Hip Hop, an influential artistic, cultural, political, and social movement rooted in 1970s street culture, is associated with four key pillars: MCing (rapping), DJing, graffiti, and breakdancing.
Hip hop has also fostered core values and principles that continue to shape its evolution and impact.
One significant achievement of Hip Hop is the development of streetwear, a fashion style blending elements of casual wear, sportswear, and Hip-Hop culture (e.g., baggy jeans, oversized t-shirts, baseball caps, bomber jackets, sneakers, etc.).
Streetwear has transcended the hip hop community, becoming a global fashion trend.
Over the years, streetwear has also diversified in both garment types and target audiences. However, this widespread adoption has highlighted somecontradictions between the fundamental values of hip hop and the practices behind streetwear production.
Contradiction in Values
Although some streetwear is manufactured in countries like Turkey, Portugal, and the United States, which have relatively strong labor and environmental laws, a substantial portion of this type of clothing is made in countries such as the Peoples Republic of China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and India.
In these countries workers often endure long hours and receive minimal wages. Additionally, enforcement of workers’ rights is generally weak. Although environmental regulations are in place, they are frequently poorly enforced, leading to significant pollution.
The Fast Fashion Dilemma
Some, but not all streetwear can be considered to be fast fashion, characterized by rapidly bringing trendy, affordable clothing to market. But fast fashion contradicts core values of Hip Hop. Fast fashion often depends upon the use of cheap labor, and presents health risks to workers and local environments. Fast fashion also contributes to over consumption and clothing from fast fashion brands is often dumped in countries (typically less developed ones) where waste management regulations are less stringent. These issues starkly contrast with Hip Hop’s values of social awareness and activism.
Call to Conscious Consumerism
Where does this leave us? Similar to checking the ingredients of the food you purchase and eat, the Hip Hop community and aficionados of streetwear need to consider the labor and environmental practices behind their streetwear choices.
They need to question if their fashion choices align with Hip Hop’s focus on social consciousness and activism. This should lead to supporting brands with transparent supply chains, purchasing second-hand items, or prioritizing sustainable materials. By becoming conscious consumers, not only will this support ethical practices and protect the environment but also honor the true spirit of hip hop. ultimately you’re not only what you eat, but what you wear too.
Photographer Bob Doran
Sweat Shop
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/505276769_79d781b70e_o-scaled.jpg19202560Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2024-06-02 03:28:232024-12-15 15:56:50The “Hip-ocrisy” of Streetwear
If you spend the majority of your waking hours inside, rarely go out, or hardly leave your neighborhood, then your life is going to be pretty dull and boring.
But if you do venture outside of your familiar surroundings, then you’ll eventually have to decide how you’re going to get around town.
Most people are fine with just walking, others biking, some prefer taking a scooter, bus or subway, and then others wouldn’t dare getting around their urban environment unless it was by car.
Unquestionably there are a variety of different urban modalities.
The type/s of transportation you use, however, plays a major part in contributing to how you understand the urban public space where you live, work, or visit.
The method you use not only enables you to judge distances, but may also help you to develop and understand an underlying logic of the urban environment.
Putting the concept of mental maps to the side right now, relatively recently I’ve been getting around Berlin via bikeshare. Over time this experience has enabled me to visit parts of the city that I would not normally explore had I only been using a rideshare, subway, or walking.
Traveling by bike (and bikeshare in particular) circumscribes not only the places I want to visit, when I want to visit these locations, and for how long. Searching for available bikeshares, following time limits, and the specified places to park the vehicle can also be a bit of a pain.
On the other hand, unlike a car or motorbike, for example, or even a personal bike, where you have to search for appropriate parking and pay for it too, once you park the bikeshare, the vehicle is no longer your problem.
Moreover, Berlin is relatively flat with few hills, so while biking in the city provides some physical exercise, it is not overwhelming. Additionally, the numerous bike paths and designated lanes make navigating traffic relatively easy.
Using a bike I saw all manner of commercial enterprises (e.g., cafés, restaurants, markets, etc.), landmarks, and graffiti and street art that peaked my interest (that I could explore more closely at a later point in time). Had I been traveling primarily by subway, in all likelihood, I would not have seen these sorts of things.
I’ve also discovered that the choice of urban mobility and the effect it has on knowing a neighborhood is also connected to time of day when one uses that mobility .
One night, for example, I was riding home and the google map instructions that I was following via iPhone and air buds had me to drive through Görlitzer Park. During the day this location is relatively serene. But at 10 pm it was a little sketchy. As I entered the park I was almost immediately accosted by a phalanx of young men who assumed that I came there to buy drugs from them.
Not wishing to be caught up in this scene, I did a U-turn drove off a couple of blocks. But the application kept on putting me back into the park. It took me a few minutes to determine that I should switch the google map directions to car (as opposed to bike) and thus this would direct me on the main roads and not through the park.
Summing up, choice of urban modality forces one to understand the city in unique ways.
It shapes what we are exposed to; what we see, hear, smell, and how. (And, if, for instance, it points us to new food experiences then choice of urban mobility may even have an impact on our sense of taste).
All things considered, I neither visited the suburbs, nor the more distant parts of the city. If I had wanted to explore those areas, I might have reconsidered using a bikeshare and opted for urban public transportation instead.
Therefore, if you want to better understand a city’s nuances, it may be helpful to vary your modes of transportation and explore different options for getting around.
Photo credit: Jeffrey Ian Ross
Title: Bikeshares Neukölln
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_4584.jpg640596Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2024-05-26 12:14:582024-09-22 12:19:32Ways of Knowing the City
Since the dawn of contemporary graffiti (and later street art) there’s been a proliferation of hard copy and on-line publications on this subject.
Some of the original hard copy efforts were zines; self-produced publications, resembling magazines, that were sold at independent book shops, or among graffiti writers and nerds. These creative efforts were generally not done to make money, but to share graffiti-related content (i.e., photos and information about writers, places, and techniques) among practitioners and aficionados. Meanwhile the producers of these creative efforts were lucky if they were able to recoup the costs of production.
By the same token, a handful of scholarly publishers (including university presses) occasionally acquired and published books on graffiti (or more commonly street art).
Likewise art world book publishers such as Abrams Books, Phaidon, Prestel, Schiffer, Taschen, Thames & Hudson have released a handful of books on name writing, graffiti, or more usually ones that integrate both graffiti and street art, featuring well-known street artists like Banksy or books that provide a visual overview on a theme (i.e., urban art in a geographic location).
Smaller publishing houses such as Dokument Press, From Here to Fame, Gingko Press, and Laurence King Publishing also occasionally print books on graffiti, street art, and/or the work of a well-known graff writers or street artists. Few publishers, however, have specialized on both publishing books on graffiti and distributing this material to eager customers. It’s not clear why, but I suspect that acquiring, editing, printing and distributing monographs on this topic is not that profitable.
But then there is Hitzerot. Based in Berlin, Germany, and started in 2015 by Sascha Blasche (34) and Steffen Köhler (38), both former graff writers and graff book enthusiasts, Hitzerot is an enigma, among book distributors and publishers. Since their founding, they’ve not only sold 200 different titles centered around graffiti or name writing, but they currently have 140 of them in stock. That’s not all. Hitzerot has published 28 books, 9 magazines and a handful of prints to hang on the wall.
According to their website, “Our stock consists of must-have evergreens, extensive monographs, limited zines, important major releases, scientific readers, print editions and of course a broad variety of our own Hitzerot volumes.”
Although it has a rather large on-line presence, Hitzerot, which was named after a legendary, now banned and obsolete, type of red spray paint, once popular among graffiti writers in Berlin is physically located in a relatively nondescript storefront that also doubles as a warehouse in Moabit, Berlin. The small space is crowded with boxes upon boxes of books, shelves filled to the brim with books, a loft for additional storage, and a counter. Even though the space had a toilet, there was no heat which Sascha said helped keep the rent low.
A little background. Sascha, who grew up in Lichterfelde in South Berlin, is a former illegal graffiti writer. Steffen, on the other hand, was raised in Neubrandenburg, and moved to Berlin in 2007. He initially worked in graphic design and in art direction for an advertising company. Although he used to do graffiti, he is more interested in taking photographs of this type of urban art.
In 2012, Sascha started publishing Auri Sacra Fames, a magazine focusing on the Berlin graffiti scene, and did a total of five volumes.
When Sascha was working on the magazine’s first issue he asked photographers and “spotters,” as they often call themselves, for material to better convey an authentic overall picture of the graffiti scene. A befriended photographer introduced Steffen to him and Steffen kindly provided photos for the first issue of graffiti on trains and walls in Berlin.
According to Sascha, “There were lots of graff related magazines at the time.” But there was a lot of intransparent curation among people who produced these publications. In particular, they publish the work of their friends or people they personally know. He notes, “I used to have a section in each of the magazines that would focus on certain areas and populate from each. This strategy was designed to reduce favoritism.”
Sascha adds, “There were lots of magazines at the time. The idea of starting a publishing house came out of the magazine as a way to distribute other graffiti related publications.”
Although the idea of establishing a book distribution/publishing house came out of the magazine, it was not really connected to this representative focus Sascha had for the magazine. He states that, “It was more like another project back then where I could bring in my knowledge of running a small online shop knowing how to distribute the magazine and my contacts I made during the years of publishing it.”
Steffen also suggests that, “The idea was to combine several good and well thought out publications in one shop instead of having them all in different small simple online ones. Back then (and it still to this day) it was common to create a shop like BigCartel, a very simple, easy to handle shop system, for each new publication someone did. We thought to build a proper online shop with more photos of the product and a deeper insight through the text (review-like) would be a good idea. At first for our own publications, but very soon we started listing other people’s publications we like as well.”
Their first effort was a photographic book on painted trains in Berlin with a different approach as the documentation style, as you can find in Sacha’s magazine for example. It was called Farbzüge (which might be best translated as “coloured trains.”
Although Sascha is more interested in old-school graffiti writing and writers, Steffen leans more toward new school graffiti practices. Regardless, both of them know what is happening with graffiti, not only in Berlin, but Germany and around the world, including who the players are, who is hot, who is active and who is inactive, the locations and the styles of the past, and which ones are emerging.
Sascha and Steffen have worked out an equitable division of labor. Sascha primarily takes care of writing advertising copy, including descriptions of books, proof-reading, order fulfillment. Steffen, on the other hand, supervises the website’s backend, conception and layout, the identification and implementation of new technologies, and methods to improve business processes. Both admit that order fulfillment, preparing new releases, maintenance of the website, and responding to inquiries eats up a large part of the day.
Meanwhile some times of the year that are busier than others. They are always very busy just before the UNLOCK book fair (an annual meeting where publishers meet and display their merchandise).
Typically Hitzerot tries to release one or more new books just before or at this venue. To these ends, they are presenting two new books at the UNLOCK book fair. The first one is Theorie des Style/Theory of Style which is a re-issue of the 1996 book of the same name. They are going to release the book in both English and in German versions.
The second one, in which Steffen is one of three co-authors/editors, is Daniel Weissbach aka COST aka DTagno, I features the work of the iconic German based graffiti writer and street artist (1976- 2020).
From the beginning, neither Sascha nor Steffen draw a salary out of the business. Instead they try to pump the profits back into the running of Hitzerot. That’s why both of them work half time in other jobs to be able to keep Hitzerot running.
Steffen admits that, “we could distribute or produce a lot more street art books, or ones about popular street artists like Banksy, or mainstream graffiti books, but we want to spend our time on books that focus on interesting graffiti and name writing. We want to pick the gold. We want to distribute titles that are hard to get. Hitzerot won’t be any good if we watered things down.”
In short, in addition to wanting to invest all their time into the business and not depend on part time jobs, they want to distribute the books that they like.
Some of their future plans include being more efficient in distributing books and magazines that would allow them to bring out more of their own titles as a publishing house.
Sascha states that, “most graff writers constantly read all the graffiti surrounding them, to see who’s up and who’s good. And publications and the ‘afterlife’ of graffiti as/on photographs and its publication are important parts of the whole graffiti game. Moreover graff writers would rather be famous (among fellow writers) than rich.” And that is why Sascha and Steffen see their roles not only as book distributors and publishers, but as curators and archivists too.
According to their website, they “constantly kept our eyes open for interesting content and the most relevant titles. Our mission from day one has not changed: We are aiming to offer you the highest quality publications with a graffiti context out there.”
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_4885.jpg286323Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2024-05-16 13:23:572024-05-18 14:06:20The Little Graffiti and Name-Writing Book Distributor and Publisher That Could
The “Hip-ocrisy” of Streetwear
/by Jeffrey Ian RossHip Hop, an influential artistic, cultural, political, and social movement rooted in 1970s street culture, is associated with four key pillars: MCing (rapping), DJing, graffiti, and breakdancing.
Hip hop has also fostered core values and principles that continue to shape its evolution and impact.
These include:
* The promotion of Expression and Authenticity
* Enabling entrepreneurship and Self-Reliance
* Encouraging Creativity and Innovation
* Promoting Community Voice and Unity
* Resistance Against Social and Economic Injustices
* Respect for Oneself, Others, and the Art Form
* Fostering Social Awareness and Activism
One significant achievement of Hip Hop is the development of streetwear, a fashion style blending elements of casual wear, sportswear, and Hip-Hop culture (e.g., baggy jeans, oversized t-shirts, baseball caps, bomber jackets, sneakers, etc.).
Streetwear has transcended the hip hop community, becoming a global fashion trend.
Over the years, streetwear has also diversified in both garment types and target audiences. However, this widespread adoption has highlighted some contradictions between the fundamental values of hip hop and the practices behind streetwear production.
Contradiction in Values
Although some streetwear is manufactured in countries like Turkey, Portugal, and the United States, which have relatively strong labor and environmental laws, a substantial portion of this type of clothing is made in countries such as the Peoples Republic of China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and India.
In these countries workers often endure long hours and receive minimal wages. Additionally, enforcement of workers’ rights is generally weak. Although environmental regulations are in place, they are frequently poorly enforced, leading to significant pollution.
The Fast Fashion Dilemma
Some, but not all streetwear can be considered to be fast fashion, characterized by rapidly bringing trendy, affordable clothing to market. But fast fashion contradicts core values of Hip Hop. Fast fashion often depends upon the use of cheap labor, and presents health risks to workers and local environments. Fast fashion also contributes to over consumption and clothing from fast fashion brands is often dumped in countries (typically less developed ones) where waste management regulations are less stringent. These issues starkly contrast with Hip Hop’s values of social awareness and activism.
Call to Conscious Consumerism
Where does this leave us? Similar to checking the ingredients of the food you purchase and eat, the Hip Hop community and aficionados of streetwear need to consider the labor and environmental practices behind their streetwear choices.
They need to question if their fashion choices align with Hip Hop’s focus on social consciousness and activism. This should lead to supporting brands with transparent supply chains, purchasing second-hand items, or prioritizing sustainable materials. By becoming conscious consumers, not only will this support ethical practices and protect the environment but also honor the true spirit of hip hop. ultimately you’re not only what you eat, but what you wear too.
Photographer Bob Doran
Sweat Shop
Ways of Knowing the City
/by Jeffrey Ian RossIf you spend the majority of your waking hours inside, rarely go out, or hardly leave your neighborhood, then your life is going to be pretty dull and boring.
But if you do venture outside of your familiar surroundings, then you’ll eventually have to decide how you’re going to get around town.
Most people are fine with just walking, others biking, some prefer taking a scooter, bus or subway, and then others wouldn’t dare getting around their urban environment unless it was by car.
Unquestionably there are a variety of different urban modalities.
The type/s of transportation you use, however, plays a major part in contributing to how you understand the urban public space where you live, work, or visit.
The method you use not only enables you to judge distances, but may also help you to develop and understand an underlying logic of the urban environment.
Putting the concept of mental maps to the side right now, relatively recently I’ve been getting around Berlin via bikeshare. Over time this experience has enabled me to visit parts of the city that I would not normally explore had I only been using a rideshare, subway, or walking.
Traveling by bike (and bikeshare in particular) circumscribes not only the places I want to visit, when I want to visit these locations, and for how long. Searching for available bikeshares, following time limits, and the specified places to park the vehicle can also be a bit of a pain.
On the other hand, unlike a car or motorbike, for example, or even a personal bike, where you have to search for appropriate parking and pay for it too, once you park the bikeshare, the vehicle is no longer your problem.
Moreover, Berlin is relatively flat with few hills, so while biking in the city provides some physical exercise, it is not overwhelming. Additionally, the numerous bike paths and designated lanes make navigating traffic relatively easy.
Using a bike I saw all manner of commercial enterprises (e.g., cafés, restaurants, markets, etc.), landmarks, and graffiti and street art that peaked my interest (that I could explore more closely at a later point in time). Had I been traveling primarily by subway, in all likelihood, I would not have seen these sorts of things.
I’ve also discovered that the choice of urban mobility and the effect it has on knowing a neighborhood is also connected to time of day when one uses that mobility .
One night, for example, I was riding home and the google map instructions that I was following via iPhone and air buds had me to drive through Görlitzer Park. During the day this location is relatively serene. But at 10 pm it was a little sketchy. As I entered the park I was almost immediately accosted by a phalanx of young men who assumed that I came there to buy drugs from them.
Not wishing to be caught up in this scene, I did a U-turn drove off a couple of blocks. But the application kept on putting me back into the park. It took me a few minutes to determine that I should switch the google map directions to car (as opposed to bike) and thus this would direct me on the main roads and not through the park.
Summing up, choice of urban modality forces one to understand the city in unique ways.
It shapes what we are exposed to; what we see, hear, smell, and how. (And, if, for instance, it points us to new food experiences then choice of urban mobility may even have an impact on our sense of taste).
All things considered, I neither visited the suburbs, nor the more distant parts of the city. If I had wanted to explore those areas, I might have reconsidered using a bikeshare and opted for urban public transportation instead.
Therefore, if you want to better understand a city’s nuances, it may be helpful to vary your modes of transportation and explore different options for getting around.
Photo credit: Jeffrey Ian Ross
Title: Bikeshares Neukölln
The Little Graffiti and Name-Writing Book Distributor and Publisher That Could
/by Jeffrey Ian RossSince the dawn of contemporary graffiti (and later street art) there’s been a proliferation of hard copy and on-line publications on this subject.
Some of the original hard copy efforts were zines; self-produced publications, resembling magazines, that were sold at independent book shops, or among graffiti writers and nerds. These creative efforts were generally not done to make money, but to share graffiti-related content (i.e., photos and information about writers, places, and techniques) among practitioners and aficionados. Meanwhile the producers of these creative efforts were lucky if they were able to recoup the costs of production.
By the same token, a handful of scholarly publishers (including university presses) occasionally acquired and published books on graffiti (or more commonly street art).
Likewise art world book publishers such as Abrams Books, Phaidon, Prestel, Schiffer, Taschen, Thames & Hudson have released a handful of books on name writing, graffiti, or more usually ones that integrate both graffiti and street art, featuring well-known street artists like Banksy or books that provide a visual overview on a theme (i.e., urban art in a geographic location).
Smaller publishing houses such as Dokument Press, From Here to Fame, Gingko Press, and Laurence King Publishing also occasionally print books on graffiti, street art, and/or the work of a well-known graff writers or street artists. Few publishers, however, have specialized on both publishing books on graffiti and distributing this material to eager customers. It’s not clear why, but I suspect that acquiring, editing, printing and distributing monographs on this topic is not that profitable.
But then there is Hitzerot. Based in Berlin, Germany, and started in 2015 by Sascha Blasche (34) and Steffen Köhler (38), both former graff writers and graff book enthusiasts, Hitzerot is an enigma, among book distributors and publishers. Since their founding, they’ve not only sold 200 different titles centered around graffiti or name writing, but they currently have 140 of them in stock. That’s not all. Hitzerot has published 28 books, 9 magazines and a handful of prints to hang on the wall.
According to their website, “Our stock consists of must-have evergreens, extensive monographs, limited zines, important major releases, scientific readers, print editions and of course a broad variety of our own Hitzerot volumes.”
Although it has a rather large on-line presence, Hitzerot, which was named after a legendary, now banned and obsolete, type of red spray paint, once popular among graffiti writers in Berlin is physically located in a relatively nondescript storefront that also doubles as a warehouse in Moabit, Berlin. The small space is crowded with boxes upon boxes of books, shelves filled to the brim with books, a loft for additional storage, and a counter. Even though the space had a toilet, there was no heat which Sascha said helped keep the rent low.
A little background. Sascha, who grew up in Lichterfelde in South Berlin, is a former illegal graffiti writer. Steffen, on the other hand, was raised in Neubrandenburg, and moved to Berlin in 2007. He initially worked in graphic design and in art direction for an advertising company. Although he used to do graffiti, he is more interested in taking photographs of this type of urban art.
In 2012, Sascha started publishing Auri Sacra Fames, a magazine focusing on the Berlin graffiti scene, and did a total of five volumes.
When Sascha was working on the magazine’s first issue he asked photographers and “spotters,” as they often call themselves, for material to better convey an authentic overall picture of the graffiti scene. A befriended photographer introduced Steffen to him and Steffen kindly provided photos for the first issue of graffiti on trains and walls in Berlin.
According to Sascha, “There were lots of graff related magazines at the time.” But there was a lot of intransparent curation among people who produced these publications. In particular, they publish the work of their friends or people they personally know. He notes, “I used to have a section in each of the magazines that would focus on certain areas and populate from each. This strategy was designed to reduce favoritism.”
Sascha adds, “There were lots of magazines at the time. The idea of starting a publishing house came out of the magazine as a way to distribute other graffiti related publications.”
Although the idea of establishing a book distribution/publishing house came out of the magazine, it was not really connected to this representative focus Sascha had for the magazine. He states that, “It was more like another project back then where I could bring in my knowledge of running a small online shop knowing how to distribute the magazine and my contacts I made during the years of publishing it.”
Steffen also suggests that, “The idea was to combine several good and well thought out publications in one shop instead of having them all in different small simple online ones. Back then (and it still to this day) it was common to create a shop like BigCartel, a very simple, easy to handle shop system, for each new publication someone did. We thought to build a proper online shop with more photos of the product and a deeper insight through the text (review-like) would be a good idea. At first for our own publications, but very soon we started listing other people’s publications we like as well.”
Their first effort was a photographic book on painted trains in Berlin with a different approach as the documentation style, as you can find in Sacha’s magazine for example. It was called Farbzüge (which might be best translated as “coloured trains.”
Although Sascha is more interested in old-school graffiti writing and writers, Steffen leans more toward new school graffiti practices. Regardless, both of them know what is happening with graffiti, not only in Berlin, but Germany and around the world, including who the players are, who is hot, who is active and who is inactive, the locations and the styles of the past, and which ones are emerging.
Sascha and Steffen have worked out an equitable division of labor. Sascha primarily takes care of writing advertising copy, including descriptions of books, proof-reading, order fulfillment. Steffen, on the other hand, supervises the website’s backend, conception and layout, the identification and implementation of new technologies, and methods to improve business processes. Both admit that order fulfillment, preparing new releases, maintenance of the website, and responding to inquiries eats up a large part of the day.
Meanwhile some times of the year that are busier than others. They are always very busy just before the UNLOCK book fair (an annual meeting where publishers meet and display their merchandise).
Typically Hitzerot tries to release one or more new books just before or at this venue. To these ends, they are presenting two new books at the UNLOCK book fair. The first one is Theorie des Style/Theory of Style which is a re-issue of the 1996 book of the same name. They are going to release the book in both English and in German versions.
The second one, in which Steffen is one of three co-authors/editors, is Daniel Weissbach aka COST aka DTagno, I features the work of the iconic German based graffiti writer and street artist (1976- 2020).
From the beginning, neither Sascha nor Steffen draw a salary out of the business. Instead they try to pump the profits back into the running of Hitzerot. That’s why both of them work half time in other jobs to be able to keep Hitzerot running.
Steffen admits that, “we could distribute or produce a lot more street art books, or ones about popular street artists like Banksy, or mainstream graffiti books, but we want to spend our time on books that focus on interesting graffiti and name writing. We want to pick the gold. We want to distribute titles that are hard to get. Hitzerot won’t be any good if we watered things down.”
In short, in addition to wanting to invest all their time into the business and not depend on part time jobs, they want to distribute the books that they like.
Some of their future plans include being more efficient in distributing books and magazines that would allow them to bring out more of their own titles as a publishing house.
Sascha states that, “most graff writers constantly read all the graffiti surrounding them, to see who’s up and who’s good. And publications and the ‘afterlife’ of graffiti as/on photographs and its publication are important parts of the whole graffiti game. Moreover graff writers would rather be famous (among fellow writers) than rich.” And that is why Sascha and Steffen see their roles not only as book distributors and publishers, but as curators and archivists too.
According to their website, they “constantly kept our eyes open for interesting content and the most relevant titles. Our mission from day one has not changed: We are aiming to offer you the highest quality publications with a graffiti context out there.”