

‘My work is about what I see when I close my eyes. It is about spirituality and the unknown. Others are calling it “Neo Shamanistica”, I call it what I do when I’m not eating. It’s evolved by means of random mutation and natural selection. In this case I am both the mutation and the selection, which really accelerates and distorts the evolutionary process.’

NiNA BRAUN

www.ninabraun.net

Some crazy shit going on here. Nina creates art by using tactile, unusual techniques such as knitting and sewing. It’s totally fresh and I love it. Nina Braun is a European artist who was born in Italy and then raised mainly in Germany near Cologne by a Dutch mother and a German father. She had a good childhood moving a few times as a kid, living in the Netherlands and Hamburg, with the result that today she doesn’t feel rooted to any one place. She now lives and works in Berlin.

‘I love to mix supposedly outmoded handcraft techniques with contemporary matters. I take the liberty to explore different materials and processes. I produce sculptures, installations, textile pictures and paintings, objects and cartoons.’

Back inna day she studied Visual Arts at art school in Hamburg.

‘It was there that I received the impression that art is not allowed to be fun and should not be pleasing to look at. I left the academy before the exams, partly disappointed, but partly for the benefit of (skateboarding company) Sumo, that expanded with rapid strides back then. My “education” continued on the streets and I improved my skills in urban disciplines. I finally entered the ‘real’ art world, but I keep my background—urban culture — visible in my work by using an iconic picture language and characters to tell my stories.’

BERLiN

Berlin has been one the finest cities for the urban generation for the last ten years and will continue to do so for some time, as in the grand scheme of things Berlin is a total infant as it has only been one city since 1989. The streets are plastered with graffiti and street art (only recently outlawed) and the Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, and Prenzlauer Berg areas are where it’s at for street life. This is where the young and the restless hang and the great-quality, cheap places to eat, sleep and drink are in abundance.

Because of the number of youth in the city there is a lot of cheap entertainment on offer. There are too many clubs and venues even to think about listing and every genre of music is catered for. In the Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain neighbourhoods there are many small bars that open up and attract boho crowds that are seriously unique. This is the place where the doner kebab was invented. Forget what you know about the doner, in Berlin they are one of the most delicious things you can eat.

A short walk from the Ostkreuz station is a really great street called Sonntagstrasse, which is a great place to spend an evening. A lot of students live in this area as it is cheap and not-yet developed. There are a few hostels and cheap hotels here and many bars and restaurants.

The Mitte area has been almost completely rebuilt since 1989 as this was where the wall ran its course with large parts mainly no-man’s land between East and West Berlin, and a lot of the fashion industry and boutique hotels are situated here.

One thing that is interesting about Berlin is the courtyards behind the tall apartment buildings. There is a whole world waiting to be explored and most courtyards are accessible to the public. You can be on the most urban street and wander through the heavily graffiti’d arch, then step into another world: ponds, trees, timber yards, artists’ studios, kindergartens, communal eating and living spaces, indie cinemas. There are some great independent festivals and events in and around the city, especially in the summer when the city comes alive. The Berliners love their independence and when the 02 stadium was built recently there was much protesting at the homogenization of their culture, with a lot of the city promising to boycott any concert there. Here here! I say. Fight the power and commercialization of culture.

There isn’t much left of the wall except for the tourist area in the Potsdammer Platz and the West Side gallery along the river in Kreuzberg. The latter is the one to visit as a lot of the original wall art is still visible and this tells its own story of the wall.

BERLiN ON LESS THAN 40 EUROS A DAY

Berlin is one of the cheapest western European cites. The figures below will change slightly with inflation, but this is what you can live off:

Dorm bed in decent hostel | €16
Continental Breakfast | €2
Lunch (doner/pizza) | €2.50
Supper (quality) | €7
Travel Card | €6.10
Drinks (ten bottles of beer/soda) | €5

BROKEN FiNGAZ

www.brokenfingaz.com

I drive 90 km north of Tel Aviv to the city of Haifa. On the way I pass gas stations with giant dragons sat on the roof breathing neon fire onto the peeps filling up their cars and state-of-the-art shopping malls and entertainment complexes. There is nothing backwards about Israel, even out of the cities. I’m in Haifa to hang out with the Broken Fingaz, a multi-faceted, multi-talented, young and restless art and music crew who virtually run the street scene in Haifa single handedly. And after I marvel at their fucking cool shop in the mixed Massada area, they take me downtown to the Arab part of town for some killer hummus.

‘We attempt to recreate our personal twisted world into our art. Most of the time what comes out is a lot of colors, organs, fat people and animals on acid. We started as part of the first generation of graffiti writers in Israel at the beginning of the decade. Five years ago we started a line of underground parties, and designed all the posters and flyers for the events. That was our first serious experience with graphic design, and slowly we started to design most of the flyers and posters for parties and shows in Tel Aviv. From there we evolved to other media such as T-shirts and plush dolls, screen prints, fine art and eventually opening our own gallery and shop, keeping it DIY at all times.’

Not only do they design the posters, they host the events in Haifa and then promote the shit outta whatever, as they believe in what they do. It’s been a while since I’ve met such an enthusiastic and energized bunch of kids, and this is a breath of fresh air for street culture.

‘Street culture means having an edge, style, being a part of your local community. It’s about putting your shit outside, not only through the media and the web. The fact that street art gets so hyped these days just makes it possible for us to actually make a living from stuff we like doing anyhow.

‘We grew up in Haifa City, a true old school town. It’s like San Francisco of the Middle East, only without the hipsters and the gays, just the homeless and the old hippies. On one hand growing up in this gypsy town made it hard to be exposed to many things we liked in this culture; on the other hand, being a pioneer and playing on fresh ground made the game much more self motivating and gave us the opportunity to see the scene growing from zero to really cool and artistic.

‘Our influences are, hash, music, weird people, growing up in a fucked-up militant country, hummus, skateboarding, porn, Haifa….’

CENTRAL STATiON

www.centralstationdesign.com

One of the creative driving forces coming out of Manchester (>p172) is the creative collective Central Station, comprised of Matt and Pat Carroll and Karen Jackson. The visual yin to the Happy Mondays audio yang, Central Station provided all the art, including record sleeves, stage sets, music videos, to the movement. And their art is fucking amazing. When I had to swiftly make a business card in South Africa I was so inspired by their Black Grape ‘Carlos’ cover (see right) that I used the same police photo-fit image with the words ‘Graphical Terrorist’ scrawled underneath. I sat down with Matt, Pat, and Karen in Manchester on a sunny day in 2009.

‘We’ve been into making art since we were kids. There was eleven of us living in this tiny council house — it was chaos. Art became a way of entering our own world and space. We were influenced by all the shit that was around us, music, books, films, magazines and mad characters. A subliminal intake of the world, a subconscious collection of ideas. We were into things like drawing, type, and making marks — stuff that kids round our way were just not interested in.

‘Our front room was full of our brother’s massive record collection and we were fascinated by some of the sleeve art — it was amazing. We’d buy our own records and redesign the sleeves ourselves, or if we bought a single without a proper sleeve we’d make one. We’d spend hours copying images from Marvel comics. Drawing pictures and cartoons of pop stars and people off the telly.

‘Our Dad introduced us to magazines and books that we would never have looked at. It opened up a world that had a massive effect on us. Some of the visual images we discovered at that time — like when we read about the air disaster with the rugby team in the Andes in 1972-that fascinated us for 20 years. Reading about things like the Baader-Meinhof gang, terrorist movements, stuff like that had a big impact on us and influenced our work — eventually. Being a kid in the 70s and early 80s, you have to remember that it was a fucking grim time — but we always had dreams and aspirations beyond our means, we always thought outside of what you’re supposed to. One of the most important things when you get older is to connect back to all those key moments. People forget that… A lot of people become adults and they fucking erase everythin’ they think is no longer important. We’ve always believed that’s the stuff you keep. When we set up Central Station our priority was to celebrate this idea. Growing up with the Mondays meant we shared the same mentality-we didn’t give a shit.

‘Factory records became an outlet for us all to infiltrate a commercial environment. Our art, images like Bummed and Carlos the Jackal were exhibited in high-street shop windows, people’s homes, and posters were plastered around the country. We were part of an underground movement, using the establishment to communicate to a wider audience.’

MARTHA COOPER

Martha Cooper is a living legend: one of the most influential documentary photographers of street culture and co-author of Subway Art-required reading for anyone into street culture. Martha has done all kinds of photography over the past 40 years in order to make a living. The bottom line is that she is an editorial photographer, meaning that she shoots photos for publication in newspapers, magazines, books and the web, so that people can find out about things.

‘I prefer to call myself a “documentary photographer” rather than a photojournalist because to me journalism implies news and I don’t like shooting news stories.’

I first met Martha in Berlin in 2007 when, one summer afternoon, her German publisher tried to get her to autograph 1500 copies of her latest book. I helped her out with the signing of 700 or so, by keeping her supplied with a stream of open books to write on, and we bonded over the absurdity of the situation. She returned the favour and shot an interview for me in the rubble of a hip hop museum that was being built nearby.

‘For me, the subject matter always overrides factors such as unusual light or dramatic angles. I really want to be able to see what’s going on in my photos. I feel the camera is an excellent tool for capturing the world and I’m more interested in historic preservation than I am in art. That being said, I would also like my photos to be aesthetically pleasing so the challenge is to present straightforward documentation well framed and well lit. I’ve pretty much shot the same way my entire life. Over the years I’ve been more specialized in my choice of subject matter but my basic way of taking pictures has remained the same.’

CTRL

www.ctrlclothing.com

Coming straight outta Helskini, Finland, CTRL began its journey as a skateboarding company back in 1994, but in the last five years it has moved smoothly into the fashion world. The roots are still in skateboarding and street culture, but now the main focus is clothing, for both men and women.

‘The biggest motivation for the gentle switch to the fashion world came from the fact that by owning a fashion label you get the most attention from the best looking girls, basically.’

And now they also get to decide what their friends should wear. All this leads to a lot of networking and travelling around the world; lots of tradeshows and secret drunken gatherings. CTRL is now sold in 33 countries around the world. But this is just the start! I hung out with Freeman, the designer/art director and asked him how his work has evolved.

‘Graphic design-wise my work has gotten more mellow. It started as a vivid, colourful and disturbed mega blast and slowly got easier and easier. I’m trying to put more effort behind the design, meaning that in the beginning I was satisfied with something that just looked cool to me; now it has to mean something as well, conceptual thinking is key, I guess. And in general my way of working has changed a lot more into being a clothing designer more than a graphic designer — my way of working of combining those two, though, but compared to early days it was mostly just working with deckgraphics or T-shirt graphics, but now I have whole clothing lines to think about, cut, sew and everything.’

I was curious to know how Freeman saw fashion/streetwear influencing the urban landscape.

‘Living in Helsinki, I can only say that the rise of fashion/streetwear brands has done a lot of good to the urban landscape, meaning that in general people dress better than before. It wasn’t such a big thing, you see in Helsinki dressing up isn’t obvious, especially if compared to our neighbouring country capital Stockholm, where dressing up and being aware of the latest trends has always been a huge thing. But on the other hand there the trend consciousness is on such a level that it almost looks like people are wearing uniforms, everybody looks the same. And I guess this is happening in many cities around the world. But in general it’s not really the streetwear brands that dictate the way fashion is going, but the skaters and everything that is around skateboarding, and therefore skate brands are always on top of the pyramid.’

CULTURE JAMMiNG

www.publicadcampaign.com

www.areyougeneric.org

One of the most exciting and ingenious elements of street culture is culture jamming. Culture jamming is what people turn to when they have had enough of the more popular forms of mainstream culture — shopping, movies, the media, advertising. It is a healthy reaction to the propaganda and bullshit that is fed to us 24/7 through the media, and is manifested in street action (hijacking advertising or shop fronts), media action (using Internet and traditional media to raise awareness) and events I can’t even categorize (using a giant projector to beam out anti-consumer messages on to a building). It could be a protest about how big business rides over the lives of humans in the cause to make even more money, or the way that a lot of advertising billboards are actually illegal. On the road writing this book, I spent time with two serious culture-jammers, Okat from areyougeneneric.org and Jordan Seiler, who’s the mastermind behind the New York Street Advertising Takeover.

areyougeneric.org, the US-based website has been ‘Giving brand-America the finger since 2001’ and links the protest with creativity. Areyougeneric is a group of artists that seeks to protest, to question and to disprove. Its nemeses are unethical corporations, censorship, the biased media, hypocrisy, excessive advertising and plain stupidity. Its heroes are art, discussion, independent thought and creation.

‘At first the site was nothing more than a place for us to show off a culture jam or two (such as stickering the front of certain fashion magazines that are totally controlled by their advertisers) that we pulled off. It has now evolved to be much more than that. It’s become a resource library of street-art photos from all over the world. It also houses our catalogue of clothing and print art intended to critique and reclaim our social and mental environments.

‘Our shirts promote a concept, not a name (not even our own), and are intended to provide an alternative to big business and small thinking. The shirts have no label, no logo, and are printed on sweatshop-free tees. We’ve also shared all our culture jams in the public domain and are constantly supporting and encouraging others to pursue their concepts in the public arena.’

As I helped Okat sticker up a shop that was being converted into yet another Starbucks, I asked him to define street culture.

‘In the most simple terms, I define street culture with the word “raw”. The street is where everything is born, where it lies before the mainstream gets its hands on it and refines it to something tolerable. Street culture embraces the unfinished, the pure, the work that was improvised without the intention of ever getting noticed and that is why it so beautiful’

The first of Jordan Seiler’s seriously ambitious New York Street Advertising Takeovers (NYSAT) took place on 27 April 2009, when over 120 illegal billboards throughout the city of New York were white washed by dozens of volunteers and then turned into works of art. NYSAT was a reaction to the hundreds of illegal billboards that are not registered with the city. Even though these adverts are illegal, the violators are rarely, if ever, prosecuted by the City of New York, allowing the billboard companies to make some serious money by cluttering the outdoor space of NYC with some seriously shit adverts. Jordan tells me what it’s all about.

‘Outdoor advertising is the primary obstacle to open public communication. By commodifying public space, outdoor advertising has monopolized the surfaces that shape our shared environment. Private property laws protect the communications made by outdoor advertising while systematically preventing public use of that space. In an effort to illuminate these issues, I illegally reclaim outdoor advertising space for public ideas and visual forms. Through bold acts of civil disobedience I hope to air my grievances in the court of public opinion and witness our communities regain control of the spaces they occupy.’

How has your work evolved?

‘Today I try to make work that not only uses outdoor advertising space but also announces itself as doing so. This means if I am making personal work, I use tactics that allowmy work to stand out from inside the advertising frame. Things like giving physicality where one expects two-dimensional prints, being quiet when someone would expect images to be loud, breaking the frame, and always trying to create honest personal interactions that are so rare in commercial messages. As well the work has embraced a sense of activism and the organization of events has become a part of my art.’

C215

C215 grew up in the small city of Orléans in France, a very quiet place where he began creating his street art as a teenager.

‘It was a balanced life I could not face, since I am a very unbalanced person who needs action. This city was too small. Paris is now too small. I sometimes feel this world is too small.’

His art has developed into some of the most amazing stencils around and can be seen in many cities around the world: Delhi, Sao Paulo, Istanbul, Brooklyn, LA, Dakar, Casablanca, London, Amsterdam, Rome, Barcelona, Athens, Warsaw, Berlin. ‘I think my art is painting stencils in the streets. I could do other things, but what I am good at is stencilling the streets. I’m used to painting anywhere I am and I am travelling quite a lot. I try to place paintings in the streets, but almost without asking for any authorization. Trying to place the right stuff, at the right place, at the right moment.’

What does street culture mean to you?

‘A lot of things, and not only hip hop culture. As a Frenchman, we think to the firemen dancing parties of the 20s, the Parisian terraces, the political posters, having fun between kids in parks, putting tags by night in the streets, being rebuked from night clubs, smoking a cigarette outside a club, smoking a joint in a small street. But more seriously I also think to homeless people, street kids and beggars, since those experience streets continually, with its violence, its indifference. These suffer from streets and cannot be avoided.’

What/who are your influences?

‘Ernest Pignon-Ernest, the original pioneer of French street art, is certainly at the basis of most of my works. But older classics are big references for me: Dürer, Rubens, Delacroix, Ingres, Géricault, Courbet and many others, I am even influenced by French poets like Baudelaire, Apollinaire and Rimbaud.’

THE CiTY LOVES YOU

www.thecitylovesyou.com

The City Loves You is a Mexican art and culture crew who get their messages about urban art, fashion, movies and events out there, through a web-based magazine. Operating out of Mexico City since 2006, TCLY was primarily created as a platform where artists from Mexico could show their work to the world, and ever since they have been invited to collaborate with a lot of different companies and represent a lot of artists in Mexico City. They also create events and parties based on the themes they usually talk about on their website and they are the best reference point for anyone who wants to find out what’s really happening in the lives of Mexican youth, from the street to art to nightlife to leisure life and beyond. I caught up with Cesar Ortega, founder and director of The City Loves You.

‘We started TCLY as an urban artists’ and fashion designers’ community, the idea first was to give an account to all the emerging artists so they could show their work on a website. Obviously they were never able to update the blog so I started inviting friends who were fans of the scene and were interested in having this as a hobby, and since this was a good idea it grew a lot in the world and it started to be a job for everyone because it was considered as a one of a kind piece on the internet’

‘I grew up in a barrio in the north of Mexico City called La Industrial, well known for being a half wild barrio and also because it’s a very inspiring hood. Actually there are a lot of famous creators who also were raised there. Then I moved to another place which was more like a wealthy place full of Spanish people and Nuevos Ricos. I didn’t quite like it but I started skateboarding there, and there was the place where the local skate shop called Time Skateshop made a park for us where I basically used to spend all the time skating with neighbors and friends from around.’

‘The street is the perfect medium for us to communicate in different and simple ways, like the clothes you wear, the music you represent with it or the sport you practice, or any other way to express peacefully and impact the others to continue the process of freedom and love between each other on the planet. We have a lot of musical influences, we’re really eclectic: we go from punk to hip hop and many genres more, it doesn’t matter, but we’ve been also influenced a lot by all the people who started growing the scene in Mexico, the people who believed in the underground culture in all of its different forms.’

I love it: street culture Mexican style. This is what the culture is all about, taking something global and giving it a local twist! Big up The City Loves You!!

COHEN@MUSHON

www.myspace.com/cohenetmushon

First off, let’s get this straight: Cohen@Mushon are three guys — two MCs and one DJ. The trio, Michael Cohen, Michael Moshonov and Itai Drai, are some of the most humble and likable guys I’ve ever met and when we spend some time together I discover the boys have an infectious sense of joy about them, a rare thing indeed in the rap game. They are like the Beastie Boys used to be when they were young and restless. Cohen@Mushon are from Tel Aviv. They rap in Hebrew and use old-school Israeli music samples mixed with the fattest beats. This may sound like something that won’t cross-over, but I can assure you that their music has a global appeal. A serious global appeal.

‘First of all everything started as a joke. We met when we were sixteen-years-old and we started to do this routine every Friday and record a song — it was like our hangout — it grew and grew and when Itai (our DJ) came to the event we really became a band. We stated having like bigger and better shows and we started connecting to the scene. We used to have shows for our high-school friends but after we hooked up with Itai we got more serious and then at one of those shows we met Ori Shochat who is like the fourth member of the group. He’s a pioneering hip hop producer/DJ in Israel. He saw us and we started working on our album at his studio. That’s when we got serious, we kinda picked the material and we said, okay, we’re making a real album. Ori gave us a home to do everything and record for free and he really believed in the project and we were off on the journey.’

So Cohen makes the beats, then Cohen and Mushon write the lyrics together, and then Itai, AKA Walter, digs in his crates and finds some vintage Israeli sample to scratch in. The song that put them on the map contained a sample from an old-school Israeli track from the 70s, to which Walter added something from an Israeli cartoon to bring out the humour. What is also interesting is that even though they rap in Hebrew, the music works overseas as the message is universal.

‘We rap only in Hebrew because we feel that hip hop is all about your own language and talking on a personal level so that the only way to say something truthful is in your mother tongue. So it was only natural for us to sing in Hebrew even though most of the stuff we listen to is in English, but we wanted to make it our own. How it happened was very simple. Michael did the beats on Fruityloops (easy-to-use music software — and by the way we still work on it!) and he used to send me beats and I said to him, “You should be the MC also,” and he said, “No, you should be the MC and I will be the producer.” I said, “No, you have great things to say!” and so we started writing together. Our first concept for a song was “I have lost my physical fitness”. It was about us being unable to run or do anything sports related. It was very important for us to put some humour in our music, because when we started out, Israeli hip hop really took itself seriously, and was very political, very heavy headed. We needed to add some of that humour we had from our heroes — Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, The Beastie Boys — to bring back an element of fun to it. But that’s not to say that we don’t take it seriously. We don’t do it as a joke. We take our fun seriously.’

JAMES DODD

www.james-dodd.com

Jimmy and I met by chance when we were both guest speakers at some insane street art fest in Belgium (>p82). It was a strange but interesting weekend and it was one of those meetings where it feels like you’ve known the person forever, which is what friendship is all about: eternity. Jimmy used to be one of the most prominent stencil artists in Australia until he gave it all up to go back to uni and study for his Masters of Visual Art. This was an astute move as now his work has all the influences of the street but with the heavy-weight conceptual backing of the art establishment.

What Jimmy does is travel the world collecting scrawls and graffiti (not the street art kind, but the underclass style — people writing band’s names, expletives, insults, gangs etc). He shoots them on a digital camera, and then comes up with a concept to incorporate the image — like the time he built a facsimile of a Darwin bus shelter (which are renowned for being painted with very kitsch sunsets) and used exact copies of the collected scrawls to cover its surfaces. Thus underclass outsider art (ie art created by members of the underclasses out of frustration) becomes high art. I fucking love it.

‘I’ve always been attracted to graffiti and to people who do things that they’re not supposed to.’

Having spent years knee-deep in the Melbourne stencil scene, Jim knows better than most what he likes and, more importantly, what he doesn’t:

‘I’ve decided that most New York/train-oriented graf is very derivative. As a culture, it often doesn’t support innovation and experimentation. But these are the primary things that I find exciting in all creative endeavours. That’s why I find outsider graffiti so exciting, because it doesn’t adhere to a set of rules and is often unpredictable.’

ARAMiNTA DE CLERMONT

Araminta has a great story about how she got into photography and subsequently how she shot two different sides to South African — more specifically, Cape Town — life. ‘Prison gang tattoos and matric’ dresses’ for her first exhibition. (Matric’ is short for Matriculation and is when you spend your last year at high school and graduate, like the US high school prom. Then you have a graduation party and this is when the dress comes in!) The moment I spotted her work I knew that she had something special and I had to get her in here. I’ll let her tell you her story in her own words…

‘I did an architecture course in England but what I really liked was shuffling around London looking at sites I was given. I really enjoyed that bit. And then I studied it at St Martins, which was quite an odd course as it hadn’t really started as a course properly, it was just me and another girl. I had walked in off the street and said “Do you do a photography post-graduate?” and so they said, “No, but talk to the tutor who basically had to shoot all the fashion,” and he was rather bored. So he made us a course, which was lovely. And what happened was by then I had a terrible drug habit and everything went a bit pear-shaped for years and then I came out to Cape Town for treatment and rehab. I just locked myself in the darkroom in London and used it as an excuse to do what I wanted and when I came out to South Africa I started shooting properly and also I found that I had all these ideas.

‘It was because of the drug stuff that enabled me to meet the 28s and the 26s [prison gangs], really. When I came out here I had the most horrendous scars, almost disfiguring, on my face, but when I met the prison gangs, the first thing I thought was that the tattoos were such a rich art form in their own right, and I found it so fascinating, and also interesting because of my own scars. Which were nothing compared to the branding that the gangsters get from their face tattoos. It was very healing for me to see this. I had empathy for them as I had made my face peculiar as well. But I had the best year and a half with them because they are like the most amazing men and their stories are incredible. The tattoo is a kind of way for a human being to express themself when they have had everything else taken away.

‘I actually was going to do the matric’ photos across the board, all the people, but I became really interested in the Cape Flats (a notorious area of Cape Town, (>p270)) where the kids there have the best dresses, the most imagination for the one night they can style on. It was quite grinding to shoot the gangsters and I was quite happy to shoot something fun. The girls were full of self-expression and really into making a statement. They all think about the dress they are gonna wear for about five years and the parents spend every penny on it and it’s all focused on the one moment when they step out of their blockhouse in Mannenburg and the whole neighbourhood turns and looks at you and they all go wild. Just unbelievable…’

DJ CULTURE

For me, I first really understood the power of the DJ when I was in a small club (Snoopy’s) in S’arenal, Majorca, in 1986. For some reason I was stood near the DJ booth and I watched him cue up a record. He began to play ‘Last Night A DJ Saved My Life’, not at the beginning but at the end of a 12” mix, and as this was pumping out he quickly cued up a different version of the same record then dropped that in, and with that one swift move he had created a live remix. What the fuck did he just do? I was hooked.

If you went back to 1970 in New York, the year dot for DJing, you’d find it all began with a man called David Mancuso. He started holding private parties at his loft apartment in New York that year at 647 Broadway. The first party was called Love Saves The Day. These invitation-only parties became so popular that by 1971 he decided to do this on a weekly basis at 74 and then 99 Prince Street from 1975-1984. The Loft was inspired by Harlem rent parties of the ′20s and ′30s and if you were a member and had no money, David ran an IOU system so you could pay the following week. It was all about being able to be with your friends, dancing and having a good time. It was a true social experiment where all walks of life got down next to each other. This is why it was important. And then there was the sound system. David designed his own unique sound system which was his secret weapon. It wasn’t about volume, it was about quality.

The Paradise Garage opened in NYC in 1976 at 84 Kings Street, the home of legendary DJ Larry Levan. Originally a parking garage, hence the name, it was largely inspired by the loft parties: no food, alcohol or beverages were on sale, and it was not open to the general public.

You had to be a member to get in. As word spread, people would queue round the block each Friday night, hoping to be able to get in with a member, almost prostituting themselves in order to gain entry. Now that’s a club. This was the birthplace of ‘Garage Music’.

‘The club was down some dingy backstreet by the docks. From the outside it was not what I was expecting. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to witness inside the club. The place was rammed. The clientele were almost all black, all male and very gay. The club was made up of numerous rooms; it was impossible to get any idea of how big the place actually was as it was so chock-full and difficult to get around. This was like no nightclub that I had ever been in before. The unseen sound system was pumping out tune after tune of which I’d never heard the like before. Mainly they were stripped-back extended mixes of shuddering electro tracks with soul divas’ voices on top; they almost made the Giorgio Moroder records I knew sound like kids’ stuff. Track after track, all seamlessly segueing into each other. Never a drop in the energy level. This was something else altogether. It was literally an ocean away from cheesy Euro disco or the soul-boy sounds that dance clubs would have been playing in the UK… On leaving the place I noticed that it was called “The Paradise Garage”.’

Bill Drummond ex-KLF

Over the sea in Europe, in 1976, a club called Amnesia opened on the Balearic island of Ibiza. DJ Alfredo Fiorito took over as resident DJ Amnesia in 1984 and changed the face of DJing. Turn to p122 to continue the story.

DESiGNERS AGAiNST AiDS

www.designersagainstaids.com

Designers Against Aids came to life in 2004 after long-time fashion journalist, Ninette Murk, and a photographer and music journalist, Javier Barcala, joined forces. Their idea was to build different campaigns that would utilize their serious network of friends (artists, fashion designers, musicians, celebrities) to create different messages of HIV/AIDS awareness using their talent and I vehicles of expression. Starting from fashion collections, they’ve also organized conferences, been involved in music festivals, created video-clips, photographs and moreover, two worldwide campaigns with giant retailer H&M that reached more than 30 countries. DAA have worked with Estelle, Katy Perry, Yoko Ono, Cyndi Lauper, N.E.R.D., Moby, Tokio Hotel, Robyn and Dangerous Muse.

DAA is now training students to start campaigns in regions with dramatic rates of infections (such as China, India, Russia, Ukraine, East Asia and South Africa) through courses at their International HIV/AIDS Awareness Education Center in Antwerp. They’re also looking into possible collaborations with sports celebrities, because they have the power to connect with the youth as much as musicians do and are very great role models.

‘Our goal was always to create messages that would keep the youth interested in AIDS awareness and wouldn’t make them look somewhere else or lose interest.’

Javier Barcala

DR D.

www.drd.nu

dr.d is a street artist who specializes in billboard hijacking, which is one of my favourite mediums. Billboards are there to be fucked with (>Culture Jamming p40) and the good doctor does just that. dr.d’s work is a take on life:

‘It’ll either be funny or political, I think the most effective political stuff will have an element of humour that makes it work better.’

He started off just cutting bits from one billboard to stick on another, which was generally just funny or stupid, but…

‘After a while you find that it’s really limiting as to what you’ll end up with, as all you can work with is what the advertisers throw you. Now as well as being technically different (ie I’ll use stencils over posters and even do small scale collage that I then print up billboard size), I suppose my work now has more of a point politically or socially.’

DOT DA GENiUS

I was introduced to Dot’s work when I was cruising the streets of LA (>p156) and ‘Day & Night’ (the tune he wrote & produced fwith Kid Cudi) was on heavy rotation on every urban radio station. I tracked him down and we hooked up at his brand new studio in Brooklyn.

‘I’ve been doing music pretty much my whole life. I went to music school from seven to like fifteen and from then till now I’ve been playing the piano. When I first got to college my roommate did electro/techno music and he gave me my first beat program to make beats on, called Fruityloops - a cracked version. That’s when I first started making beats. I just kept making beats and working with anyone who wanted to work with me, as I was just starting. My A&R first worked with Cudi when he first came to New York and he linked us and we made music for two years straight and then the song just took off.

‘I’ve been influenced by artists from Lily All en to Rick Ross. I was influenced in the beginning by the Neptunes, Timbaland, Swizz Beatz-the staples: the blueprint aseveïpfcne wants to attain that kind of success. All these producers influenced me to do my own thing. You have to jump from one genre to another. A lot of people make the mistake of staying in one lane.’

CHOLE EARLY

www.chloeearly.com

Chloe’s work will stop you in your tracks and make you look closer. This is what it’s all about. Her work is simply amazing and unites street influences with fine art sensibilities to create something unique. She grew up in Cork, Ireland, just outside the city.

‘It was beautiful in a mossy, green moist kind of way. We had a lot of space, we climbed trees, nature was close. The city was big enough to have great gigs, bars, clubs, and discovering all that as a teenager seemed like an Aladdin’s Cave of new delights. I think with painting there is always two strands to the work. Painting is an all-encompassing absorbing task, the process becomes the reward.

‘I think a lot about colour, mark making, movement, composition, form; these are the bricks out of which a painting is built. For the viewer the first thing they often relate to is the imagery. Previously, landscape was my primary subject but my emphasis has now switched to the figure. Oil painting and the figure seem to belong to each other and I take a lot of pleasure in painting flesh. But mostly my paintings are about the combinations of imagery I use, unexpected pairings and trying to create a narrative and then drown it out again in paint. It’s a tug of war.

‘When I go to Italy I love seeing extended families walking together in the evenings, talking to the neighbours. I’m sure it’s got a lot to do with the weather but also sadly I think here in the UK the streets are becoming homogenized as the same chains dominate high streets up and down the country, and even from borough to borough in London, it’s all starting to look the same. Perhaps, though, the same things I despair of are one of the reasons why street art and skateboarding have taken off so much in the west, as some kind of territorial way of reclaiming ownership and leaving a mark or belonging to our surroundings.

‘When I think of street culture I think of other countries. Where I live in London there is large African and Turkish communities, the Turks stand outside their barbers, bakeries and flower shops talking late into the night.’

EELUS

http://eelus.com

Eelus is a killer artist who was born in Wigan and has always been fascinated by the darker, weirder side of life. He creates his art on and off the streets, using stencils, spray paint and by hand.

‘Ever since I can remember these are the themes that I’ve worked with just because that’s what’s always in my head. Even when I was very young I remember we’d have to draw some kind of dinosaur scene at school, but my dinosaurs would be being ridden around by other-worldly monsters, hunting and eating people. There would be utter carnage on the paper, the kind of shit you see being drawn by disturbed kids in horror films. Then when I was about ten I found a pirate video in the house that my mum had borrowed from someone at work, The Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, back to back. So there I was, sat crosslegged on the floor in the dark at around 2 am with headphones on and watched both films one after the other. And so began my love of the dark.’

He moved to London where his amazing work caught the eye of everyone who likes art. He does his own thing and this sets him apart.

‘Like I said earlier, I haven’t grown up being part of a graffiti crew and I’ve only ever stepped on a skateboard once in my life, the fucking thing nearly killed me. I know a lot of artists/writers have a chip on their shoulder about other artists who haven’t grown up “on the street”, but fuck that. I’m not trying to prove anything to anybody but myself and I’m certainly not apologetic for never running around a train yard at 4 am with a skateboard under one arm. To me, street culture is about people and the environment they call home. It’s everything from the yoot on the back of the bus with their shit music pumping from their mobile phones to the Turkish ladies making bread in their shop windows down the Kingsland Road.

‘There is no right and wrong with street culture, there’s just people of all walks of life living every day the only way they know how, in the clothes they choose to wear, listening to the music they like, doing the things they like to do. I’ve recently moved to Hastings and the street culture there is similar to that of east London, where I’ve just moved from. There’s quite a young and alternative crowd wearing interesting gear and sweet tattoos, I love it. On the other hand there’s weathered old fishermen with little dogs everywhere drinking by themselves in the quiet local pubs; both are equally as fascinating to me and that to me is street culture.’

His work has steadily evolved into something special.

‘When I first started I used to make small stencils of weird scratchy characters that filled my sketchbooks. From there I practised more and more and got my head around the stencilling process then along came my Shat-at piece which is what really drop-kicked me into the scene properly. From there I did a series of Star Wars themed pieces, a trilogy to go with the original films. These went down well and I was lucky enough to work with Pictures On Walls in making the images into screen prints and get them out to people who wanted them.’

RON ENGLiSH

www.popaganda.com

Ron is America’s most prolific street/pop artist working today, expressing himself through his amazing work both on and off the streets. In 1981 he blew up through his billboard take-overs, subvertising in Dallas, Texas, which, quite rightly, took pot-shots at global brands and their heavy use of advertising. He chose billboards because ‘everyone sees them’. He is one of the founding members of the Culture Jamming movement (>p40) and he questions the ethics of companies such as Apple, McDonald’s, Camel tobacco and Disney through clever re-interpretation of adverts. Back inna day he hand painted the subverts and then pasted them up on billboards; today he uses a large-format printer. But the message is still as sharp and the art as spot-on as it ever was.

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