Seb patane biography for kids

In this short memoir, an excerpt from a longer version originally published (in Italian and English) on his website, London-based Sicilian visual artist and musician Seb Patane reflects on what it meant (and still means in hindsight) to be a young Italian fascinated with British subcultures.

Images from the author’s personal archive, and an exclusive mixtape with music from the era, accompany his account.

I became a «dark waver», or simply and rather reductively «dark» (the mismatched Italian equivalent for «goth» in the Anglo-Saxon world) at the beginning of the second half of the 1980s.

Goth in general has always been regarded as a less politically and culturally involved youth movement compared to, say, punk; this was in my opinion a gross misreading, and simply an excuse to criticize a lifestyle that, as well as having depth and resonance, also had a corresponding aesthetic aspect that for some was way