Having it our way with the jersey barrier!We are in Namur, Belgium. It is the summer of 2007 and you can find us in one of Europe‘s most creative concrete skatepark construction sites. The sky has decided to let all hell loose leaving us standing in a seemingly endless downpour. We are waiting for a delivery of concrete, but rain and working concrete just do not go together. Without waiting any further we cancel the appointment with the concrete truck and devote ourselves to other duties...

Matt Grabowski is standing in front of us. Just check this guy out! You can almost hear his brain saying "What can I do? There has to be something to do! Damn it, I‘ll just build a casting mold for jersey barriers." Thought formed, spoken and that‘s what he does. Half of the day you can watch him sawing, screwing and planing. "These are original jersey barrier measurements and units, you can find it all in the Internet!"

It takes some time but finally he has three shapes finished and each of them are slightly modified. I gave myself a fair amount of time to take in the sight. They look like giants standing around in the skatepark‘s flat area. Bored giants waiting to be filled with concrete. Giants which scare you just by being there. This makes me think about Cervantes Don Quijote, riding towards the wind-mills, trying to defeat them. Where can these barriers be integrated so that we can fight them on our wooden "Rosinantes"?

That‘s when it happens. Once again Matt Grabowski is standing in front of us. Look at him now! His brain is grinding away yet again: "Where can I put these darn things? Damn it, that‘s it, I‘ve got it! I‘ll put them on the pyra-hip!". And there he goes, pushing one of the barriers on top of the rusty reinforcement, as-king the Belgian guys what they think about the idea, not forgetting to mention that he‘d cut out a part of the barrier so that it would fit perfectly – of course.

What can I say? People are scratching their heads, laughter is heard, questions are formed, consent is grunted, some disapprove. It‘s like a tug-of-war but halleluja, we can already see the lines we want to do! Good lines as well! Crazy messed-up lines! Our ideas and feelings seem to climax – but at the end of it all the idea just disappears in thin air and will probably never come back again...

Never again?! Damn it, I‘m holding on to Matt‘s idea for the future because let‘s be honest: don‘t we all want to have a jersey barrier right in the middle of a pyra-hip?! Holy shit people, let me tell you something: this idea will be used sometime, somewhere in the future! And we will mount our rides with pleasure and enjoy the vertical madness when we find it...

On this note: hold tight to those lances – barriers are made to be broken!

Markus

Photos: Bartosz Kostka

Contents

Page 6 - 14 Flee Them Fast TourFlorian Hofmeister and his gang take us on a road trip through Belgium constantly on the run from... from whom and from what the heck? Find out yourself!

Page 15 - 22 Still StoriesPssst, you should stay quiet while flipping through these pages! Sergej Vutuc danced through a black and white Zagreb with his camera capturing some wicked shots...

Page 23 - 30 Pool PropagandaThe new skateboard pool in Hagen (Germany) is under attack! Read the wise words of those who have learned to love this bowl and who know what they are talking about!

Page 31 - 38 (Bailgun-)Shots In MalmöGerde dove straight into the action at the Quiksilver Bowlriders final, armed solely with his weapon of choice and shot everything in site. Enjoy the bloodless carnage!

Page 39 - 44 The Reanimation Of Old Findings And The Primacy Of FidelityLeonare Welzin caught up with the Croatian artist Filjio and chatted with him about his art... made out of... ummhhh... trash and other "stuff". You have to see it to understand it!

Page 45 Imprint"An imprint? Why do you need that?" "Well, just for those of you in-terested in finding out where all of this comes from." "Oh, okay! Where‘s it come from?" "Oh man, just shut your..."

Text & Photos: Florian Hofmeister

It usually proves itself to be more than difficult to choose a suit­

able tour name for a road trip than finding the spots themselves. And that’s how we (that would be Felix, Chris and my humble self) ended up deliberating ­ sometimes wholehear­tedly, sometimes ridiculously ­ about a tour name while at the same time discussing in a semi­scientific man­ner how traffic jams work – all of this on our way to Dan (in Luxem­bourg).

Chris and Felix noticed fairly soon that they had left a large

amount of stress with their beloved women at home which incited Chris to come up with name "Flee The Pussies Tour". I hope there aren’t any mi nors reading this right now. If you are underage, get to bed! The title was a bit to raunchy for us so we adapted it to "Flee Them Fast Tour". While telling Dan a few days later the hitherto background of the tour title, one of our fellow passen­gers (who wants to understandably remain anonymous) noticed that he probably forgot to clean his ears. In­stead of "Flee The P#$%&?!" he had understood "Flying P#$%&?!" I can see a really sleazy tattoo right now, a swarm of flying vaginas with Good­

Year wings. Oooh Felix, come on….shit, I just gave away his identity! Oh well, the tour motto fit by all means – back in Au­gust 2006 that is, for two out of the four tour members, just barely 50 percent...following the style of Thrasher’s "Beers, Bowls and Barney" video, the next idea came up to name the tour "Beers, Bowls and Bow­ling". Beer being our favourite drink "on the road", bowls the reason why we moved our ever­growing fat asses off the couch and we bowled because Petrus gave us a day off skateboar­ding.

But it is still somewhat silly when you had a lot of fun at the bow­

ling alley without a single picture of proof being taken. I could also tell you we ate a Luxembourgian beetle soup. Or we reorganized Dan’s toe­nail collection from chronological to alphabetical order. Or how about we skated the backyard pool of the prin­

cess of Belgium. No one believes you these days without a picture. It only really happened if you have a pic­ture. And everything which is in print is the absolute truth. Better yet, get started with the real story and leave this crackbrained alibi story behind.

We’ve come up with something completely new ­ a photo story.

It’s quite easy: look at one picture after the other and always read the text for each picture from left to right and top to bottom. Then

nothing can happen to you… or may­be something can… dimmdümm­dimmdüümmdiiiiiiimmmm...

Freaky Flow

Right after Felix landed that nice fs boneless a police patrol car stopped di­rectly next to Dan and Chris, the reason being our car which was parked

on the shoulder of a large lay­by (you can see it really tiny on the horizon!). While cop number one was acting his job 100 percent eating donuts out of a bag, a slightly pissed off cop number two enlightened us that it was illegal to park a car on a shoulder of a highway without a good reason. That would usually give you two traffic points and cost 140 Euros in Luxembourg. Gulp! But after clarifying that we were not listed in any criminal data base, we were allowed to burn rubber towards Belgium.

Already on the journey to Esch/Alzette (Luxembourg) we noticed this bridge close to Schifflage (also Luxembourg) which looked like

it was built for skating. What we also noticed was the fact that there weren’t any reasonable parking spaces anywhere in the vicinity and that was going to cause us some difficulties…

Felix with a kickflip to fakie.

Brussels.

Overview of the new park in Brussels. The bowl is in the far right corner.

Dan doing a FS grind in the relatively new bowl in the middle of downtown Brussels. Shortly afterwards Dan and I marched over quickly to the skate shop. While we were gone two

younger skaters beat the shit out of each other with their boards. And of course they aimed for their heads while doing it. Nice neighborhood!

Dreams turned into concrete in a little town called Kortrijk

(or Courtrai) in the middle of Belgium.

Felix doing a transfer to tail in Kortrijk.

Chris in the middle of an invert in Kortrijk.

Chris, Igor (14 years old, lives 300 meters

from the skatepark; cool parents who let us sleep over; knows the owner of a bar which he showed to us from the inside one evening – after his pa­rents had gone to bed), Flow, Felix, Dan.

Third time is a charm they say. During our approximately 30 minute stop in this town around 30 to 40 bicycle riders stopped. They just didn’t understand what was going

on. A worried citizen decided to be on the safe side and made a telephone call…

If I had to choose a sound track to fit this picture, my choice

would definitely be "And then the cops came" from the legendary Surf Punks. You can just guess how proudly the two rebels Chris and Felix are posing for the camera while Dan mourns his lost board. But these cops were actually really cool. The citizen mentioned above had complained to the police and these guys didn’t really care. We were even allowed to take pictures for five more minutes after Felix acted all sad and tear­jerkingly. But then "the citizen" turned up personally and she really let the poor policemen have it. During the sermon for the protectors of the peace, we quietly got the hell out of there and headed towards Lüttich.

Felix can’t stop grinning while Dan anticipates the worst.

Opener: How often do you come across these types of fullpipes in your life? In my past 30 years this was the first time! Completely beautiful, the

lovely rust color, the view itself. And maybe you have noticed these completely evil metal brackets which you really do not want to land on. Dan goes up high on a backside kickturn. What you can’t see on the picture: on his next try Dan loses control, bails, the board shoots straight into my second flash sending it to unknown depths. While Felix and Chris unsuccessfully tried to dive after the flash, the board rolled on without its owner into the canal you can see in the background. Dan had ridden the board only two weeks and had treated himself to only the best of material. Ceramic ball bearings is all I’ll say to this. Dan was close to busting out in tears and to make matters worse he was travelling with three idiots who kept rolling out the word games. Especially the ones with terms like water, canal or diving were popular.

This relict of bygone heydays of European

skateboarding is enthroned above the rooftops of Lüttich (or Liege). This snake run must have been built around 1978 and can still be ridden perfectly. This is exactly the right thing for a perfect ending of a wonderful day of skating after a "Good Mor­ning Session" in Kortrijk and the "High Noon Session" in the fullpipe.

And once more the same snake run

from above.

Chris in the middle of a blunt nose grab to fakie in the snake

run in Lüttich. Keep doing that ton­gue thing and he’ll lose it!

Flow doing a bert slide in the Lüttich snake run. Photo: Felix

In this semi­legal camping spot I probably slept around 10% of the night. There were

constantly dickheads running around, cars driving back and forth and a couple that was so poor that they couldn’t afford a bed thus making them spend part of the night there. The woman was apparently so worried about their poverty that she constantly moaned while she slept. Poor girl! At some time even gun shots could be heard!!! Really nice area!!! By the way, the snake run is situated a few meters behind the goal.

Felix testing the board given to him by Spiderman as a present, sticking to the wall in Dan’s private egg­fullpipe

in the middle of Luxembourg’s nowhere.

You have to be prepared in this region for this type of

weather. While Chris and Felix are taking the tent down in the background and Dan is strolling around with his pretty umbrel­la, I’m looking forward to a rained out day in the warm car.

Every non­skater examining this picture must believe that ska­ters are totally messed up people. While Felix (unfortunately not

completely in the picture) swings the broom and Flow poses with a beer, Dan is trying to sleep in a painful contortion in the fullpipe after a piece of pool coping fell on his finger. Photo: Chris

This is how you look like after letting a

piece of pool coping fall on your finger. Photo: Chris

An extremely large"ride"AND a Dodge Charger.

Okay, sorry Chris, that wasbelow the belt but I just couldn‘t resist the pun...

StillStoriesPhotos by Sergej Vutuc

StillStories

StillStories

StillStories

StillStories

StillStories

StillStories

StillStories

PoolPropaganda

PoolPropagandaInterviews: Gerd Rieger & Markus Mhueller

Photos: Gerd Rieger

PoolPropaganda

PoolPropaganda

The sun burns my skin. I am chil­ling in the "Hagen­Pool" ­ to be more exact in the shade of the

pool’s deep­end with my notepad and a pen. Looking down at my feet I can see blood. A lot of blood. Dried drops of pain. I bet it was an inline skater without pads. Or maybe it was one of those silly scooter kids. Nose bleed? Slammed their head? Kids kicking each other in the face? Everything seems possible in this blue, round piece of craziness which surrounds me. But wait a sec! Maybe that isn’t blood – raspberry juice?! Most likely! Let me try it. Alright, now that tastes real good. Oh man, time to get over this bloody crap. Let’s just wipe away all of these words of nonsense! No, nobody has died in this bowl yet even though some rumours have

turned up in a nearby city clai ming the opposite. Once and a while there’s a small accident, but nothing more than what occurs daily during a street skate session or when you fart. So the pool isn’t that easy to ride, so what? The skaters that dedicate themselves to this thing will feel "it" and realize how much you get back from the transitions even though you most likely will feel like a complete loser at the beginning. Everything is possible in these transitions. Every­thing. On the next pages you can read through the thoughts of people who know what they are talking about when they let the words "Hage­Pool" cross their lips – they know because they have ridden it...

Markus

Opener: Anders "Poolpanic", Madonna!

Here: The evening before the contest the pool was painted blue. Here you can seethe result...

Hagen, Overview.

Markus: Hey Pierre, what do you think of this pool? A lot of people think that it is too gnarly...

Pierre: You know what? We’re build­ing a street course right now, a kind of outdoor streetpark. We had made a plan... with different transitions, a little bowl, a big wallride, with a pyra­mid and stuff... but the local street skaters didn’t like it. They’ve changed the plan and came out with a new one that was not interesting at all, like only ledges, no place to gather speed and that kind of stuff. And then they’ve asked us to build it and we said "Okay, we’ll build it if we can change the plan." And we’ve changed it again and put in some transitions, some ways to cruise around. For me it is a skate culture problem, you know? The history of what kind of transi tio n I skated or kids that are fourteen years old now is completely different. They really don’t have any idea of the plea­sure you have in skating that. It is the same here, in Hagen. If you have a gnarly place you can skate every­where. And the guy who has only a little mini ramp – he doesn’t like to skate elsewhere because it’s too hard.

It seems to be difficult for him. If I go back in memories the best thing I skated was a fucked up bowl with a little snake run and an oververt part that was not there for a purpose. And that was the best place because it taught me to skate that kind of spot, you know? When I skated Matt’s pool in Hamburg – that’s the gnarli­est thing I’ve ever skated – I realized that the guys who have that kind of pool around learned to skate there... I mean Steve Alba, the first thing he skated was a backyard pool, so he’s got a completely different skate culture, you know? He knows what it means to skate that kind of stuff and he can skate anything. And that’s the big difference, that he can skate anything.

Gerd: Yeah, like all the old guys who grew up in the Eighties skating pools or Upland, Del Mar and that kind of stuff, people like Lance Mountain, Chris Miller, Christian Hosoi, Tony Hawk, Neil Blender, can skate any­thing.

Markus: So your message to those people is that they should try it...

PoolPropaganda

PoolPropaganda

Pierre Jambé.

PoolPropaganda

PoolPropaganda David Martelleur, Crailslide.

Pierre: Yeah! Definitely. What I mean is that Europe is getting a pool culture more than before and that changes also the scope of mind... if you go and skate Algorta or Brussels or Hagen then you have a different idea of what it is.

Gerd: Skating should be like a chal­lenge and not make it as easy as pos­sible with a little mini ramp, low, low, low... it’s more about a challenge.

Markus: Right now the kids come over, have a look and go back to the street course because for them it’s too gnarly but maybe it will be more accepted by the next generation, who knows?

Pierre: That’s it! We’ve built a pool in Brussels, really small like you don’t have time to think, small transitions... When we skated it the first time we said "Ohhhh what have we done? This is way too hard to skate!" And now the kids who have learned there they drop in, they carve, they enter the session and then they are glad. They learn there!

Gerd: Or just look at some of the kids in America. Ten year olds who are doing little airs or little girls grinding poolcoping.

Pierre: And I think skateboarding has a lot to do with the pleasure you get when you are a child, when you are a teenager... the pleasure you get when you are riding that kind of stuff. So the teenagers right now who learn on a street course and stuff really don’t look for that because they have a dif­ferent relationship to what they skate. And if you learn with really small transitions you get this pleasure again later and that is fine.

* * *Gerd: Hi Thomas, we are in Hagen here. How do you like the pool?

Thomas: At first it is like... wow, I want to skate this... drop in and it’s like, oh, it is really hard to skate if you usually skate vert ramps, you know? It’s a little bit difficult but it’s definitely a challenge.

PoolPropaganda

PoolPropaganda

Thomas Madsen.

PoolPropaganda

PoolPropaganda

Daniel Cardone, Lien Air.

Gerd: So you like it?

Thomas: I like it, yeah.

Gerd: But it is different.

Thomas: It is different but it is al­ways good to have some...

Gerd: Like a challenge. A lot of peo­ple are kind of complaining that it is too tough, that it is too hard to skate. They would have liked it more shallow and easier to ride.

Thomas: Yeah, I understand people that say that... but it is just some­thing new, you know? Why should one build a new vert ramp when there are ten others around? Or mini ramps... This is definitely going back to the roots and... it’s a man’s ramp, you know?

* * *Gerd: Hi David, how do you like the pool?

David: I like this pool. It is one of the only two pools in Europe – Algorta and this one. I like it because it has poolcoping, the shape is designed very well, the concrete is nice – good finishing! It is very smooth...

Gerd: I’m asking you because some people think it is too steep, they are kind of scared...

David: No, it is not too deep. If you go to Brixlegg or Bologna... it is no pool­design, but it is deeper. This here, for me it’s perfect. Maybe more vertical in the deep end.

* * *Gerd: Hey Ross, how do you like the pool?

Ross: You know what? It is one of the funniest pools I’ve ever skated! The design of it is really perfect... twenty minutes to get used to it. Good lines, good shape...

Gerd: Some people are complai ning that it is too deep, too gnarly...

PoolPropaganda

PoolPropaganda

Ross McGouran.

PoolPropaganda

PoolPropaganda

Ross: Yeah, but the whole idea of a pool is that it is steep and gnarly and not like a mini ramp, you know? Pools are meant to be hard to skate. I think it is perfect. The pool coping is ama­zing!

* * *Gerd: Hi Daniel, how do you like the pool here in Hagen?

Daniel: I really like it, man. I like the way that it is shaped, for sure, and I like the way it’s built – a little bit like a real pool but still skateable. They’ve made a great job, man!

Gerd: And if you compare it to other pools in Europe?

Daniel: I was impressed when I heard like the local guys did this so this is one of the best pools I’ve ever seen. We need more. We need more of these guys who have built it.

Markus: Will you come back to this pool?

Daniel: Oh, for sure! Yeah, without the contest and with friends!

* * *All interviews were recorded during the Quiksilver Bowlrider contest. Oh yeah, we shouldn’t forget the results either! And let me tell you something: there were only winners that day...

Daniel Cardone.

. .in

(bailGun-)

Malmoshots

Text & Photos: Gerd Rieger

. .in

(bailGun-)

Malmoshots

Nicky Guerrero knew his lines around the park and made good use of the Deep End and Vert Quater with Inverts and nice Madonnas.

Opener: Some nice and friendly security made sure that the contest was safe at all times.

Right: Welcome to the contest.

Park overview.

Javier Mendizabal with a smooth Tailslide on the Big Bank and over the Quater.

Rune and Casper Plas in the battlefield.

. .in

(bailGun-)

Malmoshots

Dave Duncan: „This kid is no joke!” Besides anouncing the contest all day long Dave could also be seen slashing some Dagger-Style Frontside Grinds in the Kindney Pool.

It took him a few tries but Daniel Cardone pulled this Flip ober the stairs in the Shallow End smooth.

. .in

(bailGun-)

Malmoshots

Jimmy the Geek ripped the pool with some gnarly lines and heavy tricks. Fs Ollie.

. .in

(bailGun-)

Malmoshots

Salba tailslides...

Jokke Olsen likes to fly. He also came pretty close to pulling 540s from the Quater into the Bank.

Twisted tower.

Seb Daurel, Back Tail on the Bank. Yeah, he wears kneepads and he propably doesn´t give a fuck if you think it´s cool or not or if any jugde gives him less points. He also shred-ded the Kidney.

Unknown Spanish Ripper. Stalefish...

. .in

(bailGun-)

Malmoshots

. .in

(bailGun-)

Malmoshots

Jimmy the Greek with a nice Frontal Invert like very few can do like this.

Rune destroyed the whole park including the Deep End in the finals to take a well deserved first place. Here he´s doing a Disaster low to high.

. .in

(bailGun-)

MalmoshotsHappy Winners: Rune, John and Alain.

The crowd.

TheReanimation

Of OldFindingsAnd The Primacy Of

FidelityInterview: Leonore Welzin Photos: Sergej Vutuc

Filjio likes to stay incognito. The Croatian artist has a distinct self-protection thing going, he likes Outsider-Art and he collects stuff he finds, paints the objects and integrates them into his indoor art creations. Literary sprinkles are evidence of his sub-versive sense of humor. The 26 year old designer, who received his degree as a painter last January at the Zagreb art university, had travelled fifteen hours by bus from Zagreb to Stuttgart and then taken the train to Heilbronn. Leonore Welzin met up with Filjio, the combatent, in the "Basementizid" art cellar, a sub-cultural gallery in the center of the city on the banks of the Neckar river to discuss his new work "At the forefront of survival".

Filjio, what does your artist name mean? It is the dumbest word that has ever crossed my mind…

Doesn’t it mean "son"? Yeah, in Italien. I didn’t know about it when I chose the name. There is also a Croatian punk rock band called "Filji di Bruno" – I found them on the internet. I should create something for them…

What’s your real name? That’s not important – I’m a bit paranoid and having said that also really careful…

Limber walls, curbs, chimneys – you have a lot of painting examples in public areas on your homepage www.filjio.com... The pieces of work on the net make up about fifteen percent of all of my outdoor creations I have painted.

Where can these paintings be found? Most of them are in Za-greb, some in Bosnia, others in Wiesbaden, Germany…

TheReanimation

Of OldFindingsAnd The Primacy Of

Fidelity

You studied graphic design. Does street painting have any-thing to do with that? No, graphic design studies have nothing to do with what I am doing now.

What plays a role in your work? Just about everything in some manner. I can’t help you understand my work with my explanations. If I could describe it, then I wouldn’t need to paint.

Would you rather remain silent? Yeah, I just do what I do. My ego needs that. If I’m not painting I don’t feel good. It is like a kind of

self-assurance.

Are there and reference points for example in the history of art? No, in my opinion history and the history of art are always biased and subjective. You can’t write a book without individual influence. I like the history of art by Elmar Jansen. But there will always be pieces of art which you have not seen…

Through which objects do you define your work?I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without books, other artists or the internet. Nevertheless everyone has to find their own path and follow what catches their interest.

Then why did you study at an art university? I was lucky enough to be admitted to Zlatko Keser’s class. Primarily he’s a painter and he belongs in my opinion to the top five artists in Croatia.

Is he familiar with your street painting?He is aware of my website but we don’t talk about it. He has a very charismatic personality. It is quite difficult to deal with. This is definitely not a father-son relationship. I just show him what I do at the university. I believe he is a very good teacher.

TheReanimation

Of OldFindingsAnd The Primacy Of

Fidelity

What is your daily routine and how are the working conditions like at the university? I go in the morn-ing to the university and paint there. In the evening I go home. I get to use a 2,5 square meter room which is slightly more than what most of my collegues have. In two, three months time I paint around three hundred pictures. Because of the lack of space I have to hang the large formats in front of each other.

When do you paint on the street? Actually at any time, day or night. It’s not vandalism. I respect other people’s property and would never paint white walls. I like the pa-tina of old and used materials. I want to be a part of the material’s history and transcience when I paint them.

Let’s move on to the exhibition in Basmentizid.At first I wandered around Heilbronn with Sergej and found these pictures, a board, this clothes hanger, tennis racket

and a mirror. These are objects which have a history. Old items ap-peal to me that have human traces. They tell more than a canvas. A canvas is dead. When I pick up an object I feel that something is inside of it; new objects don’t have a soul. In this gallery I sensitized the room, put my mark somewhere so that I feel good.

Is your approach intuitive? No, I put everything I have into my work. That gives me strength, makes me feel good and lets me get started with my work.

What was your first sign? I think it was the wooden animal made out of branches in front of the white wall. It gave me something back. The gallery room was white and empty the first time I saw it. Some of that had to stay. I wanted to bring in the third dimension and that’s why I put the animal there which protects me at the same time. The gradient in the room gradually moves from white on one

TheReanimation

Of OldFindingsAnd The Primacy Of

Fidelity

side to a dirty-spotted color on the opposite side. The process is ac-tually not finished. I’m still not satisfied.

Which production method would have made you more satis-fied? If I had had one month time, maybe I would have dropped my work and come back two weeks later. During a development you have to continuously adapt the principles and ask oneself: is this honest? Is it really? If not, trash it. It is an internal battle. If you are honest no one will understand. And you have to be completely honest, also with yourself. No tricks, no mask.

Is it a kind of sketch? No, you can look at the work like a diary or a notebook, I only had three days for it. It is a three day notebook.

Why do you paint and not write? Because it is the only thing I have to do. I remember... it was the best moment for me when my grandmother explained something to me. She never learned to paint but she always tried to sketch out the most important aspects. Her handwriting was beautiful, pristine and spontaneous like children’s pictures.

Do you have a weakness for naive art? Yes and espe-cially for Outsider-Art.

There are little parts of sentences spread between the painted-over objects and spots... "find my sole" is a play on words. Sole sounds just like soul. Pointing to-wards the wall, there’s the counterpart:"I use my soul as a dagger."

TheReanimation

Of OldFindingsAnd The Primacy Of

Fidelity

Another sentence states: "filjio helped karl marx." Are you usually more modest? Sometime I wanted to be a rock star, wanted to write poems. But I couldn’t play an instrument or write. I am not a Marxist [he laughs]. I just came up with those sentences. It is a means of communicating with the viewer. He or she looks at the picture, reads the sentence and thinks: that makes sense.

Are there any quotations among those sentences?Only one: "Heilbronner Verkehrsverbund" [Heilbronn’s traffice sector group]. That was on my ticket from Stuttgart to Heilbronn. I thought it was funny.

Do you always produce for the art market? Last year I sold 400 pictures for 2000 Kunas, that’s about 250 Euro. The buyer, a DJ, actually only wanted one picture. I told him that one picture costs as much all the others. So he bought them all. That was the work of my second year and I had space again. If I want to earn money I do comic strips.

Some of your work has an archaic feel, are you interested in shamanism? I really wanted to work more with wood and earth: one can work well with those materials. The small drawings and writings are points of energy which create a focal point.

Wood and earth, what about the element water? That’s too perfect, I didn’t know how to process it...

Let’s take a sip.

TheReanimation

Of OldFindingsAnd The Primacy Of

Fidelity

Imprint

Editorial StaffGerd Rieger (V.i.S.d.P.) | gerd@bailgun.com

Markus Mhueller | markus@bailgun.com

Photo EditorGerd Rieger

LayoutMarkus Mhueller

TranslationsJonathan Young

Additional StaffFlorian Hofmeister, Sergej Vutuc, Leonore Welzin, Bartosz Kostka

Editor‘s OfficeBailgun Magazine

Gerd RiegerZumsande Str. 32

48145 MünsterGermany

Legal NoticeAll rights to these documents and their contents are held by the respec-tive authors. Users may download files, use them and also share them, as long as the content is not altered or the copyright notices are not re-moved. These files however may not in any form be used for corporate

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©2007 Bailgun Magazine /// www.bailgun.com

Right: Trevor Ward, fs grind, Hagen. Photo: Gerd Rieger

we were all going direct the other way

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom,

it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the spring of hope,it was the season of darkness,it was the season of light,

we had everything before us,it was the winter of despair,

- in short, the period was so far like

insisted on its being received,

Charles Dickens, 1859.

it was the age of foolishness,

for good or for evil, in the superlative degree

it was the epoch of belief,

we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven,

the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities

of comparison only.