Thomas Marecki was born in Berlin in 1972 and grew up spraying graffiti under the name Marok. In the early nineties, he traveled to California and worked with Ray Gun Magazine, where David Carson's radical designs were demolishing every convention of editorial layout. "California taught me to look at creativity differently," Marecki later recalled. "Authenticity mattered more than polish." When he returned to Berlin in 1995, the city was alive with post-reunification energy — its streets full of artistic experimentation, its clubs rewriting the rules of nightlife, its entire identity up for grabs. Inspired by the DIY zine culture of the West Coast, Marecki founded Lodown Magazine für Popkultur und Bewegungskunst — a magazine for pop culture and the art of movement.
The debut issue was self-financed and cobbled together with the help of friends. It covered skateboarding and surfing, but from the start it was more than a board-sports title. Marecki's background in graffiti and graphic design meant that every issue looked different: unique typefaces, experimental layouts, a visual restlessness that made each edition a collector's item. In 1995, he designed what is believed to be the first graffiti font available for computers. His books Lodown Graphic Engineering Pt.1 and Schizophrenic! celebrated the overlap between American pop art, graffiti, electronic music, and skateboarding.
Over twenty-one years, Lodown expanded from board culture into contemporary art, music, film, fashion, and literature — always from a position that opposed mainstream marketing structures. The magazine won Lead Awards in 2003, 2004, 2007, and 2011. Marecki's office in a Berlin loft became a time capsule of subcultural obsession: old games consoles, Japanese collectible toys, skateboards still in their foil packaging, BMX bikes he built for friends, a huge painting of a Formula 1 crash, and bottles of Ukrainian vodka. He also mounted a touring exhibition with Futura 2000 in 1998 and maintained a parallel career as an artist whose work explored mobility and urban space.
In 2016, Lodown published its hundredth issue and Marecki announced it would be the last in the magazine's original form. "I am proud to have published a magazine for 100 issues for 21 years," he said, "and not a single issue has made a compromise." The publication has since continued in new iterations, but the original century of issues remains one of the most remarkable runs in European independent publishing — a Berlin document made by a graffiti writer who went to California, came home, and spent two decades proving that the most interesting culture is the kind that doesn't need permission to exist.
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