Lectrics haben ein Interview mit POET geführt.
Poet from the GFA crew in Berlin give us a few minutes to discuss about style, letters, beef, the early Berlin and his work on canvas.
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Lectrics: As an old school Berliner, what can you say about the early stages of Graffiti in Berlin? There’s a lots of stories going around about the debuts in the East and the West.
POET: Me as a born West-berliner can only talk about West. The early stages where fascinating, because nobody had really information about anything, You had to find out everything by your own, because information where back then like gold. I can remember, that I have to give one spraycan in exchange for one picture with graff from Munich. So 30 pictures mean to give 30 spraycans, but this only counts for West-Berlin where you could find around 82 the first pieces on the Berlin wall, that was only reachable from West-Berlin. East-berlin came into the game after the fall of the wall in 1989. The whole scene from the West moved on to the trains in East-Berlin until 93-94. After that it became an All City game for everybody. I can remember for example in 1990, that one of the guys from the CAF crew, which belongs to the first generation in the East, came to a workshop from Shek and me and we taught him how to do the first lines with a spraycan instead with chalk.
Lectrics: After the wall fall down it was easy to recognize a piece from the east to another from the west. It took time to the east to catch up this 10 years?
POET: Yeah I think so. Or better put it this way, the first piece I saw, that I personal like, from an East-Berliner was around 1994-95. Some of them really maked quik progress, but I also think, the conditions back then for painting, were for all really good in the entire City. 20 years later, it seems like that the most young talented writers come from the Eastern part of the town and the Westside is full of Oldschoolers, who had maked a comeback. So I guess it’s da perfect mix for the Future.
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Lectrics: Do you mean that the Berlin scene are becoming harder? Maybe the new generation comes into graffiti not for the same reason than at this golden age. What do you think about this?
POET: I dont think that the Berlin scene became harder. It just change in direction. Maybe it became harder to paint a train, then in the 90ties. But even with this I am not sure because I see mostly every day fullcolor painted S-Trains running. It seems to me more the other way around, that the scene has become softer and more introverted. It also seems like that Berlin had the most graff-tourist in Europe. A lot of foreign Toys come to paint in Berlin, which also means a lot of cans for free. Back in the days things where definitly different but the motivation is nowadays still the same I guess: Fame. But I think, back then you had much more writers running around armed with knifes and shit. It was kind of ruffer on the street not that zero tolerance politics. Nowadays it’s a crime to carry a knife. For example, you had also a lot of the train bombers after the nienties turning into heavy crime, I know a lot of writers who just were released from jail after 7-8 years, or who are still hiding from the law in foreign countrys.
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Lectrics: There’s many gifted graffiti artists in Berlin. What do you think about the new generation of graffiti artists in your town ?
POET: I am not sure. With time I learned that the age has it own rules. I saw the most talented young writers turning there back on writing because of girls and partying. Then you also have Kids that dont care about fame, they just do it for the fun of it, which seems kind of healthy. But I think the major problem is for the most kids, that with time they dont earn anything exxept stress. To become really famous in Berlin you need good tactics or supernatural talent.
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