Today we return to Italy with BOL, a new interview for the Digging in Graffiti column. Rome is a very hardcore city and one that over time has shown itself to be full of beauty and contradictions, with Bol we try to enter the Roman underground…

Let’s start at the beginning, how did the passion for graffiti come about? And what prompted you to start?

I started writing my BOL tag after using two or three for a very short time. Until 1990 I was doing murals and generally drawing to make myself attractive to the female gender, to overcome a slight shyness in approaches drawing was a great tool. The transition from muralism to writing came mainly from the need for a more personal, self-centered search, but still would keep me within a group, a crew precisely.

What was it like to be part of the graffiti movement in Italy in those years? and what did it mean to be part of it for you?

At the beginning of the 1990s, there were very few of us writing our names on the street in Rome, but there was already a good Italian scene and several media and communication spaces to support us. Apart from a few jams, self-produced fanzines, the rounds of phone calls on landlines, the intercoms of the buildings, and the writer corners (like “the traffic circle” on the terrace in front of the Colosseum), I remember with pleasure the online chats on Mirc (IrcNet) on those channels that began with the hashtag like #writerz #hiphopitalia, etc. that still guarantee a fair amount of privacy. For a metalhead to be part of a movement that didn’t exist was shocking to many, but then over time we got used to that strange discipline that DJ Iceone calls the most undisciplined of all the 4 that make up HipHop. Writers felt freer to express themselves as they wanted for example by elaborating lettering styles that also deviated quite a bit from the classic NY wild style. For me, it was and still is an excuse to get together with people I like, people who can think outside the box and who don’t mind breaking rules they don’t feel are their own, a way to express the best part of me to others.

Rome is an urban jungle, a city of art and historical beauty, but with a strong underground movement. Writing took root quickly in the capital, from bombing to stencils, from subways to trains, we wonder what was your source of inspiration?

I started painting at CSOA Forte Prenestino where I self-managed the Drawing Workshop, practically a den of writers who came there from all over Rome basically to have fun, but also to plan urban actions, make banners and stage set-ups of the extra-parliamentary movement of the social centers, to organize and go dancing at the first rave parties ecce cc. So if Rome was a jungle we were the natives who had a good time without problems in a very stimulating and international underground environment. Here we founded crews and families like the Tremaroma, and we were an inspiration of style, not only lettering but also life for many writers who came after.

In your opinion, does the evolution of graffiti in our country and the world still reflect the initial values?

Initial values? I don’t think there are initial values to be inspired by, in fact, to be honest, I think writing has survived decades of historical and social change precisely because of its wild and adaptive nature. It’s like a virus that mutates with the times, with new ways of socializing, new modes of expression, new means of production, marketing and whatever the context is in which it develops. It’s kind of like the pencil, it’s a tool that you can use to do different things besides drawing, and every day somebody comes up with some new way, which is why they still make them in the age of digital drawing.

Over the years in Italy there has been a strong crackdown on writers, with strict laws, how do you think this has affected writers?

I think that Article 639 of the Italian Penal Code (defacement and defacement of other people’s property) should be abolished or at least decriminalized as I believe that a criminal offense that does not concern physical harm to people and can lead to imprisonment in prison for up to 2 years is unconstitutional and above all, it undermines freedom of expression in favor of the defense of private property. That is why I have supported several struggles from below by supporting the hashtag #change639 on social media. On the other hand, I believe that writers, being mainly young people, always find a way to accomplish what they want beyond any form of repression, so I don’t think this has influenced its spread more than that. The demonstration of this can be seen on the walls of our cities as well as on its means of transportation, social media, etc.

Do graffiti today still have the power it once had? By power do we mean a value and a feeling of claiming one’s space, of showing who one is through art?

The values intended to be expressed in any action I think are strictly personal, and generalizing is often a mistake that is made thinking that what surrounds us is a mirror of what we think. In reality, most writers paint simply because they think it is fun. Whether then sociologists, anthropologists, and other writers further along in both age and life experience feel they associate it with values is subjective and of little importance. I personally felt it necessary to associate values and meaning with writing from the first moment I practiced it and I still believe it is a valid way to express oneself, but I realize that this is not the case for all/all and I deeply respect their free choice.

Hip-hop is a culture that has embraced graffiti by making it an important pillar of its imagery, cult films like Wild Style show how hip hop arts blend seamlessly, is that still the case today, or has that sense of belonging faded?

Several cult films report on imagery that belongs to a limited number of people, which is why they are appreciated by them and why they leave everyone else indifferent. The belonging of writing to HipHop is comparable to the belonging of writing to art, it is still debated and I don’t think a clear objective definition will ever be reached.

Your puppets often tell stories, and are often a social critique or showcase certain aspects of our society, how important is it to you to convey a message in your pieces?

It’s very important, from the moment I first started drawing (in kindergarten, I think) I’ve always been sending messages to those who would look at my works, I think I couldn’t have done it any other way. Sometimes the messages I send are explicit (words written and repeated by my characters LALLO and LALLA the parrot or characters from comics and cartoons) sometimes less so and more intimate (especially in the style of “tubisms” and lettering). They often seek the smile and reasoning of the viewer, never expressing my pain, only my joy.

Competition is an integral part of graffiti, and in Rome, the situation is one of extreme competitiveness, how have you experienced and/or lived it? and in your opinion, this competition leads writers to always push themselves to the limit?

The desire for competition is in my opinion the legacy of an adolescent phase that has never been overcome, at best. I have experienced it, as have most of us, but then I became an adult and realized that there are other valid reasons for pushing oneself to the limit and/or taking risks. Reasons that involve more complex issues than simply wanting to feel like the best writer or the most respected or the most anything about others.

Let’s close by asking you an anecdote regarding graffiti?

Once some guards caught me in the act of painting an FS train. They were complete with a guard dog and guns were drawn. They gave us quite a scare and told us the usual two thousand stories making us lose the whole night. Anyway at the end of the day they issued and gave us a postal slip with the FS letterhead, with the fine amount written on it and the codes of the infractions (including crossing tracks and other amenities) that, according to them, we were supposed to pay for the damage done to the carriages… well I should still have it somewhere and no, we never paid anything.