The crew M.A.C. (Mort aux cons or Dick heads must die) began in 1986 in Paris and is now made up of Kongo, El Juan, Alex, Popof, Orus, Pwoz, Psychose and Creez. They have done a dozen pieces far larger than the usual 15 x 10 feet. We wanted to know more about their motives, their plans for the future and their stance on issues the graffiti scene is facing.

What are M.A.C.'s goals?

Our first goal, and one we all share, is to do bigger and bigger walls with wilder and wilder themes, while keeping the overall composition collective. We still have a lot of things we want to try out. But our basic aim is to keep on having fun.

What are your crew's shortcomings?

Our main shortcoming as a group has to do with the personal commitments each of us have. We have very conflicting schedules, and that hurts our ability to do big pieces together. Sometimes some of us just don't have the time to do really excellent work, and becoming involved in activities other than graffing can mean less and less time left for drawing. It's not easy for us to stand together against the world. Above all we're friends and very close to each other, but still I'd have to admit that sometimes it's a struggle and our projects don't always go down the way we'd like. But our weakness is also our strength-the fact that we're one group made up of many individuals, each with their own particular talents. In fact, I think the big challenge will be to organize ourselves so that we can work together more tightly.

How do you feel about the Paris graff scene?

Paris has always produced a lot of quality but there's a problem with the different directions people are going in. There's real potential, but the crews stay too separate. They haven't been able to get together and produce many unified pieces, as they did in New York. We're lagging. Already we missed out on being graffiti pioneers, and if we don't figure out how to stick together more it'll be the death of the graffiti upsurge in France! Check out the quality of the walls they're doing in Germany. Here in France, there are some groups, such as the C.O.P. (Mist and Steph), the 165, the T.W., the P.C.P., the R.A.W. and the T.S. from Toulouse, to name just a few, who have painted coherent pieces. And even when we've finished a wall, all we want to do is get beyond that. If the crews in Paris got together, that would have a huge impact, and French graffiti would really take off.

What is graffiti, for you, and where do you get your inspiration?

Kongo: For me, graffiti means doing something and then ripping it up. It's my passed. My influences are Psycose , El Juan, and now O'Clock, Sken and Home, the new generation that's tearing it all up, New York, all of that at once. I want to capture my impressions and my reactions. I want to kick up political and social issues in my production. We're the painters of the year 2,000!

El Juan: I draw my influences from everywhere, everyday life, colours, other painters and other styles of painting.

Alex: Graffiti starts out with tagging. For me, the kings of Paris are Colorz, Zeus, O'Clock and the C.M.P. crew. They're up everywhere! And then there's wall art, colors, lettering, characters and the message you can communicate through all that. Mode 2, Bando, Lokiss, Mist, Steph and many other writers have inspired me to keep going and never stop. Two-thirds of my friends are graffiti people and I can't let graffiti down. It's where I draw my strength from.

Psy: It's a chemical reaction that happens when many different cultures are all centralized in one city. It's also a great means of communication for youth seeking recognition. As for my inspiration, it's a city thing. I get it from American writers like the U.A., the C.I.A. crew and my homies in the 156. And then there's great artists, like Gaudi, Hundertwaser and Guimard, who even back in the days knew a thing or two about urban vibrations.

Popof: For me, it can be prehistoric cave paintings or the latest walls. The masters of aerosol art, whether they be Seen, Dondi or Michelangelo and Andy Warhol. Graffiti is a synthesis of many different cultures.

Orus: Writing is what moves me most. I try and share it with the people around me. It's a way of life. It's about being curious and never letting go of this driving curiosity. It's an apolitical reaction, but it means taking a stand against those who rule over us and manipulate us. It's a people's discipline that gets taken up in response to an increasingly oppressive urban environment. My inspiration comes from Subway Art, New York, Brazil, Mist, the F.T. crew and above all from the streets.

Pwoz: It's about tags, flops, letters, characters and painting scenes. What made me want to start painting in 1993 was Kongo and his good vibes. It's also about Seen, Dondi, Zephir, Loomit, Cope 2, Subway Art and all sorts of others. Writing is about wanting to express yourself on a surface where that's not supposed to be for that. It's about using any medium at all that will allow me to express what I want to express.

What motivates you to do big walls?

Because it has a bigger visual impact. The idea is to mix together our skills, our particular talents and styles, so that we can do a higher-quality wall painting through a well-planned division of labour. When you bring together a bunch of different temperaments, the result can be a visual Molotov cocktail! What we like is to get together with our friends and do better and better work, without ever being satisfied with what we've done before. Working together is a big advantage and also a big problem, in terms of everyone's time and motivation, for the reasons that were explained before. Also, doing big walls allows us to travel and mix with other writers. When you do a large-format piece together, that creates a particular atmosphere and that atmosphere is exactly what we're looking for.

Now that graffiti's getting globalized, do you really think you can be innovative?

We're M.A.C. second generation. We're not the guys that started the crew and we're not even graffiti o. g.'s. Our mission is to perpetuate the graffiti spirit of Mort aux Cons. Luck is what brought us together and kept us together. What we want to do is to bring graffiti to a higher level, in our crew, in our city and in our country. But we do it our way, with our energy and our culture, our special mix that emerged from different sources and that makes us a collective whole. We are part of a tradition because we know graffiti history. We've been to New York. We aren't trying to pretend we're something that we're not. We are interpreters of graffiti, but we read the score in our own way, from a European standpoint, from the standpoint of our own culture and where we're coming from.

Why do you use photo-realistic elements in your walls?

That's typical of Europe, part of our tradition and culture. For us, it's a good way to illustrate the themes we're interested in. A lot of writers have been using realistic elements in their work for the past 20 years. For us, realistic figuration allows us to better communicate the attitude we want to represent. The aim is to go beyond photographic realism, to give full play to the handling of materials, to make full use of colour and contrast and line.
We try and expand our technique by mixing in different elements while emphasizing line. Our aim is to get beyond reproduction and make this an entirely creative art. As time goes on, our graffiti will develop. Once we master the technical difficulties of this kind of reproduction, we'll be able to integrate our personal drawings into overall compositions.