Interview: How&Nosm

How&Nosm: What’s up Bombing Science and crew! We’re doing pretty good in the New Year. We just finished reflecting on 2009, and it was a good year for us. We achieved all of the goals we had planned, so hopefully this year will be just as successful. So far we’ve gotten off to a good start, with over 100 walls painted throughout Central America and Brazil in January alone–we took full advantage of the warm weather. Now that we’re back in NY, we’re making the cold weather and the snow work for us by building snow sculptures and painting them. Besides all that, we will hit our 60th country this year–and that alone is quite a big achievement for How&Nosm. That’s what’s good.;)

BS: Tell us a little bit about your graffiti status.

How&Nosm: Well, we’ve been writing graff since 1988 and have represented our own crew, RAL (Right And Left), since ’92. We’ve also been members of the world famous Tats Cru from the Bronx (with active members like Bio, BG183, Nicer, and Totem2 from Atlanta) since ’97.

BS: Where are you originally from and where are you based now?

How&Nosm: We were born in San Sebastian, a city in the Northern Basque Country of Spain. We spent our childhoods there until our parents got divorced and our mother moved us back to Duesseldorf, Germany, were she was from. Soon after, we saw the German premier of Wildstyle on Tv and we loved it, but at that point had no idea that it was only a part of the big picture that was the graffiti movement. A few years later, some of our buddies we used to skateboard with introduced us to tagging–and from then on we just kept tagging, piecing, and all the other fun stuff that illegal (and legal) writing entails. In 1997 we took our first trip to the big apple, and coincidentally we were staying with some friends of our family right in the heart of the South Bronx on Willis Avenue. We knew Fat Joe’s Hip Hop shop, called Halftime, was located not too far away from where we were staying, so one day we went over there and met Tats Cru founder Brim, who put us in contact with Bio. The rest is history. They put us down officially–not to be confused with the status of other dudes who claim they are or were down–so we kept coming back to the Bronx and started repping Tats in Europe. In ’99 we decided to chill with the Cru for a couple of months…and now, almost 11 years later, we are happy to say that we’ve never regretted that decision.

BS: How does graffiti in your current place differs from where you are?

How&Nosm: The New York Graffiti scene is sadly dying out faster than you might think…if it’s not dead already. It all started here, and rightfully so, they call those years the golden years of(subway) graffiti. Obviously it will never be the same, but even when the train writers were forced to leave the trains alone and instead dedicated themselves to painting murals, there was still a similar energy floating around in the NY scene. When we first got a taste of the scene writers were extremely competitive and always trying to innovate their styles, that was probably until the early 2000s. We guess the tougher and tougher laws and punishments against graffiti, and so called vandals, ended many writer’s careers and that’s what started the drastic decrease of graffiti in NYC . Unfortunately, you don’t see many new upcoming writers who have the desire to become a great writer. Most just want to bomb and get the fame as fast as possible with little effort. They usually don’t stick around longer than the 2-3 years it takes for the justice system to swallow them up. And if one has actually somewhat of a talent, he often wants to skip all the essential parts that make a well rounded writer–like painting trains, bombing hard, and at the same time doing big elaborate productions. They want to go straight to the gallery world, call it street art, and change their graff name to their government name. That stands true for the European graff scene too, but the difference is that Europe, and several other places, have enough new emerging artists to keep their scenes alive. Don’t get us wrong, we love NY, but that’s the ugly truth and reality…and we hope it will change soon because it’s hard to fight that image by ourselves. So stop doing walls with 50 dudes on a black background that have no style and instead try to change other writer’s perceptions of what the NY graff is today–because most outsiders are looking at the NY graff scene with laughter these days. Nobody cares about someone’s graff history or origin anymore, and people are tired of hearing what this and that guy used to do. Moving on and evolving is the best way to prove people are wrong about NYC graff scene.

BS: I’ve read that you guys are twin brothers. Did you started graffiti together or one introduced the other?

How&Nosm: Yes, we are identical twin brothers and started tagging at the same time, but How did his first piece about a week before Nosm–so technically you could say that How started piecing first.:)

BS: Do you find any advantages or inconvenience at being brothers who share the same passion for graffiti?

How&Nosm: Being brothers is definitely of advantage for us because we get much more and bigger work done as a team than we each would alone. And we both do both names when we aren’t together, so we multiply our work instantly. The difference between us and other twins is that you can have How&Nosm, or just  How, or just Nosm. Both names alone still stand as strong as they do when they’re together. Two minds working together also has the advantage of coming up with double the ideas for new works, so we influence each other and help each other to create new styles and find new directions for our art.

BS: What is your biggest accomplishment as a graffiti duo?

How&Nosm: That is not an easy question to answer. But we would have to say that we’ve traveled and painted in probably more countries than many others, to name one accomplishment. But to be honest, we always come up with new goals and plans in our heads that we strive to accomplish…so it’s really a never ending story for us.

BS: Besides graffiti, do you spend a lot of time together working on different things or you live separate lives?

How&Nosm: Besides graffiti, we share a passion for classic cars and movies–but even though we spend quite a lot of time together, we live very separate lives and people also say we are very different from each other. It works out well for us .

BS: I know that you’ve traveled a lot throughout the globe, does graffiti contributed to those experiences? How?

How&Nosm: Yes, like we mentioned earlier we are about to visit our 60th country this year and we are planning something special for that occasion. Graffiti always plays a big role when we go on trips. To be honest, we always leave a mark, even when we go on vacation with our wives–but they know the deal and our addiction, and they understand. If we travel as How&Nosm we make sure we cover all niches of graffiti from walls to street bombing and steel…and of course a lot of crazy but interesting things happen along the way .

BS: How do you manage to make a living out of graffiti?

How&Nosm: We started doing little graff jobs for several friends back in Germany, and they had friends who also had friends, and next we knew we were getting enough jobs in to quit our bullshit day jobs. We lived off it for a few years in Germany and once we moved to New York in ’99, the Tats Cru fellas offered us work with them. They were so busy and with our help jobs could get done faster, which meant more jobs and more money. Just like every other business, we have ups and downs in the company, but that just sharpens our senses and forces us to make things better.

BS: Who/What are your inspirations?

How&Nosm: Our inspirations come from all kinds of different aspects of everyday life. It can be people in the streets, books, music, advertising…you name it. We take those inspirations and transform them into works in our own styles.

BS: Any advices for the beginners out there?

How&Nosm: Don’t try to make a living off of graffiti if you already have a diploma or have the chance to go to college, because it’s not easy and not everybody is going to make it–especially if you aren’t certain about it. Fame won’t pay the bills for ever.

BS: Last words, shout outs?

How&Nosm: Thanks to the Bombing Science team and to the people who support us. Live your  life and be grateful for what you have, especially for your friends.

You can check our artwork on www.hownosm.org

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