Knowing ZASD By His Walk

Thomas Bratzke’s ZASD-tags has been showing up in Berlin since the early 1990’s, and in the late 1990’s he became a significant figure of the infamous graffiti style-writing scene in Berlin – one of the most fast-forward and innovative European graffiti scenes. Together with Berlin writers such as Akim, Zasd was essential in pushing the borders of graffiti. In early 00s Akim and Zasd founded the writing-collective Jazzstyle Corner whose happenings drew attention to a form of free-graff, often combining writing with music and dance. Jazzstyle Corner has been an important influence for today’s DIAMONDS crew, whose members such as COST88, BUS126, FISO, EXOT and TRYONE, have further challenged the limits of graffiti.

ZASDs performances, sculptures, installations, and interventions transcend the genre of graffiti. He deconstructs and reconstructs the quotidian, from commonplace objects to the fabric of the city, and even engages with social systems and structures, to create a new, more vibrant and interactive reality for his audience.

The book “Knowing ZASD by his Walk” consists of three parts. The first part offers a wide range of photos from different projects by Bratzke. Here, a lot of his performative manipulations of architectural spaces can be found, often referring to the practice of stylewriting. The second part introduces the novel ”The House of Thomas Bratzke” written by US author Rose Pacult: A journalist gets trapped in a house which reacts upon thoughts and movements. The protagonist, who wanted to meet Thomas Bratzke for an interview, now finds herself alone in his house, digging through Bratzke’s countless crates, documents and writings in all the different rooms. She needs to reveal the secrets of this house in order to find her way out – back into the city.
In the third part, for the first time, all works by Thomas Bratzke are collected in a thematic and chronologic order.

***Note: We have some signed books. While stock lasts.***

160 pages, 17 cm x 24 cm, different types of paper, hardcover with dust jacket
Language: English
Design: Matthias Hübner
Release date: 2016
ISBN: 978-9185639885
Publisher: Dokument Press