Overground 3: Trans Europe Express (Bk. III)

A personal big city story focusing on graffiti

Graffiti shapes the city. The city shapes graffiti. The physical environment offers its conditions through obstacles and opportunities. But politics also play their part.
We have sought out nine of the most stylistically influential European graffiti writers. From Stockholm to Bologna, London to Prague. Nine extreme artists, who are all kings in their respective cities. Masters in style and endurance. The journey continues throughout Europe in a hunt for the soul of the city and the art. For the first time, the artists are presented as a part of their environment. The city is their studio. They live and work in it, use it and protect it every day.
Personality and artistic style are a result of their surroundings. It becomes clear how vastly the writers' lifestyles and driving forces differ. And despite the standardisation of European cities, there are also great differences.

Overground 3 is about the last free artistic expression of our time. Graffiti is the world's largest artistic movement, and it inspires fashion, music, art and design. Overground 3 is also the story about a Europe in which privatisation, surveillance and intolerance are on the increase. These changes limit opportunities for graffiti writers, but also increase their need to create and be seen.

Overground 3 asks questions on whom the city belongs to and who it is for. On the right to public space and the importance of graffiti in Europe's increasingly commercialised cities.

The result is a personal depiction of the city, focussing on art and lifestyle with reports from Berlin, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Liage, London, Milano - Bologna, Paris, Prag and Stockholm.

Torkel Sjostrand is a photographer and editor for Underground Productions graffiti magazine. Torkel Sjostrand is the author of the book 1207. He has previously contributed to such books as Overground, Writers United and edited Gates of Graffiti.

Tobias Barenthin Lindblad has published the graffiti magazine Underground Productions since 1992, and has previously jointly edited Overground - 9 Scandinavian Graffiti Writers, The Beautiful Struggle and Ovrground 2.

Journalist Bjorn Almqvist is the author of the best selling book Writers United; The Story About WUFC: A Swedish Graffiti Crew. He has previously contributed to such books as Overground 2 Gates of Graffiti and is a regular writer for Underground Productions.
Bjorn Almqvist has previously edited such