DAIM on the Form and Function of Graffiti
Written by Emma Riva
Published on September 21st, 2026
DAIM—born Mirko Reisser in Lüneberg, Germany—has been in the game for decades and has perspectives to share on what graffiti has meant to him over his sprawling career.
UP: How did you start doing street art / When did you first encounter it?
DAIM: I came to graffiti through hip-hop in the mid-1980s. Around 1986, I started listening to rap music, and through that, an entire cultural universe opened up to me: music, dance, language, attitude, style — and, of course, graffiti. I drove around Hamburg, photographed tags and graffiti, and began to read these signs in the urban space. In 1989, I picked up a spray can myself for the first time.
What fascinated me from the beginning was not only the image on the wall, but the gesture behind it: writing your name into public space, leaving traces, becoming visible. This “I was here” is very direct, almost archaic. It has to do with presence, with existence, with the desire to inscribe yourself into a city that otherwise often does not belong to you.
That is why, to this day, I primarily understand myself as a graffiti writer. The term Street Art came much later for me, especially from the 2000s onward, and was then strongly shaped by artists like Banksy. That is not the tradition I come from. My roots are in writing: in the name, in the lettering, in style, and in the ongoing engagement with letters.
“What interests me is precisely this connection between a very contemporary urban practice and a very old human need.”
For me, this classical form of graffiti stands within a long historical tradition. People have always left signs on walls — carved, painted, written. What interests me is precisely this connection between a very contemporary urban practice and a very old human need.
UP: How did founding the collective getting-up in Hamburg influence your later work?
The founding of getting-up is directly connected to my art studies in Lucerne, Switzerland. I began studying fine arts there in 1996 and experienced for the first time what it meant, as a graffiti artist, to work naturally indoors. I had studio spaces where I could spray, develop canvases, experiment, and look at and alter works over longer periods of time — independent of the time of day or the weather.
Before that, even my canvas works in Hamburg had mostly been sprayed outside. My studies made it very clear to me how important a studio is — not only as a workspace, but also as a space for thinking. When I returned to Hamburg in 1999, I knew that I needed such spaces. That is how the studio collective getting-up came into being together with colleagues.
But the collective was not only a practical solution to spatial problems. It was a joint attempt to create structures. We wanted to realize projects, organize exhibitions, and show that graffiti can be more than a simple piece in public space. Especially with the exhibition series Urban Discipline, we were interested in bringing graffiti — and the newly emerging perception of Street Art at the time — into a professional exhibition context.
“What happens when an art form that originally lives from speed, risk, and urban space is transferred into an interior space? What does it lose? What does it gain? And what kind of responsibility arises when you not only practice graffiti, but also present, mediate, and curate it?”
What interested me above all was this shift: What happens when an art form that originally lives from speed, risk, and urban space is transferred into an interior space? What does it lose? What does it gain? And what kind of responsibility arises when you not only practice graffiti, but also present, mediate, and curate it?
This engagement developed even further afterward, when my collaboration with the collector and gallerist Rik Reinking began. He has been a supporter of my work for more than 25 years now and has played an essential role in making it visible within larger exhibition and collection contexts. This made it even clearer that graffiti can be understood not only as a moment in urban space, but also as an artistic practice with its own history, development, and continuity.
An important point in this development was the major retrospective at the Woods Art Institute near Hamburg. There, more than 80 original works from the Reinking Collection made it possible to trace my artistic development over more than 35 years. For visitors, this not only made the breadth of my own work tangible, but also revealed a part of the development of graffiti and the culture connected to it — in Germany, in Europe, and beyond.
This entire development was crucial for my later work. It sharpened my understanding that artistic work does not consist only of the individual image, but also of context, organization, public presence, collection, mediation, and discourse.
UP: What is the origin of the name DAIM?
DAIM: The name DAIM has no semantic meaning. I did not choose it because it stands for something or carries a message. For me, the decisive factor was form. I chose the name according to the possibilities of its letters.
The D has a curve and a forward movement. The A sets something stable against that movement. The I is narrower, more reduced, almost fragile. The M at the end has something very solid again, almost architectural. I was interested in the tension between these four letters: movement and stability, openness and construction, surface and space.
“The name became an artistic system that I have been questioning again and again since the early 1990s. I do not have to decide each time what I am going to write. I can concentrate on the how: on space, light, shadow, composition, deconstruction, material, and scale.”
In retrospect, this decision was very important for my work. The name became an artistic system that I have been questioning again and again since the early 1990s. I do not have to decide each time what I am going to write. I can concentrate on the how: on space, light, shadow, composition, deconstruction, material, and scale.
In this sense, DAIM is much more to me than a pseudonym. It is my motif, my tool, and my counterpart. I have been working with the same four letters for decades, but they do not remain the same. They change with me. That is why I also understand my letterings as self-portraits — not in a representational sense, but as an expression of an ongoing engagement with form, attitude, and personality.
UP: Having the superlative of the world’s tallest mural is a big deal. Did you set out to do that? What was the experience like?
DAIM: With projects like this, the record is not where it begins for me. A record can be a consequence of the work, but it is not its actual content. What interests me first is the site: the architecture, the wall, the proportions, the urban space, and the question of how my letters can function at that scale.
A wall of this size is not only an artistic challenge, but also a spatial, technical, and organizational one. In Calgary, the work was created at the invitation of BUMP and in close collaboration with Verve Projects. The framework in which such a work comes into being ultimately also shapes its impact within the urban space.
At this dimension, the wall is no longer an image carrier in the classical sense. It becomes part of the skyline. You see the work from street level, from neighboring buildings, from a great distance, and even from an airplane. This also changes the perception of my letters: they are no longer just typographic forms on a surface, they integrate in the space within the city.
At the same time, working with the spray can remains very physical. Even though the planning has to be precise, in the end you are standing on the wall, responding to wind, weather, height, material, and the surroundings. This connection between planning and immediate physical execution is a central part of the work for me.
And artistically, the decisive question for me is whether the work can maintain its tension at this scale — whether, despite its size, it still feels precise, alive, and necessary.
UP: Do you have a favorite memory of muraling or tagging?
DAIM: There is not one single memory that outshines all the others. After 37 years, the experiences tend to form a large web of specific walls, journeys, encounters, smells, light conditions, conversations, and moments of tension or coincidence.
One very formative memory, of course, remains the first time I used a spray can. I had already been interested in graffiti for a while. Then I was sitting in my room with two friends, we had a few cans, and suddenly we went outside and sprayed a small transformer station in broad daylight. It was unauthorized, spontaneous, and from today’s perspective certainly also naive. But in that moment I knew: this is it. This is exactly the form of expression I had been looking for.
Later, many other intense experiences were added: large murals, international projects, travels to New York, Brazil, Australia, Mexico, or Argentina, working with other artists, encounters with people who happened to stop in front of a wall. Often, the strongest memories do not come from the finished image, but from the moment in which it comes into being.
For me, graffiti has always been related to it’s environmental circumstances. A wall is never neutral. It stands in a city, in a social space, in a particular light, at a particular time. You are not only working on an image; you are always working within a broader context. That immediacy is something that still moves me deeply today.
UP: What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned in the time you’ve been doing street art?
DAIM: Perhaps the most important experience is that graffiti really is a global language — but not a smooth, unified world language. It is rather a language with many dialects, accents, and local particularities. You can arrive in very different countries and immediately establish a connection because certain codes, gestures, and attitudes are understood.
I have worked with very different people: graffiti writers, street artists, fine artists, people from entirely different realities of life. Again and again, I realized that although graffiti begins very strongly with one’s own name, it is by no means only self-centered. On the contrary: whoever travels, paints, meets others, and works together is constantly entering into relationships.
“I realized that although graffiti begins very strongly with one’s own name, it is by no means only self-centered. On the contrary: whoever travels, paints, meets others, and works together is constantly entering into relationships.”
That is an interesting contradiction within graffiti writing. On the surface, the ego is often present: the name, the repetition, the assertion within space. But in practice, graffiti is highly communicative. People exchange ideas about styles, places, technical questions, risks, and history. You get to know cities differently because you perceive them through their walls, in-between spaces, and margins.
Perhaps graffiti has taught me that identity is not something fixed. You may write the same name again and again, but you do it in different places, under different conditions, in different phases of life. The name remains, but the perspective changes. In this way, graffiti becomes a form of orientation for me: you inscribe yourself into the world, but the world also inscribes itself into you.
That is what still impresses me today: that a seemingly simple gesture — writing a name on a wall — can become a lifelong artistic process.
Emma Riva is a writer, editor, and wine professional originally from New York and now based in Pittsburgh. She is the founder of Petrichor, an art magazine covering the arts and culture scene in Pittsburgh. Her work can be found in The Art Newspaper, Artforum, Whitehot Magazine, Newcity, and more.
Website: emmawithglasses.com
IG: @emmawithglasses