Ina W.

An interview with graffiti artist Mode2

Some time has passed between the last jam I was taking part in, so it was great to see a lot of friends and faces again at the Frankfurt Jam, 20.5.94. Everybody was there like from America (Futura 2000 etc.) and all over Europe, - so it wasn't possible to see everything. One floor was just music and dance, another one was full of graffiti art/artists and that was my interest this time. By seeing a lot of drawings and pieces by Mode2 (in magazines, books, blackbooks and finally walls), I was fascinated of his style, characters and especially his way of portraying girls'n women (which isn't representing a typical hip hop/spray issue). I wanted to know more about Mode2 who came from Paris to meet people and present his latest T-shirt ...

Mode2: Uh, it's a lot of things, King T had a payback track back in 88/89 and also it was like a James Brown song - back in the days, it's like changing the situation around me, it's time for the people who've been taking to pay for what they have done. It's just changing the situation, reversing it, ya know, our history brought us to a strange situation, we young people must face all the problems like education, it's not guaranteed that you have a good secure job and a good secure life. You have to deal with nuclear power, we use a stupid method for making electricity - we use more and more everyday but most of it is generated by nuclear power, we don't know what to do with what's left over, so it's killing nature. Before when they made the atom bomb it was like only available to the Americans and now since the explosion, many small countries of the ancient USSR have nuclear weapons and since the researches, like scientists and nuclear physicians get payed better money elsewhere. We are really living in a shitty, shitty world that's only going to get worse, it's not going to get much better. If we think someone else is going to try to solve everything out for us - we are wrong; we must take things into our own hands. That's my kind of a 'payback' and I hope to encourage other people to take their future into their own hands too, because we shouldn't just wait for the government to send a local politician to do things for us because they only gonna do things for themselves or for their politics that they support and everyone must do for him or herself.

Ina: We in Germany have sometimes a problem to translate things from culture to culture, - you've lived in England/France the question is like these European kids do breaking, graffiti, rap. Do they feel kind of same thing a ....

Mode2: I don't think anyone feels the same thing because then everything would be kind of o.k. Everyone feels something in his or her different way, but we must be passionated in what we do to be able to share what we do with other people. Anyone who's doing any kind of cultural form, whether it's hip hop or arts or music or anything, anyone who is doing it for real - like putting a lot of time, energy ... putting their life into it. When they do that, they are bringing things from their very own culture. You embrace something new that you've seen coming from elsewere but you see it in a different way than the people in N.Y. or the people in Kingston or somewhere. I think everyone must bring elements of their own culture into what they have discovered which means that it's not like a fashion, like you start to like something you get into it and you... I don't know, you're passionate about something; it comes from the heart, it's not from the mind trying to take it and manipulate it for your self. It's something that's always like you need more and more ... - nobody must be scared of hiding what they are. But the problem nowadays is when you have media like MTV about hip hop or ragga etc... There is a certain kind of atmosphere that is portrayed and people think: oh, to be able to be in with this kind of people I must act in a certain way or be in a certain way or dressed in a certain way, and that's the traps that you are putting on yourself. I think everyone can bring something new all the time. It's only by your self to be original and bring something new.

Ina: Do you think hip hop is coming out of a feeling of oppression, also in Europe?

Mode2: I think America is a very strange country because it's a very young country still - that is just about survival from the beginning on. It was just land that's been stolen from people who thought that they belonged to the land and not the land belong to them - like the American Indians, the Caribs or people from Southamerica/Africa or whoever respect the land and feel that they belong to it. America's power has been built by slave labour and it's always a kind of wildwest attitude even now.
People have the right to carry guns - not outside but they do. So it's a society of survival of many extremes of good and bad ... and I think it's a bit normal that in a society with so much friction between many different parts of society that creative things come out. Like if you are not living on the edge, if you are not in a very difficult situation you are not going to test what you know.
But I feel that the fight is the same everywhere except that in America there are a bit more extremes than in Europe. If every culture looked at all its bad and good side rather than concentrating on its good side we are able to go somewhere. America sees itself still as No. 1 country in the world because the economy of the world is run there and money runs the world. Ya know there is no other way around that even communism has been bought by capitalism. Out of a feeling of rescue after the 2nd World War every culture from America has been brought to Europe whether it's Rock'n Roll, Rhythm'n Blues, Jazz etc. All this music is born out of a very bad social situation where people are surviving and explaining how hard live is, trying to deal with really hard issues of life or just trying to put out something happy of their hardship...

Ina: We in Europe live a much more easy situation. We are not concerned with survival but we must work double hard because we have the time and we are not going to get shot on the street - so I think.

Mode2: We can fight some more in other circles than the Americans can. The Americans tend to be ghetto, they have a ghetto society that everyone is into one corner whether it's race or religion, economy: everyone is just in their own little category - so we have advantages that we should use. Just be yourself... (...) We have extremist tendencies too (Basque seperatists, Corsican independentists, the Kurds, the IRA). We should apply that extremism in normal everyday life, culturally. Does that answer your question?

Ina: What it means 'to be real' to you?

Mode2: Being real for me is being yourself and not being scared of saying what you feel deep down. But hip hop is big now (...) so you have to be careful of who you talk to. Just relax and step back - look at your life objectively...

Ina: But I think Hip Hop is created out of mass media culture....

Mode2: But I think everyone has looked at mass media and still in a very personal way... That's what must be brought forward, that a lot of us have listened a bit to the same kind of music, to the same this'n that but I think we were born in different families (etc...). We must look at our selves and how we have lived our lifes and draw images from that and that's the only way you can be yourself. Like I can't draw something that belongs to someone else because I wouldn't do it as good as the other person...

Ina: But conversions are a big element of hip hop...

Mode2: O.k., a lot of people like to make references to the things they've lived once in a while. When 'hanging out' came out they try to bring an atmosphere of a time that used to be like this or that (...) but you've your own souveniers in mind that have nothing to do with the other people (...). You can listen to something, draw all the informations out of it, but you can also listen to it and just feel something... I listen to music in that kind of way. (...)

Ina: You are really famous like people can find you in 'i-D', 'Vibe', 'the Source' and international graffiti art books. I've got the impression that you define yourself underground but you also told me that you've had gallery shows, how do you think about the 'underground'...

Mode2: As far as gallery shows go, we did just one in Dec. 85 in London. It was like a beginning but this was the only gallery thing I did, one time I was about doing a performance for a Jam (on a wall 9 m long) but they didn't get the stuff for me so I had to do two canvases instead; that was how it turned out...
I do paintings for some private people, who come and ask me - I like this direct contact with people. The gallery scene doesn't interest me at all because that side of the art world has always been reserved to a social, intellectual or cultural elite and I don't think they care about what people are really into ... all they really care about is placing their money into someone and then they get some good articles about how good he is - cause then what they bought of mine is going to bring more money. I prefer trying to work in public places were people of all kinds must cross each other... Like I also like to do T-shirts and people look at it wherever you go (...) I'm not interested in a gallery public, I think we must widen the public that's interested art or graffiti. I want to continue to work in public places where anybody walks along, - not a certain group of people who drink white wine, eat small bits of cheese ... talk and talk about your work but perhaps they don't even care about it...

Ina: Do you make a living out of spraying?

Mode2: I survive out of spraying (..).

Ina: That amazes me cause you got lots of fame and I know some sprayer much worser than you who really got crazy cash from commercials they are doing...

Mode2: Perhaps they have a better business sense than me, like I've problems in comercial things like I wouldn't do something for a product that I don't use - that's hipocrisy! You shouldn't use the art you love to sell something to someone that you don't use yourself. May be someone is very passionate about what you do and you are using this contact you have with them to sell them something, I have a very deep problem with that, I refuse a lot of work because of that...

Ina: You told me before that you are not really down with the art scene but are you interested in some artists from the art scene?

Mode2: Anything, everything I like pre-raphaelites like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and also J.W. Waterhouse, Lord Leighton of Stretton and Alma Tadema, a lot of work from the Victorian period out of the end of the last century when it was a kind of neoclassicism - fighting against the industrial revolution - I like the work from that time ... I've liked the Dutch painters like van Dyke... I hardly know the names also Rembrand I look at as much work as I can, but I don't have time ... cause I look at a lot of imagery like comix'n stuff too ... cause that's what is people touching now...

Ina: Comix, who do you like?

Mode2: Jeffrey Jones, Liberatore, Art Suydam, Mike Mahon ... now I'm looking at some things and say shit, it's something that I read and saw when I was 9/10 yeahrs old but it's coming out of subconsious now... Sometimes you get pretentious because you think you invented something but I don't think we invented anything, - we just innovate, we take something that we've seen somewhere that we've assimilated somewhere but we bring it out in a different way... we never invent or create anything, ya know... I like Rick Griffin, Alphonse Mucha who was painting posters at the beginning of the century, the art nouveau scene, I like Patric Woodroffe - all the record cover artists from the beginning of the 70's like Roger Dean, Rodney Mathews, all these kind of artists because they brought that kind of fine art accessible to ordinary people through records...

Ina: You are also doing a lot of drawings...how is the relationship between drawing and spraying?

Mode2: You can't be spraying all the time perhaps you haven't enough paint or walls, sometimes I'm scribbling, sometimes I'm writing ideas down, or drawing - like I spend many hours on drawing...(...)

Ina: I always imagined that graffiti sprayers like the adventure, like stealing cans, or feeling of frightened when working in an illegal place ... running from police ...

Mode2: I don't like running from police, I'm not a very good thief. I wish I grew up knowing how to steal in the stores instead of putting my hand in my mothers purse and stuff like that. I don't want to get chased by police like it happened once or twice and I don't like it!! It's a good rush when you get away, so it's exiting in that - a lot of people like dangerous living but I'm a very self-preservation type of person, like I try to take the minimum risk...

Ina: So it's not important that you work illegal?

Mode2: It is because like a strange paradox, like I try to do less risk as possible but sometimes you know that you must go and taste this risk if you want to advance because when there is this excitement you are not thinking anymore, you are just acting, you forget about the risk you are just painting picking up a colour, do it, do it, do it ... and you don't have much time for thinking or bullshitting and you need also that kind of pressure on you ya know ... - that helps you to go forward and that helps you to create without too much thinking, just action!

Ina: So you are also down with crossing other peoples writing?

Mode2: I only cross people over if I really have a problem with them and then, they also know where they have to find me ... if I have to go and cross people over like either they are painting somewhere where me and some friends like to paint because it's kind of our spot - everyone has kind of their own spot, kind of their own neighbourhood ... but I really like more to work on a clean wall than on someone elses pieces... Fights are a waste of time when we are fighting each other we can't fight the people who like to see us going very far with self destruction. I don't want to die stupidly - no way! It's only when you fighting people who have too much influence that it's worth it.

Ina: You are now for ten years in the hip hop scene what holds you for quite a long time?

Mode2: Nothing holds me... I'm just doing things for myself and if that helps hip hop cool. I think it's my individual way helping me to go forward (...) you can inspire helping other people... I like to meet people. And you must put what you know to the face of reality, put it to as much people as possible... Too many people are scared of communication, they are living a kind of paranoia.

Ina: Is that the quality of jams?

Mode2: Yeah, (...) the only thing I depend on jams is like doing my T-shirts 'n stuff, painting and drawing.

Ina: A lot of girls like how you draw them...

Mode2: I don't know because I mostly get a lot of guys come up to me and say yeah this is nice ... but I'm scared sometimes that they would think, that I'm promoting some kind of, what we called truckdriver mentality. I'm scared that they just say ooh yeah nice girls bla, bla - you know - but I tend to spend time on drawing them, or the quicker ones come out of an inspiration (like that girl I saw last time in the subway) that comes... Oh my good I was having things to say like: If a girl would walk naked down the road, I wouldn't jump on her. - I mean it's not up to any guy jump on a girl whether she's dressed or not.

Ina: What you don't like on truckdriver mentality, is it also in between hip hop?

Mode2: No, I mean I saw guys doing portaits of girls with trains coming out of their pussies, or riding naked on cans, and that's a completly teenage wank fantasy ... and I can't see the point either you have a flesh to flesh contact with a girl rather than stick something in her... I think there are very very few girls getting turned on by trains or cans... So I did one piece in 1981 that was a girl liking a can but that is about as far as that one. So I didn't develop that kind of idea much further because in retrospective it seems a bit cheap...

Ina: How do you think guys talk about girls in hip hop?

Mode2: It's a general thing with guys'n especially young guys. It's hard to be modest ... not modest but nobody wants to tell about sexual hang ups and things like that, everyone is gonna try to make themselves look better in the public. They want to look strong and whatever so everybody is making... O.k. I know some friends would misinterpret if I talk about girls to them - that truckdriver mentality, you know, and some not so I don't talk to everyone about that.. My close friends know how I'm like as far as womankind goes - some jokes might be cracked about this 'n that but I don't put down someone badly - unless they made themselves look stupid ya know and that goes for men as well as for women in hip hop.

Ina: Yeah, men as well as women ... but just for an example I read 'the Source' in the train, and they made bad critics about the attitude of 'Hoes with an attitute' as well as about their music, and the way 'the Source' talked abuot that never happened to for exp 'Too live Crew'. I would say as a dj, I like people talk in a kind of sexual stupidness as one element of hip hop - guys come with their big dick talk all the time, you do it as a girl and people just overreact. I can see that also in personal experiences...

Mode2: It feels for me like a masculine way to show femininity o.k. Not many girls talk about their sexual power as much as guys do, but like on 'Black Sheep's record...

Ina: Yeah the music is very melow but the lyrics are sometimes really hard too.

Mode2: Some guys feel they have a big dick and have to talk about it - like Mr. Lawnge from 'Black Sheep': "I have a dick that I brag about, I put it in quick then I drag it out..." You know like they have things they can't show girls when they are dancing they have to write it down and tell them, and yeah like if you want to know you can come and get some...whatever.. I did a logo for 'Black Sheep'..I did four different versions I hope one get excepted.

Ina: Don't you think you got a little bit of that style in your art too, like your new T-shirt?

Mode2: No, no these images are completly seperated (describing the T-shirt, 'The Payback Theory') like for me it's like good and bad. Now in France you can get 5 years for graffiti ya know.

Ina: Why?

Mode2: (started also discribing the T shirt) Because they changed the law since the first of March you can get less prison for beating someone up - so take your choice - you prefer I go spray a wall/train or do you prefer getting beaten the shit out of by someone? And that's a choice for society to take - they can get it with a can or with a bat ya know. Like kids have a destructive urge like they don't know and it's an extreme we are trying to touch two things at one time and when I'm working on a wall perhaps I'm a bit more sensual than sexual... I don't know people make up their own minds ... but I would like that people would not see it like someone trying to put woman out like objects I try to be really smooth about it and not vulgar - it's hard you know... So here is my book...

we look at his blackbook:

Mode2: There are some things I keep in my blackbook that I would not put in public places (...). This here for example I would never put on a wall because a lot of people would just see gross sexism in it, a girl offering herself in that way and that sodomy thing is like taboo...

Ina: But that's what I try to point out when I spoke about 'Hoes With Attitudes' that girls have sometimes fun or reasons to do it - bitching... - Guys always turn silent when girls do that because they have no space to appear stronger than the girl - and that is what I in between hip hop don't understand because hip hop is full of that attitude...

Mode2: But what you like in private is different from what you do in public...

Ina: In between sex, may be...

Mode2: Cause if you talk too much it's no mystery anymore...

Ina: Do you think so? So after sex happened there is no mystery? I don't think so ... - then it just starts to get mystical again and again ... But may be it's that kind of rule between guys 'n girls after sex you just started to fuck, you fuck, so what you want more - but I don't feel this way and I don't understand that you as a good girl should not getting too famous for fucking. Like everybody likes you doing the bitch privately but not in public...

Mode2: But me as a guy I'm also trying to keep that private..

Ina: So it's me the truckdriver?

Mode2: I don't know, no, no...

Ina: Uh I cut that picture with the 'firepussy' too, it's out of 'The Face'...

Mode2: Yeah I just eat a lot of pictures with my eyes...

Ina: You always put out a very beautiful, idealized image of girls ... I like that...

Mode2: I like also a photographer called Jan Sandek who does photos of 'normal' women ... but like to draw a fat woman I would need a live model because it's hard to imagine were the flesh goes, it's more difficult for me to draw fat girls...

Ina: That's why you need idealising?

Mode2: Yeah it's easier to draw a skinny girl because than you have the skeleton but when you start to put more and more flesh on it what do you do with it?? It's very hard to imagine were it goes...

(...) Ina: Yeah, this side looked completly designed...

Mode2: But the pages come together piece by piece there are lots of old scetches under this then I put pictures on and color it...

Ina: Really it looked so perfect...

Mode2: But it's a long period of things coming together, finding something to put here or to put there...