We get in contact with Jeris in the middle of August and he asks if we have prepared questions. We haven't, but Anna, who is in Corsica to harvest grapes, has sent us some. In any case, Sasha breaks the ice as he always does:
Let's start with the most classic question: when did you start?
This is a difficult question! I started when I was a young kid. When I was walking around with my dad already at 5,6 years old he used to make me notice graffiti, he used to say ‘oh look at that cool, look at that drawing’. I remember once we ended up at the Porta Portese market on a Sunday and nearby there was a hall of fame dedicated to Crash Kid who had died a very short time before, like in ‘97. That same afternoon I called a friend of mine and said ‘oh let's start graffiti!’ I used to go to the store by myself to buy cans, I was 11 years old and in fact a few times they didn't sell them to me. By the way, with the first spray I bought I started tagging and sprayed myself in the face ahahahah
Well, good start! And did you already have a name?
Yes, Jericho, which I had taken from a Prodigy song that was the firestarter. Then it was a bit too long and I shortened it to Jeris, while my friend wrote Fax, but he has only been tagging with fat cap, now he hasn't done anything for a few years.
So you've had the same tag forever!
Yes, always loyal!
Rome at that time had a very active scene, who did you watch the most?
At the Crash Kid hall of fame it was all Rome Zoo and TRV, so at first I mostly watched that, then when I started doing trains in the early 2000s I started liking the bombers, ZTK, NSA, THE, that kind of stuff, amazing stuff.
And you were also into hip-hop?
Yes absolutely, back then it was the four arts culture, I saw one of the first Truceklan concerts!
And the trains, who did you start with?
By myself, I've always been quite a solitary person. The first train was at the Mandrione crossing, near Tuscolana, they used to leave a lay-up during the day, a marmotta, my first and only marmotta by the way, because it was around that time that they started filming. Then I started making TAFs that did the metropolitan service and they ran a lot.
Speaking of trains, you're a bit of a model collector, you like to look for lines with particular models, private lines, things that are even difficult to paint...
Yes, in the zine for example there is the Genova-Casella, which is a very small line that has all the carriages with different liveries that it has changed over the years, I read this in a book I bought. Maybe that line is even a Unesco heritage site, but maybe it's bullshit. Anyway with a friend I once found it lost in the middle of nowhere so that we thought it was trash, instead it rolled for months!
And then there's also the Centovalli and it's one of my favourite models, I've painted it twice. In 2010 I did the old one, beige and blue, and the second time I did the 90s one, not the new blue and white one. We went into the hangar and I remember there were washing machines going!
You don't just collect trains though...
I actually collect everything, I'm a serial accumulator! Jackets, shoes, mainly clothes, but if I were rich I would collect everything, even cars. I'm into Japan so I'd buy a nice Jimny, an MX-5, a Lambo Countach which is a bit gundam in design...and then a nice Panda.
Do you have shoes specifically for drawing?
Usually the shoes I sacrifice for drawing are the ones that have started to get ruined, but the last shoe I use for drawing are Gore-Tex Adidas ZX8000 in collaboration with IRAK, so it's a shoe born for graffiti, so I use it like that.
And does the cover of the fanzine have something to do with it?
Being a Japan fanatic, I go there like once or twice a year, I'm a serial collector and accumulator, I'm a superfan of mecha, Japanese robots and kaiju, so in the fanzine there are some pictures of the giant sculptures I saw in Japan. On the back cover there is one that I incredibly photographed in Italy.
You were also in Florence a lot!
Yes, I loved it, but there wasn't much of a scene. It had been strong until a few years before, but then when I arrived it had calmed down, many had already stopped. I met some incredible people, Ero and Zee, and we did a crew called NECP.
Being that you're in the crew with Ero who is a real punk, what is your relationship with hip-hop now?
I've always had two souls, apart from rap I've always listened to punk-rock. This thing that graffiti is related to hip-hop I think it's a legend like Santa Claus. One cool thing about graffiti is that out of the four disciplines of hip-hop it remains the least fucked up, because it's the one that money hasn't come into and that's why I keep doing it, it's real. Talking about hip-hop in 2024 is out of time, while it made sense to talk about it in the 90s/2000s. Both punk and hip-hop in recent years no longer exist, musically they have adapted to the times, commercialising themselves, but in doing so they necessarily change values.
One thing you want to say to someone reading this in 2040?
Let's see if I make it to 2040, I feel old already now, anyway I have a megapunk attitude about it, I don't give a fuck about the future, I don't think about it! I live day by day and I think everyone should do that, I've never thought about the future until now.
Sasha, like a good punk, laughs with satisfaction. We end the call in this mood, all lighter for a moment. For a moment I also have the feeling that I've picked up a secret: maybe this is how one manages to survive through very different times, from the ‘90s Rome to the scene of 2024, like a Gundam crossing the galaxies without thinking about how many asteroids and comets it will have to dodge.