Alexander Egger: Satellites Mistaken for Stars
Explaining someone’s output on the basis of a biography would be short-sighted, ineffective, delusive, and wouldn’t do justice to the variability of life and its complex conditions. Alexander Egger lived the first third of his life on the Italian side of the Alps in a little village where Ezra Pound used to spend his summer holidays. In his childhood Alexander was found playing with building bricks suspiciously often and spent time researching the life of ants while sitting for hours on a milk can in the middle of the street.
Personal Data
Name: Alexander Egger
City: currently Vienna
Age: 37
Profession: designer, illustrator, publisher of Artzines
Food: during work I often forget about it. Except carrots I hate veggies.
Music: mainly noise and field recordings. Sometimes just some stuff to dance to.
How much did growing up on the Italian side of the Alps influence your work?
Gertrude Stein once said in an interview: “Why do we have roots if we are not able to take them with us?” For a long time it was important for me to remove myself from this provincial origin and therefore I experimented with different life situations in the city. Generally it’s easier for me to cope with too much input than with silence and isolation. My latent reservation and intuitive distrust may also be reasons, why I first had to learn a fundamental urbaneness. Over the years I do recognize more and more, also through my work, that nature and countryside had maybe a bigger influence on me than I thought. The cultural constellation of different ethnic groups in South Tyrol, where I grew up, is again and again reflected by various topics in my projects: balances of power, conflict potentials, cultural relation, negotiation and communication.
The Alps and water are sharing a kind of imaginary coherence. Are you also dealing with this classic theme?
The raw power of nature, the discreet monumentality, barren clarity and naive virginity of the Alps, the apparent deceleration of time, the groundedness, but also the idyll, the hidden beauty of threat and destruction, and the increasing exploitation through tourism are all topics, which are leaving their marks on my everyday work.
In 1995 you moved to Milan (Italy). What is your resume of that time?
I started to study design at the Politecnico there, what turned out to be quite unsatisfying. On the other hand it was pretty important for my personal development, as I was living with people from all-over the world in a creative commune. It was a real funny mixture of fashion, graphic and web designers, stylists, and illustrators and the only shared room was the kitchen what successfully supported cultural exchange and discussions. It taught me to think more open-minded and I learned that some problems are not purely rational and easier to solve with a way round.
Afterwards you worked for some time at the internationally known design agency Nofrontiere. Did that influence your work as a freelancer and if yes, how would you describe the process?
After two years in the advertising branch I had at that time the chance to work with Nofrontiere on innovative design solutions for bigger clients within the new media business and learned to handle commercial projects with all their good and negative sides in a professional way. Also the crash of the new economy in 200??? was an important experience, maybe an even more important one than all its hype before. Parallel to the all this commercial work more and more projects came up, which went a step further and defined the depths more precise: refreshing jobs that made again room for minor mistakes, and their visual creation aiming to be more general and offering abstract solutions. All these trailblazing artworks have been collected and released by Rupa Publishing under the name “Satellites Mistaken for Stars”.
Would you define your current freelance projects as experimental graphic design?
There is always an abstract concept at the beginning of my work that helps me to define a rough test order, which I verify afterwards. That working method may seem a bit analytic and experimental, even though the jobs themselves sound very poetic most of the time. People might criticize that up to a certain point my work appears to be unfinished and premature because the process is relentlessly clear-cut and still under progress. Anyhow the outcome has to remain multidimensional, offer alternative perspectives, and even mental leaps, mistakes and disarrangements must be kept evident. My work is done before its conclusion is getting to simple, obvious and static, or even adopts the characteristics of a product. In some way political and socio-critical approaches are an important point here too. They are a visualization of mind constructs with numerous metal levels, which the beholder can absorb without having to.
Is there a difference between the Austrian and German “design scene” with regards to content and formality? After all they are both German-speaking countries.
I’m not familiar enough with the German scene to draw a comparison. But regarding the Austrian scene I see neither a historical nor a traditional background, and to go further, maybe not even a real scene. That could also be an advantage and offer a certain freedom and light heartedness. There is a talented new generation of upcoming graphic designers and small agencies.
But all in all it’s noticeable that it became almost trendy to study graphic design and that this increasing abundance of training posts produces a lot of mediocrity.
Your recent project with the title “Satellites Mistaken for Stars” is available in book form. What’s the story behind this new project?
You can find a complicated and pretentious press release about it, but a quote by Inger Christensen from 1963 describes it maybe the best: I am talking about the interforms of communication / the interstages of thought / I am talking about the intercultures of emotion / why shouldn‘t that be the only world.
Are there any other projects at the moment?
I definitely can’t complain right now about not having enough to do. I’m already working for a while on an audio project with a 15W amplifier and some cable manipulation, but somehow it doesn’t want to get finished. New ideas for Artzines are coming up constantly; they’re blocking my mind and want to get realized. Next is probably a catalog for the artist and photographer Sissa Micheli, and there are two other book projects, which are already in progress: “We Have No Scar to Show for Happiness” following a quote by Chuck Palahniuk and “Scientists Say 1963 Mankind Will Live Permanently on the Moon” that will be a kind of stylistic extension and sequel to the recent book. At the moment I’m dealing with the different ways of financing these ideas, so let me know if somebody out there has some extra money to spend.
In the past you were present at numerous exhibitions. Are you planning an exhibition for your new book “Satellites Mistaken for Stars”?
I will definitely participate in a few group exhibitions with some artwork from the book. I would love to show some serials from the book in large size for an individual exhibition, what would give them a whole new effect, but so far I can’t tell anything concrete.
Is there any country where you still would love to do an exhibition?
Saying the Antarctic would probably go a bit too far, but it’s still the only continent where I didn’t do an exhibition. It rather makes me happy if anyone likes to see my stuff and if that happens, I don’t care too much about the place …
Further Information
Satellites Mistaken for Stars
By Alexander Egger
English 180 pages, 22 x 27,5 cm
ISBN: 978-3-940393-16-6
rupa publishing
29,80 EUR
Buy now
www.rupapublishing.com
