09/01/2022
✅ Finally done! It wasn't a lot of work to build, but for all sorts of reasons it hadn't been possible to speed it up and finish it.
The electricity house of Business & Innovation Campus De Gasfabriek in Gemeente Deventer city. Formerly the electricity supply of a gas factory. Besides the fact that this building now serves as an eye-catcher due to a nice mural by JIMKI Design & Art studio, this building is not that special in appearance. Yet every Deventer citizen knows this little building.
For me it’s a special building. When I was about 15 yo, this was the very first place I practiced my tag. In other words, a signature in the graffiti world. My tag was placed under every graffiti I made after this moment. This tag was also kind of a status symbol that I was a member of the "well-known group" called 'South East Posse'. 'Reader' was my tag(name). For years, few knew who the person was behind this name. Until someone started snitching and I got in trouble with police and Stichting Halt…
In that period I also became the first DJ of one of the first Nederhop formation 'Zuid Oost'. Together with Osdorp Posse, we turned the Netherlands music scene upside down and laid the foundation for the Dutch hip hop generation in the late 80s and early 90s.
Walking with a backpack full of spray cans I jumped over the fence in the middle of the night and trembling on my legs I sprayed my tag and the '(in)famous SEP initials' on the back of the building for the first time, which also had a Mercedes logo as a symbol. I was so proud! Outside, in the real world and no longer just on paper in a Blackbook. From that moment on, many artistic but mainly illegal practices followed throughout the Netherlands. But because of this, I could spray graffiti on commission for a number of years and was able to earn good pocket money.
For me, to this day, when I drive past it, I think of that very first time with a smile. Good memories with sometimes a less happy ending. But it was my first public artistic expression that I will always cherish. Until today I am creative every day. Would it ever have been different in and with my life if I hadn't sprayed my initials on this building?
No. 000321