25. Oktober 2022
ALL IS WELL THAT BEGINS WELL.
WE HAVE NO END
A brief history
How can art be put in order? Hmm... What we are trying to do here is contemplate the last ten years of eigensinnig, but in fact we know: Order needs to be redefined. Because every end is a beginning, every beginning marks the end of a phase that has passed, every answer leads us to new questions.
Did you know? The Greek semicolon can also be interpreted as a question mark, therefore we follow our intuition between 0; and I;, between end and beginning. Ten years, that means ten eventful chapters of our eigensinnig story:
0;I BATTLE AGAINST THE SUN
In the beginning, we still think like everybody else, the most important thing is to be seen, so why not settle in the heart of Vienna’s prominent fashion center? Collections have been ordered, furniture commissioned, drafts of showrooms are created in our minds, on paper and on the walls. It simply has to materialize. This beginning is immediately the end of thinking like everyone else: Our visions for the 6th district burst, someone else moves into the location, we start over.
0;II ALL IS WELL THAT BEGINS WELL…
eigensinnig is neither round nor square, it becomes a center for obstinate minds who do not think in stereotypes. In a dialogue, we create and exhibit. Photo galleries and vernissages between designer brands. The safe run-of-the-mill life is over, we are finally pursuing our own darkness. Between subculture and dull high culture, we make time stand still and leave the path of the many. Obstinacy is fun – Hesse was right about that.
0;III HAPPINESS MAKES YOU LAZY
Perhaps our artistic forum for fashion, photography, craftsmanship and art runs too smoothly: We let things slide, we lean back. Everything looks immortal. No wonder I am covered with dust, the time traveler in Victory over the Sun remarks, and for a while we feel completely timeless as well. Suffused with this improbable lightness, we don’t know what to do, so we wait for something extraordinary within the extraordinary. eigensinn panta rhei – we try to step into the same river twice and lose ourselves slowly, yet imperceptibly.
0;IV WE LOOK BACK TO MOVE FORWARD
The creative potential in the space between our high walls can be divined through small holes. We take a breath and give shape to ideas that have been lurking within us for a long time. eigensinnig becomes a unity; the showroom becomes a creative house; we lock coincidence into a house, and ideas are necessities again. The inner pendulum clearly swings into one direction: Our own ideas finally manifest themselves and become palpable, the fashionable character of eigensinnig takes shape. We start drawing our thoughts, creating our drawings; eigensinnig fashion is unstoppable.
"I WAS WAITING FOR
SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARY
TO HAPPEN BUT [...]
NOTHING EVER DID
UNLESS I CAUSED IT."
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
0;V SECOND BREATH
The attraction of eigensinnig takes on a life of its own: Our creative conglomerate grows, we need more people and more heads. A team materializes; a workshop materializes. Our ideas come thick and fast, and with every impulse, eigensinnig sends a thousand more impulses to the outside world. We create a cosmos where we can try, fail, make changes and try something new again. We blindly follow the anti-fragile creative force that has been helping us in our battle against the sun.
eigensinnig at Paris Fashion Week. Impressions lead to questions, lead to creations, 0 becomes I; becomes 0; becomes II. We do our own thing, enjoying it is key.
Soon our workshop becomes too small, there is simply too much sun in here, our ideas require more space. We tear everything down and rebuild it, as often as necessary until we can breathe. In our new workshop, we finally can. Phew!
0;VI BLACK SWAN
A black swan only doesn’t exist until someone finds it. Unpredictable disasters simply cannot be predicted. Below the surface of the creative house, hardly perceptible vibrations come loose and are only discovered when things have already broken. Toni and Stefanie go their separate ways.
We practice the art of failing and balance on a fine line between 0 and ; – how much baggage can the creation process bear? Toni remains eigensinnig; Ernest Hemingway calls this the Artist’s Reward. I’m not done with eigensinnig – even if the sun was against it.
0;VII THE END OF LINEAR TIME
If one were only an Indian, instantly alert, and on a racing horse... Like Franz Kafka, we dream of more and we make the More happen. eigensinnig is like an atomic nucleus, permanently suspended in a state between decay and formation. 0 is I is ; We leave the spurs because there are no spurs. We discard the reins because there are no reins. Headless and neckless, we ride through the polycrises of our time, between Covid and autolysis; between destruction and its creative fruits.
In our battle on all fronts, in the midst of creative, global and personal crises, we cannot let the sun within our walls rest; again and again, light bursts through small cracks to attract ideas and obstinate minds. We are riding, riding, riding, without a horse’s neck and without a horse.
0;VIII AVANT-GARDE IS INESCAPABLE
The first of Zarathustra’s seven solitudes is silence in the face of big thoughts. Emptiness occupies eigensinnig and creates a vacuum, energy nearly slips away from us completely. Impulses fail to appear, we turn inwards like the rest of the world, waiting in front of locked doors and gathering dust. Stiflingly empty spaces lead forward and backward at the same time, a quantum entanglement of sun and darkness in the workshop. There is no dialogue, and only occasionally our big thoughts glance through our shop window through their masks.
We are in the middle, at the end and at the beginning – necessity rather than coincidence. On a spiraling path, craftsmanship, art, philosophy, psychology and music always lead us to our eigensinnig fashion. Inspired by dynamics between the different ways of thinking, a truth emerges: eigensinnig is inescapable.
This end, too, is a new beginning. Standing still creates a thirst for action, and eigensinnig has to reinvent itself. Again. Inside and outside, everything is hollowed out, not a stone left standing. New eigensinnig minds populate the rooms while a new space for new ideas is forming. eigensinnig 0;I. Black and blacker swans cast their shadows in which we rekindle the sun.
0;IX BLACK, THEN - AGAINST THE WORLD
Our victory over the sun is black: Black defines our thoughts and becomes the anchor point of our obstinate art. Black avant-garde fashion from our workshop develops its own personality and is marked with three ochre lines. The new eigensinnig minds recognize beauty in destruction and, like in other areas of their lives, move against the norm. In our new workshop with our new team, cigarette smoke entangles buzzing heads who create unconventional things.
We know that everything is not going to end well. But we will find a way. As always.
0;X WE HAVE NO END
Black will continue to define eigensinnig in the future – we are becoming an autonomous artistic solar system, drawing obstinacy from our own, apparently inexhaustible, energy sources. We want our house to be filled up with our ideas, to burst at the seams.
In a constant dispute with its own self, eigensinnig has found its glocal identity and reinvented itself over and over again. We move from Vienna to Paris and into the world, and yet we continue to focus on obstinate Sankt-Ulrichs-Platz. So it has been 10 years, and every idea feels like a new beginning that inevitably has to arise. Creating, experimenting, crossing boundaries – do what thou wilt shall be the only law, and we find it delightful. Let the crises come, we will master them; we will refute them; we will turn shadow into light and light into shadow, 0 becomes I; becomes 0; becomes something new; becomes 0.
„All is well that begins well. We have no end.“ – from Victory over the Sun
Text: Laura Bruning | www.gorillaverlag.com & Toni Woldrich | www.eigensinnig-wien.com
Photography: Silvia Max | www.eigensinnig-wien.com
TAILOR-MADE
We have been a creative house for almost 10 years. We create designs that make our eigensinnig obstinacy visible. Tailor-made. According to your wishes, to accentuate your character.
If a model or your size is sold out, please contact us.
You wear a non-standard size? We can make it for you. Tailored to your body and your style.
Come and visit us at eigensinnig and let us advise you. We will create your desired style.
