0036 Mark brilliantly combines the pop art style with the characters of the cult Hungarian cartoons, and does all this in such a way that they look good even on the street. Most of his works can be seen in Budapest, but he has also left his mark in Belgium, Switzerland and Croatia.

When did your first work hit the streets?

If we don't count my graffiti era, only strictly street art, then at the end of December 2018.

Where did the stage name come from?

The simple version is that 0036 is the international calling number of Hungary, and Márk is my first name. Of course, the matter is more complex than that, because I wanted them to find me on the net based on my stage name, so Mark would simply have been insufficient, so I thought I would choose something that also refers to nationality, but is a bit more imaginative than mark_hungary. In addition, 0036 has several additional meanings for me, but I won't shoot the joke now. 

How did your own style develop and what would you call it?

The style was put together roughly based on the checklist in my head. I would have liked something that could be understood at home, but also understood abroad, with visual humor and some nostalgia. I call it pop street art because my works are mainly based on domestic and international pop culture references and mashups. I mainly look at movies and cartoons from the 80s and 90s, but I make detours if I like an idea.

Have you had any conflicts with the authorities?

Fortunately, nothing happened at home, but in Antwerp a civilian patrol car spotted me while gluing. It passed me quite slowly, which was suspicious in itself, then when the warning light flashed, I could already guess that this was not going to be a smooth car. The blue light flashed on the dashboard, and the two men in uniform jumped out. It was all a few seconds. However, the story ended with a happy ending, because they unpacked me and since I had nothing that they could bite into, they looked at my works and saw the Hupikék dwarf blue graphics that I wanted to display. They liked it, but I suspect they thought it was silly and ended up telling me where to stick them. 

Do you see street art as a hobby or a livelihood?

As a passion and a release.

How expensive is it to make each of your works? How can you finance these?

I don't know specific printing prices, but the production cost of a work is directly proportional to its size, so the bigger it is, the more expensive it is. I have a regular job and mine is somewhere between Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne. I make a living out of it so that I can play poster-flying Batman at night. 

How do you see the current situation of the subculture here in Hungary?

This is a difficult question, because even though I have been following Hungarian urban art for 20 years with more or less interruptions, I have only been playing around until now, and now I have been dealt a card. I think we have been stagnating for a while, or moving in such small steps that it seems like we are standing still. Classic graffiti is perhaps in a slightly better position, there are more active faces and more opportunities, but on the street art front, unfortunately, I can count the active creators on my two hands and the opportunities must be counted accordingly. I suspect that I am not saying anything new when I claim that the West is lagging behind us in this as well, and although initiatives come and go here as well, in the end the projects are usually either left without support or suffocated. For lack of a better option, everyone is scratching their own little chest and trying to move forward with the already mentioned small steps, trusting that one day we will get to the point where society at large, the city administration and decision-makers will not see urban art as something from the devil.