MODE 2 Bridges

Talking about Mode 2, and talking with Mode 2 leads to the questions of his uprising and the various destinations that he has called his home for the last few years. Born in Mauritius, growing up in London, moving to Paris, and now currently living in Berlin. These are the places from where he managed to help Graffiti or Aerosol-Art become a worldwide recognized and consequently developing, autonomous art form and youth-relevant phenomenon. After years of traveling the world and observing his different surroundings, Mode 2 is now a household name when it comes to the art of drawing characters, or detailed lettering. His unique style has subsequently influenced countless artists, painters and illustrators. Furthermore, in his mild and precise manner, Mode 2 has the capability to analyze and portrait the culture he has essentially helped shape, and also the society he lives in. Building bridges across the world of art and hip hop.
For over twenty years now, Mode 2 has influenced and followed the development of the hip hop culture, though he never shared its current "zeitgeist" in which symbols of consumerism or the violent-ridden gangster attitude have become much more important than an image of a respected member of this society. His trademark drawings, his characterizations and general motifs reflect a positive view on reality right down to the last detail. Accurate in every respect he captures the people and scenarios for his artwork. Shifting the focus from genuine Graffiti art to a more personal and individual art, he now gets to the point where his body of work has a different, multilayered signature, even including more romantic subjects.
"In '84 I started painting, in '87 I moved to Paris to start working with computer graphics. I was living away from the family thing, and I was on my own as it were, my two best friends had a fight, like the two people you rely on, that one here is talking shit about this guy, the other one is talking about the other guy. And a lot of people that grew up on the hip hop scene were also kind of like this novel "The Lord Of The Flies" where these kids from this nice background get stranded on this island, and then they fall kinda into a primitive society. You know like me and me / or kill the pig slit his throat spill the blood kind of attitude. I don't want to make myself slide with the dark stuff, it is harder to try and fix things.
Say for example the first Black Sheep Album. It had that "Woke up, didn't stroke up, so my AK was broke up." It's easy making hardcore lyrics, and it's easy to make it look entertaining and interesting. It is easy to make a song saying how totally you fucked up your bedroom is. It is hard to make a song sound entertaining, how you put everything back up very nicely on the shelves, you know. It is really hard doing this, it is not very funny. It's boring.
So for me it is instinctively always being into bridge buildings between people, making them like individuals. Like the Paris thing kind of gave me a lot of this fact that we were sharing apartment say like an advert when I was on salary, when I was woodworking, I had my own place and then I loved that, but when you are sleepin' at some ones place, sleeping at someone elses…a few do sharing together, one may be got a regular job, the others sell drugs, and the others doing this, this is how we live, but no one was into saying this is right or this is wrong, no one wanted to start any of these kind of conversations, and as soon we were smoking and drinking together, as soon as I wanted to talk about that "Maybe, you should do thaaat!!" and all the other guys gave you the look like you were crazy, yeah boring ya, it was the time then, but this is definite pre mobile phones pre Internet times.
When things develop locally and you could see things develop in less complex ways. But then I could not do them anymore, cause post mobile phone and post Internet suddenly made things speed up a lot more and the nature of problems has so much more factors coming in and affecting them, it is hard to make a theme wall or theme something when you with that certain aspect for life but that is and has been one of my driving forces, even in school I was a long answer guy."

Obviously, Mode 2 is a long answer guy. Surely this man could share a lot of his experiences. But he is really concerned in delivering the whole context of that situation he was in. It's more about the complex scenario, not only the quick laugh about a funny answer. From his own biog come these words "his interests are more into culture in general and its impact on society as a whole. He was already taking pictures of the scene going on around him back in 1985, trying to document something that was for him far more important than just the fun that everyone was having. The culture brought together youth from all backgrounds, and had all basic forms of artistic expression as its disciplines. In today's world, he believes, culture is the only tool by which many of the youth can be made receptive to education, especially in the more deprived communities, and more generally as a tool to ward off many social ills whilst inspiring and empowering the needy."
While working at Sartoria in Modena, Italy, he initiated the DEFUMO project, working alongside Delta and Futura, with the support of Sartoria and Slam Jam, in creating a project involving the painting of a club called MORE over a week-long period. The whole process was filmed and has had an exhibition and catalogue, as well as a website and limited edition DVD made around it. It was an attempt by Mode to take part in a project that pushed beyond the usual boundaries of what he has usually been asked to do on walls.
Known and globally respected for his cover artwork for Thames & Hudson's "Spraycan Art" in 1984, providing erotic imagery for a photo and drawing compendium called "thecalendar.nu, excelling within other media like creating a backdrop for a short film by Costa Gavras in 1991, celebrating the 25th anniversary of Amnesty International or taking part as a key speaker at the "Hip Hop; A Cultural Expression" seminar held at Cleveland State University in 1999 - you will notice a direct link between his artistic work and his community-based efforts. He is constantly bridging the art, political or academic world with the street related scene he is coming from. Focusing on the social topics he could communicate throughout his position he has gained from being a part of that culture for over 20 years.
And you may have now noticed as well that Mode 2 is really exact about telling you the time and date of anything happened in his life. He still very thoughtful, very cautious to give the exact time when all this happened to deliver all information for the situation he is talking about. So you have the chance to get the big picture about all that went on during the early days of HipHop and recent youth culture in Europe.
From 1997 to 1999 he participated in and ran mural workshops in Belfast, Northern Ireland, bringing children from both sides of the political divide there to take part in the discussion and execution of ideas for the murals he did in the city. He also had a one-man exhibition at the Old Museum Arts Centre, as well as holding a conference there on graffiti-writing, mural art, and their role in the community.
It's Mode 2's ability to build bridges from one topic to another within one single question, starting at views on typical behavior in that culture, leading to French music and to every aspect that might comes to mind within that context.

"You get used to from a young age standing out like a little bit. If you could handle it good, it helps you to develop a strong personality. The problems when we were having these moments, the people beginning to talk about their problems, like you could see they couldn't really handle, and you watch as the years go by, you see the ones that commit suicide, and you see the ones they try this and try that, oh shit yeah, I am gonna go into muscle building. You know they try all these things. Maybe at a key point in their life they didn't really find something to focus on for the love of that thing, and they were just kinda of getting along with that thing, because they needed to get around, because of the safety of the gang and belonging, all that kind of stuff. So it is like in the street the weak become heroes? I wish that could be the case for many of them, but they also became losers, so much was lost from bullshit, because for me like a lot in the French hip hop scene was committing the same mistakes as the French they were dissing. That was called the yeah yeah thing, because in the 50ies when Europe was kind of bankrupt because of the war, and the Americans had the Marshall plan, and all this kind of stuff, and they were exporting America to Europe, like yeah. It was harder for local cultures to regain any kind of thing, and all these kind of people who were doing these cover versions of American Rock and Roll, and the Rap guys like dissing this, these dudes doing exactly the same kind of thing 40 years later. Of course you still have that kind of Backpack Hip Hop, Underground Hip Hop and all this kind of stuff. If it is not entertaining you, you not gonna get it in the fucking club, and the people not gonna be dancing. It is this real of a hard thing how to make interesting things and paintings again, you know. A lot of them guys believed that Hip Hop would kind of save them in some kind of way what I call the Hip Hop planned to be land thing. And it is kind of that stuff in New York, like a bit of it in Philadelphia they belonged to that time in that place and what we got was an Expo of certain particular moments. A lot of people took that as one whole thing, but it was not people living in New York, the reason why graffiti things evolved in a way, because the media what it was on, it wasn't the fanzines and the fucking Websites. And if you wanted to see a train you had to go to certain spots and wait for them. In 1985 in Covent Garden some dudes were on a mission to find a Futura piece from 1982 or 1983 whatever it was. You know, like stuff jumping over fences, because that's how you are going to look at things, like in real life when you could see the scale of a thing you can appreciate the technique, the type of paint. A lot of friends that I grew up with in Paris life for many of them kinda passed them by, because they believed that this Hip Hop thing would fix so many things, that everyone becomes a Rap Star, everyone becomes this or a DJ, no, only the better people would become that and hopefully only the better people because then you would have good and bad full of culture, P Diddy could not have changed things. And we have the college kids to be into this ruff kind of ghetto stuff and we gonna smoothen it out with Mary J. who can't sing. Billie Holiday didn't have a wide scale - range - but she could hit the notes, but Mary J. can not hit the notes."

You will be tossed around with every aspect of the conversation with Mode 2. Within seconds he changes the subjects but clearly interconnects them with each other. It's an amazing ride through all younger European history, including smart ideas how to describe them in a more "global" way. So in 1989, he was asked to paint different murals around the suburbs of Paris for the bicentennial of the French Revolution. His skills were a valuable tool in creating bridges between the many youth clubs he worked for and their local population. He was asked to participate in "graffiti-workshops" also, but became quickly aware that many ideas coming from the different socio-cultural institutions regarding youth tend not to be in touch with the reality of things, and do not guarantee any long-term solutions to the problems of the inner-cities.

"It was a problem with 1989, it was 200 years since 1789, so were celebrating this revolutionary mess, 'cause 1795 they had an emperor. 1792 they get rid of him, they chopped of the king's head. 1795 they had Napoleon, can you please make your mind up? you want to have a ruler or not a ruler? some ones even harder then they do before. Until 1981 they had no free radio stations, everything was state TV and state radio. And so culturally they had people like Jacques Loin, you had all these people some of the people called caviar left/gauche. We do this we do that we are going to make change to so many things, yeah OK. You have done your studies all this kind of theory and stuff, but on the ground and in the street it happened in a different way. But for the cultural thing they wanted to get all kinds of youth clubs and all these places. You must get the youth to understand. Hip Hop is like a revolution and then maybe we could use this to kind of as a vehicle to get the children to understand. But revolutions can´t be understood from above. It was in that kind of time filled with obstacles, but then the problem is that suddenly you get sent to every youth club in the whole of France: But the guy who runs the youth club does not know shit about Hip Hop. It is like little pockets of people aroundthe whole of France but this is the one in Paris, this is the one in Marseille and this the one in Bordeaux or fucking Strasbourg or wherever. They are actually hooked onto it, like in some kind of idea what could be going on. But suddenly you had guys who knew nothing about the culture having two forces onto the local youth club. And for me it is like you know what "Let's do some damage limitation here like I am trying to do as many as I can. In ´89 it was a lot of touring different places, keep do something like on what a theme is, yes I know what a theme is. This kid from Paris called pro who was linked with the GT guys, he told me he saw me painting. This gymnasium is actually a sports court, Rene Rousseau in Tragy le Roi, a south east suburb of Paris in 1989 and that's what started him to get into painting. Every once in a while you have meet someone who was like yeah when you would see this thing and that thing and ya know yeah then I got into it. And you see that from then they actually really got into it and really took it somewhere. When you see things in real life and when you meet people in real life, and the first time you just sit there and watch it and it is the best kind of education."

And this was when a few of these went on because like it still was damage limitation, they were totally dissing us on the press like side. 1984 they had this guy called Sidney who had his first Hip Hop TV in France. Every Sunday afternoon, like achuter ajouter, I was not in Paris, I came in ´85, so Sydney had this kind of Hip Hop Show, people could come from everywhere showing their dance moves. Solo who was on the cover for one of these Tommy Boy compilations, he was like the Zulu king for Paris. This real kind of naïve Hip Hop kind of kiddy thing Just ended like with the season in the end of´84. And then what really stayed behind was tagging graffiti. And that's what kind of actually carried on the culture I was really happy, we started in London, we have a totally different optic on the kind of crew on what we were about crew wise. My friends were, I was the youngest guy in the crew, when I was already 16, 3 of the other guys had already been onto an art college doing art courses; so everyone already was into drawing, they were old enough to have their end of puberty and OK I'm like my personality is a bit this and a bit that. This is the background of the Chrome Angels. These four guys were Eskimon and Zerox. Zerox went on to be Kev One/Cab One to this crew called "Definition of Sound" the late 80ties. We just wanted to progress creatively, we were burnt in London, because we could not find anyone who was better than we were, we were better organized, and some of the other crews were looking up to us style wise. A couple of crews like a guy called Juice with his kids were state of the art, there were a couple of guys who were getting their own thing going on for the main part - graphic things. We hooked up to a band in Paris and that opened the whole new thing and we found these guys from bad boys crew where like J One is from, there is another crew called Buccaneers, they were like painters. ´85 in Paris was the scene for painting in Europe reflected in "Spray Can Art", you had to paint there. The same summer down to the next spring the whole Amsterdam thing was going on through Shoot and Delta. Graffiti carried the whole thing at the same time that illegal side of it was also just kind of tearing up Paris - a crew called MBK - Moc, Bonzai and Kane, there was this one dude called Boxer he came in for, took other reasons, a guy called Sheek totally destroyed crews like CBA. Destroying, destroying, destroying! Nothing really but/not destroying, just couldn't take it everywhere, so we getting slaughtered in the press. And then when the things come on, yeah, yeah we need you, when the 1789 the 1989 thing comes along, so it is like kind of hypocritical kind of stands from the cultural point of view and in France they always had this problem for the people. Since 1981 in these positions as far as culture goes they seem to think I want their jobs, but I don´t want their jobs, I don't want to have my ass sit down on a seat. You should really listen to what we have to say that we can really help you to eventually perhaps prevent things. You are doing it from the top down. The academie francaise tied to protect the French language. Then maybe around ´95 perhaps a bit before radio stations must play a minimum of 40% French music. And this was when the French Rap really kicked off, there was not much of that French music around and this was a door wide open for anyone who wanted to say what is going on in the neighbourhood, good or bad, like ya know, the government doesn´t do shit for us, but if you don't learn shit for yourself nothing is gonna get done. Academie Francaise on one side refused to accept that language must evolve, the words people are using you should integrate that in the French language, and widered and richered. But the reason why I was leaving it was like banging against the wall, trying to understand things. But by the time they are going to react to peoples enthusiasm, all that stuff is gone, all the freshness."

Mode 2 believes that there is a present and growing need for a "re-humanisation" of the cities that we live in, as society become more and more individualistic and consumer-driven, and the notion of community gradually disappears, leading to growingsocial disillusion. The majority of visual language that we see in public space is used for the sale of products through billboard ads and shop signs, or else purely directional and informative signs regarding traffic and so on. As far as youth goes especially, Mode 2 feels there is a need to integrate visual and graphic images by the way of murals, ceramics, stained glass, or sculpture into educational, sports, and cultural centres, whereby the youth that these centres depend on would feel in harmony with the look and feel of the buildings that they're in. These initiatives would need to be carefully put into place, though, so that only artists and urban architects who really have an affinity with this kind of vision, and realise the importance of its implication into our urban landscape, would be shortlisted for these projects. We have witnessed so many initiatives trying to use "Hip Hop" and other urban cultures on the socio-cultural level that have failed in their intentions.