NUMERO UNO - FASH

I have always been on the side of style rather than quantity. The first graffiti I saw impressed me with the shapes, I wondered how you could imagine doing a letter in a certain way that was so stylish. In the end the film that gives birth to graffiti is Style Wars, if you do graffiti you have to make the style just as if you have to play basketball you have to throw the ball in the basket. Yet at the same time there are also kings who make the same track over and over again, just think of 10Foot. There is nothing wrong with that, in fact that simple track is usually very powerful. The beauty of this game is to be able to live it with great freedom, to be able to interpret it. When you do your stuff with sincerity you can see it, it's the attitude that makes authenticity and authenticity should be the ultimate aim. Whoever could buy chrome and black and bomb everything.

You have an extremely solid but still instinctive, at times childlike, way of drawing. What has left you from when you were younger in what you do and what are the first marks you saw live?

I don't have a memory of drawing much as a child, I would say I started out with graffiti. From that period I remember that Enrg, who I knew from middle school and had started painting a few months before me, used to send me sketches on msn where he showed me the construction of the letters and explained the proportions. A school I have never forgotten!
The first tags I saw in town were from him, with his first name and his first crew. Then when he introduced me to 1st Depot, the forum of the time, the world opened up in front of my eyes. I consumed Horfé and O'Clock's page, those of Rome crew Feis, Aber and Haker, while I have a large folder of Amaze's stuff saved from Tumblr. I saw the first trains arrive with PRG that looked like plotter prints, amazing FUXIA as well, and it was great to do the first panel with Bixer, one of them. I still keep the black spray I used that night! Then when I started to go to Milan with my friends we would stay the whole trip stuck to the window looking at the pieces, there was incredible stuff: especially by Nemco, lots of Caps too. And once we got to the city there were incredible flops by Fayer, Dru, Clark, Panda, Drom, Sage, Pilchi, Goldie: CTO, NZ and FIA.

What is your process when you paint?

Back in the day I read an interview of Lauda's where he said that the outlines only have to be one shot for the flow of the piece. I don't even know if he still agrees with that since he does outlines with the brush now, but I bring it up now because it's fun to think about it again. It's a very New York rule, almost academic, discipline-like. On the other hand, I often find myself doing things a little bit in the wrong order sometimes, going over, covering. The piece takes shape by itself, it grows on itself and I really like that, the final effect is much more vibrant with all those layers. 
Lately the biggest boosts are coming from LPM's Fratm Life, we're pushing each other and it's very nice.

The limit for my generation was set by PAL. I have printed in my head the shutter tagged by Horphée in Montana Diaries with that P drawn from underneath all stretched out.

Now for example the ICY in Berlin, and especially Clint176, are still doing it.

I would pay to see a video of him painting, not those toys doing flaris with the astrofat on instagram. It is precious in general for all Western culture, although no one knows it. Formal research, free and totally disinterested, therefore sincere: only graffiti can push you to do it. They are true avant-garde! 

Thus, and coming back among writers, it's okay that they are not understood, from a certain point of view they are extreme. But in the end, isn't that exactly what Style Wars is all about, pushing style as much as possible? Those who turn their noses up at Clint and Saeio without trying to understand and thinking it is total crap compared to Dondi and Seen are dogmatic. Note well: the rule, the dogma is the worst obstacle to authenticity. After all, we are in 2024 the energy of writing has rightly evolved. who in the history of art would say that Matisse is a toy because he made rough brushstrokes? Yet they called him a beast (fauve)! Or that Futurballa was one because he drew colored triangles?

Do you think a person approaching to graffiti today can find his way through the overdose of videos and information about it?

Before there were certainly less references, but better made. Basically I think because it was more difficult to produce. Today on Italian spotting pages you see really bad pictures, they particularly bother me in the last period. And the same thing happens with fanzines, which have increased in parallel with the rise of spotting on Instagram. It is too easy to make a layout of 200 photos by yourself, send the file to an online printer and receive the fanzine package at home. It's the same thing Dumbo says about subways in Nero Inferno, "when it's easy for everybody, you know, one day there's one, one day there's another one," and today it's very easy to document graffiti. On the other hand, it is difficult to document them well and therefore to communicate them well, also making the proper selection. Then painting in italy is very easy, so any kid starting out feels justified to do it even though he does not have the skills because he does not have the comparison with a decent standard that should be established by the culture itself. Information has to be interpreted, you don't learn on your own, but if the information is chaotic, nothing but chaos can come out of it. I would not be happy to paint and see rolling something that someone who has been doing it longer than I respect thinks it sucks. But yet I have been faced with some arrogant behavior.

You can see it well in cities where there is more repression and therefore where painting requires more effort, for example in Berlin. There is real attitude there, and you can also see it in the spotters, a real subculture within the subculture: in my opinion the best information is coming from there now, and in fact there is and incredible style. The Berlin of today is the Paris of 10 years ago. Der Edelstein and Wuesteneiundluft, who are now my favorite photographers, both in terms of selection and quality of photos, show us very well. (Other than antistyle!!!!!!)

And so what does the person who browses through your fanzine find there?

I try to do my own. Cross and delight, unfortunately writing is a lot of fun for me, I don't think I can stop. I'm always writing with my finger in the air, my mom and my friends have been making fun of me since ever.
As you can read on the cover, there are 27 photos in the fanzine taken between 2017 and 2023, they are in chronological order and when I flip through it each page takes me back to one of the moments in my life, it kind of marks all the passages, the tours I've been on, the people I've been with. I want to thank everybody here as well, for those who have been with me in the graffs and not only, and I want to thank everybody else simply for reading these words that maybe even I would not have read. I am quite convinced that talking about graff serves no purpose, despite the fact that I would eventually talk about it endlessly (and I do). Thank you!

We close the studio microphone after two hours, there are so many words and so many silences that you will never hear, we thought this was enough to make you understand what we seem to have understood: that for Fash writing is definitely not a formality, but a matter of quality.