INA KENT meets FARCE

Vienna-based musician Veronika König makes music as FARCE, bringing catchy melodies, noisy guitars and electronic experimentation together without feeling the need to choose between them. Committing to one particular sound has never been the point. She wants to keep making art for years to come, and to have the freedom to explore whatever interests her along the way. As a musician, producer and composer, she does much of the work herself, though she has little patience for the myth of the lone genius.

Her latest album, The Label, released in June, explores the ways we are perceived, labelled and put into categories by others. We spoke to FARCE about the collaborative work behind creative independence, how a song title alone can be enough to get a tune stuck in your head, and how to say what you mean without feeling obliged to clear up every misunderstanding that follows. We also talked about her bag: packed, but surprisingly organised.

You grew up in the countryside near the Black Forest and once said you felt a bit like an alien there. How much of that environment still finds its way into your music today? Or was it mostly somewhere you felt you needed to escape, at least mentally?

Like a lot of teenagers back then, I spent a huge amount of time online as soon as I could: MySpace, Tumblr, Facebook. Mostly in communities centred around music, film and art. By the time I was fourteen or fifteen, I'd already started writing for a blog, covering music and videos from a journalistic perspective, simply because I found it interesting.

Being able to do all that without living in a city like Berlin or Vienna, where so much was happening, was obviously incredible. And then there was Stuttgart, which had its own cultural scene. Little by little, I started exploring the things I was genuinely interested in beyond the internet, too.

So the internet gave you access to music and people who shared your interests. What did your immediate surroundings offer you? And how did those online connections eventually turn into real-life encounters?

I think what I sometimes miss most is the nature, the landscape, and how relatively deserted parts of the Black Forest are. I've always loved that wild, almost brutal quality of the natural surroundings. There's a certain melancholy to the landscape, too, and to the whole atmosphere.

Those online platforms eventually made me want to meet people who were into the same things. Suddenly I was finding people who listened to the same bands and lived just twenty-seven kilometres away. That was incredibly exciting. I started my first cover band when I was twelve or thirteen, just with a few other kids who wanted to make music.

Especially when you're young, musical taste is often a social thing. It brings people together, but it can also draw lines between them. You spent a lot of time in hardcore and metal scenes back then. What were those communities like for you, and how did they shape the way you engaged with the world beyond music?

I really found my place in that genre and the community around it, because these were people who cared about politics. There was a strong emphasis on political activism, mutual aid and solidarity with people in the community who were experiencing repression, racism, police harassment and things like that.

When you're a teenager and start learning about all the injustices happening in the world, at least for me, there was this real urge to actually do something about it. And when that overlaps with music you love, and maybe there's also a reasonably safe place to hang out, like a youth centre that puts on gigs, that can become a really important space for a lot of people. I was lucky that Stuttgart had quite a lot going on in terms of progressive culture.

You've been making music for a long time, not just as a performer, but also as a producer, composer and in various roles in theatre. The word “genius” often comes up when people talk about you. Do you like being seen as someone who can do it all, or does that come with a certain pressure to live up to expectations?

I want to keep my options open because I know I want to work in this field for the rest of my life. If I spend every week, every year, every decade just focusing on myself, I don't think that's going to be particularly good for me. Maybe that works for some people, dedicating themselves entirely to one thing and perfecting it, becoming a master of their craft, so to speak. But that's not really what interests me.

So you're not particularly concerned with how other people perceive you?

I know what the reality of being an artist looks like, and being able to do lots of different things is never going to be a disadvantage.

For example, we curated a small exhibition to accompany the album. I loved thinking about how to translate the music into something visual. How do you approach the curation? What do you write for the accompanying texts? What elements do you include? I find all of that really exciting. I'm not particularly worried about doing things the right or wrong way, which gives me a lot of freedom to explore different things.

You once said that the way you work as a producer wouldn't have been possible in a city like Berlin. What has Vienna given you?

I'm not sure whether it's the size of the city or just the general atmosphere, but from the very beginning, Vienna felt like a place where I could arrive, settle in and see what happened. Where I didn't have to have everything figured out straight away. I think there's a lot of room for experimentation here, and people are willing to take their time developing ideas. It's actually a really good city for people who want to create their own work.

Because things move at a slightly slower pace?

Everything's always a little slow. People tend to be a bit late rather than early. That's actually quite nice when you're working on something more idiosyncratic. If you're into club culture and that whole spontaneous, fast-moving way of doing things – let's make this happen, let's do it, are you free on this day? – I don't think Vienna is necessarily the place for that. It's probably easier in London or Berlin. But then again, in Vienna you can get pretty much anywhere in half an hour. That's a definite advantage.

When talking about your album The Label, you've described the songs as conceptual starting points. You mentioned that you had the titles before you actually started writing the music. What does a title need to have for you to feel there's a song in it waiting to be written?

Most of the titles I end up keeping have this almost earworm-like quality, but with words rather than music. They keep popping back into my head. There's usually something about them that sticks with me, whether it's the spelling or an unexpected combination of words. I think there are plenty of great songs with completely ordinary titles. It doesn't always have to be something nobody's ever come up with before. You could write the seven-millionth song called "Come On" and it might be exactly the right title.

The reason I describe them as conceptual starting points is that I'd already spent a lot of time thinking about the songs as ideas before I actually sat down to make the music. There were themes, ideas, theories, familiar notions that kept coming back to me, things I found myself thinking about over and over. Stories, fictional stories, that I wanted to tell.

Bringing all of that together into one cohesive whole is also a question of form. What shape do I want it to take? For me, ten tracks and around twenty-seven or twenty-eight minutes just felt right.

Did you already have the overarching idea for The Label in mind, or did it emerge as the songs came together?

The title The Label had been around for a while. Ela, who also did the creative direction, and I spent a lot of time talking about the ideas behind the album. What is each song trying to say? How can we bring that across, both creatively and visually?

I think there's a lot of room to experiment with how you present an album these days, because the traditional release cycle doesn't really work the way it used to. So we tried different things and worked together to find ways of communicating the ideas behind the album beyond the music itself.

A lot of The Label is about how we’re seen, described and defined by others. Is there a label people have given you that you don't recognise yourself in at all? Or, conversely, one you've grown particularly attached to?

Neither is really something I think about that much. And that's part of what the album is about: the way someone sees or describes you is entirely their own interpretation. I can show you something, signal something, or approach you in a certain way, and you might read it completely differently. You might think I'm doing something for one reason or another, when my actual motivations are entirely different.

I'm happy when people acknowledge the different things I do and the different directions I take. And if someone chooses to focus on just one of them, that's fine too, because it's still part of who I am. I'm not so precious about it anymore, because ultimately, the way someone chooses to categorise me doesn't really have anything to do with me.

I imagine getting to that point was a process, though?

Oh, absolutely. And that brings us back to the experience of not belonging, of being othered, of exclusion and social dominance. Anyone who is marginalised in one way or another experiences othering.

It fundamentally shapes how you see the world and how you see yourself, because you're constantly made to feel like you don't belong. It's something you have to confront from a very early age. You don't have the luxury of ignoring it and maybe deciding to engage with it at some point later in life.

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You've said that being able to express yourself clearly and make yourself understood is important to you. At the same time, art often thrives on ambiguity and contradiction. How comfortable are you with being misunderstood?

I suppose I must be pretty comfortable with it by now, because I've felt misunderstood so many times in my life. Part of the struggle is learning not to turn that experience into this compulsive need for everyone to understand you. To be able to let people misunderstand you, too.

People are allowed to misunderstand me. But I owe it to myself to express myself clearly and actually say what I think, as long as it's safe and possible for me to do so. Biting your tongue, or not even being honest with yourself about how you feel about certain things, is probably something everyone struggles with to some extent. So it becomes a question of authenticity: How much of myself can I express? And how much of my authentic self do other people have to accept, tolerate or make room for?

That doesn't mean what I'm expressing can't be ambiguous, or that I can't have conflicting emotions that I'm trying to work through in a song. There has to be some kind of tension if I want to tell a story.

You seem to really value your independence as an artist. If a great record deal came along, would you turn it down?

That would depend entirely on the deal. I think if you're working in the music industry and making a business out of it, you have to recognise that nobody is completely free within any industry. Work is work. In any job, you have to make compromises, put up with things you're not particularly happy about, and sometimes work with people who don't share your worldview.

But if you do have the freedom to choose, and can essentially structure your working life as a series of finite group projects, I think it's a shame not to make sure you're working in an environment where people respect each other and share at least some common ground. Ideally, in any working relationship, I'd want people to treat each other well, be kind, negotiate openly and in good faith, and make sure everyone knows what they're agreeing to and is genuinely on board with it.

Unfortunately, that's rarely how the business works. But if there are industry partners who want to work that way, I'm always open to it. It's not as though I'm taking some principled stance for the sake of appearances, saying, "I'd never do that, absolutely not." I think you can remain independent and still collaborate with other people. But if you're asking whether I'd sign some exploitative contract that would ultimately be bad for me, then no.

If someone found your bag and had to put together a psychological profile of you based entirely on what's inside, what would they get right – and what would they get completely wrong?

Wrong: That I'm messy (because my bag is full). Right: That I'm organised (because everything in that very full bag has its place).

At INA KENT, we often talk about how a bag only really becomes your own through the person carrying it. What would need to happen to yours before it truly felt like you?

It would need a few scuffs, a few charms. I love my wooden northern bald ibis, for example, or my crowned brass skull from the Habsburg Imperial Crypt. USB sticks in every inside pocket. Maybe a faint smell of my perfume.

Is there a pop culture topic you have a disproportionately strong opinion about?

Yes. Reality TV.

Which three films do you think everyone should see at least once?

The Nowhere Inn (2020), A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), Love Lies Bleeding (2024).

Which three albums have had the biggest influence on you?

Stereolab – Dots and Loops, Amenra – Mass V, St. Vincent – St. Vincent.

Which song do you wish you'd written?

“Kids” by MGMT.

Which three books, texts or authors do you keep recommending?

Moderation by Elaine Castillo, Pretend I’m Dead by Jen Beagin, and The Medium Is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore.

Which three artists from Austria should everyone know about?

By sheer luck, all three happen to be based in Austria. Firmly anti-Heimat, and all the more important to me and my musical journey because of it: Soap&Skin, Sakura, Ja, Panik.

What's the most useless piece of niche knowledge you currently have?

No such thing as useless niche knowledge.

What does your perfect day off in Vienna look like?

Sleeping in, iced dirty chai latte, wandering around, food, a nap, dinner, cinema. Not necessarily in that order.

FARCE WEARS:

More about FARCE: Website - Instagram 
Photos: Linda Tomschiczek
Light & Assistance: Daniel Binder
Video: Gabriela Kielhorn
Location (& THANK YOU to): Villa LALA.