Podcast #022 – Jacob Kimvall (English Language)

For this podcast Ilovegraffiti talked to Jacob Kimvall from Stockholm. Jacob is a Swedish art critic, art historian and lecturer in visual culture, specializing in graffiti and street art. And of course he has been active as a writer since 1986, under the name Track172. Jacob received his doctorate in art history from the University of Stockholm. His doctoral thesis “The G-Word: Virtuosity and Violation, Negotiating and Transforming Graffiti.” From 2014 examines the historiography of graffiti and suggests to understand this subcultural phenomenon as jointly produced by subcultural and institutional actors.

The G-Word book is available here:
www.spraydaily.com/p/the-g-word

In 1992 he was a co-founder of the international graffiti magazine Underground Productions (UP) and worked as one of the publishers of the magazine and in the later Dokument Publishing house during the 90s. Anyone who follows the documentary series “Rise Of Graffiti Writing – From New York To Europe” knows Jacob from the Stockholm episode of the current third season, in which he, in addition to Swedish graffiti pioneers such as Ziggy, Disey, Kaos and Puppet, talks about the first attempts by the local graffiti scene in the speaks in the early eighties.

In the podcast we talk about this episode, graffiti in Stockholm, zero tolerance politics in Sweden then and now, Underground Productions, his doctoral thesis “The G-Word”, the restoration of graffiti pieces (eg Odem), the Berlin Wall and a history-steeped one Moment on November 4th, 1989.

Here is a link to our book Svensk Old School Graffiti (Swedish Old School Graffiti) that is mentioned in the podcast episode: www.unfade.com/p/svensk-old-school-graffiti