"It's almost pornographic the way aesthetics are worshipped"

ICONIST: You live in Berlin, come from a village near Hanau - a difference like day and night?

Eike König: The village has always restricted me a lot. I was drawn to the city. In Frankfurt am Main I started out as an art director for a techno label, designing record covers. Owner was the band Snap! - "I've Got the Power".

ICONIST: So you experienced the beginnings of techno first hand?

König: This movement, this perhaps naive-sounding “love and peace” movement, was political. The techno scene was still undefined back then - for me as a designer it was like a playground of challenge and freedom.

ICONIST: And today you are an artist.

König: I have been focusing on artistic practice for a number of years. I have followed different career paths that are related to each other. Since 2011 I have been a professor at the Offenbach University of Applied Sciences.

ICONIST: So you are in regular contact with young students.

König: I was disappointed with my own student days. Professors were like keepers of knowledge. You have defined what is right and wrong. I had hoped that the university would be a place of revolution, where the future would be rethought. But there was a system with structures, and if you behaved "right" in it, you got through. I found that boring, I wanted the friction, the confrontation, I wanted to question what they thought was so good.

ICONIST: So are you doing it differently now as a professor?

King: I feel like stepping into a fountain of youth every time. The students have current questions that I don't know from my socialization. I want to create a space where they can flourish and develop an attitude. For her, design should not only be a tool to fuel capitalism, but also to change things for the better.

ICONIST: So, looking back, wasn't everything automatically better in the past?

König: I would have preferred to study today than back then. For a long time I was very insecure about my own abilities because it was so often discussed at university: I wasn't good enough that I should be doing something else. In the years that followed, I needed a lot of confirmation from others to absorb what the university had destroyed. But that's why I'm also aware of my responsibility as a professor, that I can very easily destroy a lot.

ICONIST: Does this friction, which you were looking for during your studies, take place in your work as an artist today?

König: My way into artistic practice was the desire for independence. There are always expectations associated with money. But expectations are also reflected in the time and energy you put into it, and the older you get, the more you realize that time is limited. At some point I asked myself the question: Do I want to spend my lifetime getting paid to brand Nike shoes, for example?

ICONIST: What are you doing instead?

König: I don't make any more contracts, I don't become dependent. I do projects with galleries, I decide what I want to produce or say. I don't let anyone talk me into it and I support projects that are important to me. So I can use my public to draw attention to certain conditions.

ICONIST: Last year you designed a suitcase - a cooperation with the men's skincare brand Harry's and the luggage manufacturer Horizn-Studios. Has art always been part of everyday objects, or did it only develop as a result of the push for aesthetics of the social media generation?

König: Social media has democratized it, in elite circles this aestheticization of everyday life has existed for a long time. It's almost pornographic the way aesthetics are worshiped. For me, the suitcase is more of a kind of prop that stands for many life stories. Actually, it is just a vessel, a means of transport for personal belongings. On the one hand we associate it with positive things, travelling, being mobile - and at the same time there is something tragic about the suitcase when you have to pack up what you still have to flee.

ICONIST: What determines the price of art?

König: Like real estate or gold, art is also a speculative currency. The price is not tied to the material or the time you spend on it. My problem with the artistic work was that I was never paid for my ideas, but for producing something tangible, a book, a poster, designing objects. An idea is initially purely mental – not a medium that you can use. So you calculate the hourly rate for the time that is needed, but not the concept development in advance, which is necessary to create a final product. That's what I want to be paid for.

This text is part of our Small Talk series, in which we publish short conversations with interesting people.