INTERVIEW WITH EARSNOT

As the founder of the seminal IRAK crew, EARSNOT stands as an essential, polarizing pillar of New York City’s late-1990s graffiti renaissance. Transitioning from the raw, high-velocity friction of street bombing to the stark, analytical spaces of contemporary fine art, his voice exemplifies a culture built on peer prestige, visceral territorial negotiation, and brilliant graphic autonomy within a rapidly shifting urban grid.

E: IRAK CREW is compiled of some of the illest, youngest minds in visual arts. We’re like a liberal, extreme liberal, expressionist group—a lot of graffiti writers. We’ve been tested throughout our young emergence in this scene downtown. So, we’re clear on certain messages we want to send or look to say. We were trying to enlighten. I hate to sound typical, but we’re trying to get people with some other ideas, on a mass level; to have people listening to us. That’s what we want to do.
   We’re visual, whether it’s photography, writing on people’s gates, movies, like documentaries on old-school New York people that are gonna soon be extinct. Trying to somehow let the people know what else is up, whether it’s like showing a bunch of gay graffiti writers. A lot of people are stupid like cattle; they need to be shown the way. They need to be taught what is being a gay, Black, graffiti writer that isn’t being gay or whatever. A lot of people will have misconceptions about the way things should be. Gay life is only depicted a certain way. Black people in the media and in movies are depicted a certain way. So, people who don’t really know Black people will assume that Black people are this way. It’s the same for graffiti writers and for gay people. 
   My generation has a lot of democratic ideals. It’s IRAK's position and responsibility to let our generation know how we feel; what our position is on a lot of shit because a lot of people look up to us.

Q: How many writers are in IRAK CREW?
E: About forty to fifty.

Q: How many important ones; aside from you?
E: Twenty.

Q: Are there any kings besides you and maybe SACE?
E: TIE is the king, my man TIE, RIP. These are people that are down, that are kings of other stature, for other reasons, like GKAE, and then there’s ESPO. These are people down with my crew, but they’re not necessarily kings on the IRAK level, they’re on their own, they’re independent-level kings, but SACE and I and TIE are the people that came from IRAK and made it happen.

Q: Is anybody All City?
E: Right now? No.

Q: Is that criteria important to you?
E: It used to be. It’s not anymore. People not wanting to be friends with graffiti writers. Only wanting to deal with them on a beast, bombing-level. That doesn’t exist anymore. That whole world doesn’t exist anymore. Now, you can do graffiti on the internet. Do it in your backyard, take pictures of it, put it on the internet, make a website, put up a couple stickers downtown and be the man. That’s what it is, it is what it is. Having said that, it’s not important anymore.
   Is it important to me to see people go All City? Of course. I like to see that shit; see people go all out. But at the same time, my life has evolved. I don’t want to be at a point where I’m running all around the city trying to write graffiti, because for me, it’s done out of desperation, out of a low point, an I-don’t-care-what-happens kind of thing, which is raw. People love it for that reason, but it’s a bad place to be. It's not good; it’s not coming from a positive thing.

You may read the full interview in You Weren't There: 1990s NYC Graffiti. Aesthetics, Plasticity, & Form, edited by Martinez Gallery, NATO, DIP, Danielle Becker, Kevin Monaghan, Octavio Zaya, Hugo Martinez

Focusing on the 1990s—a decade of unpredictability and innovation—this book traces graffiti's evolution and its sensibilities within broader social currents. Through striking visuals and incisive text, we follow their vanguard's vision of creativity: combinational, exploratory, and transformational. Accompanied by the vanguard's stories, commentary and their artworks from private collections, this is the groundbreaking chronicle of an era that redefined the rules of art.

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