Rammellzee
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Rammellzee (or RAMMΣLLZΣΣ, Pseudonym, pronounced "Ram: Ell: Zee"), born 1960 in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York, is a graffiti writer, performance artist, rap/hip-hop musician and sculptor from New York.
Rammellzee's graffiti and his art work are based on his theory of Gothic Futurism, which describes the battle between letters and their symbolic warfare against any standardizations enforced by the rules of the alphabet; his treatise, "Iconic Panzerisms", details an anarchic plan by which to revise the role and deployment of language in society. Rammellzee is often identified as an artist apart of the Afrofuturism canon; Afrofuturism is identified discourse concerned with revisioning racial identity through the tropes of science fiction and fantasy narrative or aesthetics.
He was also instrumental as one of the original hip-hop artists from the New York area who introduced specific vocal styles which date back to the early 1980s. His influence can still be heard in contemporary artists such as The Beastie Boys and Cypress Hill.
Discovered by a larger audience through the 1982 cult movie Wild Style by Charlie Ahearn, his fame in graffiti circles was established when he painted New York subway trains with Jean-Michel Basquiat, the famous pop-art painter, who also produced Rammellzee's 1982 collaboration with K-Rob, the rap single "Beat Bop." Rammellzee was also a member of the Death Comet Crew, with Stuart Argabright and Michael Diekmann of Ike Yard. In 1988, he and his band Gettovetts recorded the album "Missionaries Moving." In 2003, Rammellzee performed at the Knitting Factory in New York with the newly-reformed Death Comet Crew; subsequently, Troubleman Unlimited re-released recordings made by DCC between 1982 and 1984; additionally, their single for "Exterior St." was featured on the compilation, Anti-NY, with contemporaries, Ike Yard, Sexual Harassment, and Vivian Goldmann, among others. In 2004, he released his debut album "The BiConicals of the RammEllZee", produced by DCC collaborator Argabright.
His artistic work has been shown in the US and in art galleries throughout Europe. Currently, Rammellzee's Letter Racers, and other sculptural works, are on view at P.S. 1 Contemporary, the Museum of Modern Art New York's contemporary art center. The show, entitled "Music is a Better Noise", includes artistic works by individuals mostly identified with their musical contributions.
In a recent interview, he stated that his name is derived from "RAM" plus "'M' for 'Magnitude', 'Sigma' (Σ) the first summation operator, first 'L' - 'longitude', second 'L' - 'latitude', 'Z' - 'z-bar', Σ, Σ - 'summation'." He now performs in self-designed masks and costumes of different characters, which, as he states, represent the "mathematical equation" that is Rammellzee. On the basis of his "Gothic Futurism" approach, he sometimes describes his current artistic work as the logical extension into a new phase which he calls "Ikonoklast Panzerism."
Rammellzee makes a cameo appearance near the end of Jim Jarmusch's 1984 film Stranger Than Paradise.
[edit] External links
- Official Rammellzee website: Gothic Futurism
- Video interview and live show: [1]
