Tasso - (DE)

How I got there?
When I was little I enjoyed lying under the kitchen table at my grandparents’ house painting. At one time I had the idea to write my signature and date under the table, every year, and watch the change in style, year after year. I still went to school when I first saw a show about graffiti on television. It must have been on a Sunday afternoon and it was “Style Wars” with German subtitles. I had no idea what they were talking about, but I liked it a lot, it was fabulous, colourful and absolutely my thing.

Years would be going by until in 1985 they showed Beat Street in East German movie theaters. Like every third teenager I was trying to be a Break Dancer. But Graffiti’s fascination was much stronger and I knew I wanted to spray my first painting. Although – at the time I didn’t know how very important it was to create your signature over and over again, trying to vary in style. All I was doing …"HipHop don’t stop" – Throw up.

To make matters worse all cans disappeared from DDR stores in 1986, leaving no opportunity to express anti-DDR slogans on walls and buildings. This is it, I thought, leaving my vision behind and starting new ways. Along came the political change and my first Graffiti-painting. It still took some time until I realized, that in towns like Chemnitz kids were discovering spray cans in no time and in 1990 you could find pieces that as I thought could only be of West German origin.

1991, now 25, I sprayed my first piece. In the following three years no more than three were finished, so I regard 1994 as my personal starting year. From the beginning I did not want to commit myself to a certain style, but wanted the freedom of trying myself, finding my versatility and create new ways.

In our small town Meerane I found a guy who had similar intentions and whom I knew from my breaking days, BART, and we founded the StyleWandBombers. In very active times we came up to six people. Because of too little action of the crew we went different ways in 1998.

In the same year I founded the DSA Crew, together with ANIZ from Dessau. Part of the crew are now: DARM (Dessau), COP 24 (Köthen), JMF (Döbeln), KIOSK, SÄLB, Klar, MONET (all from Zwickau), KAN (Weimar, MALUN (Ingolstadt), KASTORE, KAFEH (Calbe), DESUR (Gera), AKUT (Schmalkalden), and in addition we have the DSA –GIRLS : WENCH (Wien)…

In November I retired from the DSA-Crew. I joined with AKUT, CASE and RUSK in the new MaClaim-Crew to flood Germany and the rest of the world with our fotoREAListic stuff.