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 windmills, 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, asking 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
stka Photos: Bartosz Ko
Contents Page 6 - 14 Flee Them Fast Tour
Florian 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 Stories
Pssst, 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 Propaganda
The 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 MalmĂś
Gerde 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 Fidelity
Leonare 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 interested in finding out where all of this comes from." "Oh, okay! Where‘s it come from?" "Oh man, just shut your..."
Florian Photos: Text &
ter
Hofmeis
I
t 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 wholehear tedly, sometimes ridiculously - about a tour name while at the same time discussing in a semi-scientific man ner how traffic jams work – all of this on our way to Dan (in Luxem bourg).
C
hris 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 minors 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 passen gers (who wants to understandably remain anonymous) noticed that he probably forgot to clean his ears. In stead 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 Au gust 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 Bow ling". Beer being our favourite drink "on the road", bowls the reason why we moved our ever-growing fat asses off the couch and we bowled because Petrus gave us a day off skateboar ding.
B
ut 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 toe nail 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 pic ture. 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.
W
e’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 may be something can… dimmdümm dimmdüümmdiiiiiiimmmm... Freaky Flow
A
lready 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…
R
ight after Felix landed that nice fs boneless a police patrol car stopped di rectly next to Dan and Chris, the reason being our car which was parked on the shoulder of a large lay-by (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.
Felix with a kickflip to fakie.
D
an 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!
Brussels.
Overview of the new park in Brussels. The bowl is in the far right corner.
Felix doing a transfer to tail in Kortrijk.
D
reams turned into concrete in a little town called Kortrijk (or Courtrai) in the middle of Belgium.
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Chris in the middle of an invert in Kortrijk.
hris, 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 pa rents had gone to bed), Flow, Felix, Dan.
T
hird 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…
O
pener: 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.
I
f 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 tear-jerkingly. 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.
T
his 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 Mor ning Session" in Kortrijk and the "High Noon Session" in the fullpipe.
C
hris in the middle of a blunt nosegrab to fakie in the snake run in Lüttich. Keep doing that ton gue thing and he’ll lose it!
A
nd once more the same snake run from above.
Flow doing a bert slide in the Lüttich snake run. Photo: Felix
Y
ou 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 umbrel la, I’m looking forward to a rained out day in the warm car.
F
elix testing the board given to him by Spiderman as a present, sticking to the wall in Dan’s private egg-fullpipe in the middle of Luxembourg’s nowhere.
I
n this semi-legal 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.
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his is how you look like after letting a piece of pool coping fall on your finger. Photo: Chris
A
n extremely large"ride" AND a Dodge Charger. Okay, sorry Chris, that was below the belt but I just couldn‘t resist the pun...
E
very non-skater examining this picture must believe that ska ters 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
Still Stories Photos by Sergej Vutuc
Still Stories
Still Stories
Still Stories
Still Stories
Still Stories
Still Stories
Still Stories
P o o P l P r Prooppaaggaannddaa Interviews : Gerd Rie ger & Mark Photos: G us Mhuelle erd Rieger r
he sun burns my skin. I am chil ling in the "Hagen-Pool" - to be more exact in the shade of the pool’s deep-end 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
T
turned up in a nearby city claiming 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. Every thing. On the next pages you can read through the thoughts of people who know what they are talking about when they let the words "Hage-Pool" cross their lips – they know because they have ridden it...
P ol Pooo P oppa Prro agga anndda a
Markus
Hagen, Overview.
Opener: Anders "Poolpanic", Madonna! Here: The evening before the contest the pool was painted blue. Here you can see the result...
P ol Pooo P oppa Prro agga anndda a 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 build ing 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 pyra mid 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 transition I skated or kids that are fourteen years old now is completely different. They really don’t have any idea of the plea sure you have in skating that. It is the same here, in Hagen. If you have a gnarly place you can skate every where. And the guy who has only a little mini ramp – he doesn’t like to skate elsewhere because it’s too hard.
Pierre Jambé.
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 gnarli est 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 any thing. Markus: So your message to those people is that they should try it...
P ol Pooo P oppa Prro agga anndda a
David Martelleur, Crailslide.
P ol Pooo P oppa Prro agga anndda a 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 chal lenge and not make it as easy as pos sible 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 dif ferent 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.
Thomas Madsen.
Daniel Cardone, Lien Air.
P ol Pooo P oppa Prro agga anndda a
P ol Pooo P oppa Prro agga anndda a Gerd: So you like it? Thomas: I like it, yeah. Gerd: But it is different. Thomas: It is different but it is al ways good to have some... Gerd: Like a challenge. A lot of peo ple 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 some thing 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?
Ross McGouran.
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 pool-design, 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 complaining that it is too deep, too gnarly...
P ol Pooo P oppa Prro agga anndda a 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 ama zing!
*
*
*
Gerd: Hi Daniel, how do you like the pool here in Hagen?
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: 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 Cardone.
(bailGun-)
shinots
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Malmo Text & Photos: Gerd Rieger
(bailGun-)
shinots
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Park overview.
Malmo
Opener: Some nice and friendly security made sure that the contest was safe at all times. Right: Welcome to the contest.
Nicky Guerrero knew his lines around the park and made good use of the Deep End and Vert Quater with Inverts and nice Madonnas.
Javier Mendizabal with a smooth Tailslide on the Big Bank and over the Quater.
(bailGun-)
shinots
..
Malmo
Rune and Casper Plas in the battlefield.
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.
(bailGun-)
shinots
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Malmo
Jimmy the Geek ripped the pool with some gnarly lines and heavy tricks. Fs Ollie.
(bailGun-)
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Malmo
Salba tailslides...
Twisted tower.
Jokke Olsen likes to fly. He also came pretty close to pulling 540s from the Quater into the Bank.
(bailGun-)
shinots
..
Malmo
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 shredded the Kidney. Unknown Spanish Ripper. Stalefish...
Jimmy the Greek with a nice Frontal Invert like very few can do like this.
(bailGun-)
shinots
..
Malmo
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.
(bailGun-)
Happy Winners: Rune, John and Alain.
shinots
..
Malmo
The crowd.
The
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tuc lzin Photos: Sergej Vu Interview: Leonore We
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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 subversive 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 Zagreb, some in Bosnia, others in Wiesbaden, Germany…
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You studied graphic design. Does street painting have anything 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.
The
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What is your daily routine and how are the working conditions like at the university? I go in the morning 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 patina 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 appeal 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
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side to a dirty-spotted color on the opposite side. The process is actually not finished. I’m still not satisfied. Which production method would have made you more satisfied? 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 especially 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 towards the wall, there’s the counterpart:"I use my soul as a dagger."
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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.
Imprint Editorial Staff
Gerd Rieger (V.i.S.d.P.) | gerd@bailgun.com Markus Mhueller | markus@bailgun.com
Photo Editor Gerd Rieger
Layout
Markus Mhueller
Translations Jonathan Young
Additional Staff
Florian Hofmeister, Sergej Vutuc, Leonore Welzin, Bartosz Kostka
Editor‘s Office
Bailgun Magazine Gerd Rieger Zumsande Str. 32 48145 Münster Germany
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©2007 Bailgun Magazine /// www.bailgun.com
Right: Trevor Ward, fs grind, Hagen. Photo: Gerd Rieger
It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us,
we were all going direct the other way
we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven,
- in short, the period was so far like
the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities
insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree
of comparison only.
Charles Dickens, 1859.