Galerija Gregor Podnar is pleased to announce Was ist Kunst Hugo Ball, an exhibition by the artist group Irwin in collaboration with Bishop Metodij Zlatanov, Metropolitan of the Christian-Orthodox Church in Macedonia, in the Project Space of Galerija Gregor Podnar on Kolodvorska 6 in Ljubljana.

Was ist Kunst Hugo Ball will confront Greek-Orthodox icons with IRWIN-framed Dada works, complying with Dionysius’ invocation. This is the exhibition’s second presentation after it was conceived for and shown at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich in 2010. In Ljubljana Irwin will be showing the magazine Dada 4-5 of 1919, as well as the famous photograph of Hugo Ball as magical bishop dressed in a Cubist costume. Furthermore, there will be a large-scale photograph of Bishop Metodij Zlatanov, Christian-Orthodox Metropolitan of Macedonia, produced specifically for this exhibition and showing him holding in his hands an original Dada work from the Kunsthaus Zürich as if it was an icon in a procession.

Adrian Notz, co-producer of Was ist Kunst Hugo Ball and director of Cabaret Voltaire, describes icons as “ritualistic tools which do not represent holiness but are the substance itself, thus giving direct access to divinity. Their function as ritualistic tools brings icons very close to what Hugo Ball tried to achieve with Dada. Dada was neither a ‘style’ nor a ‘movement of art’, but a gesture Ball thought would help him obtain mystic insights. He conceived of this notion the night he was intoning phonetic poems in the guise and voice of a bishop. On 18 June 1921 Ball wrote in his diary Flucht aus der Zeit (1927): when I came across the word ‘Dada’ Dionysius called upon me twice. D.A. – D.A. He was not talking about Bacchus (Dionysus), but Dionysius Areopagita, a controversial mystic from the 5th century A.D. Ball had published a book about in 1923 entitled Byzantinisches Christentum.

IRWIN has dealt with the subject of icons in their series Was ist Kunst since 1984. In direct reference to the Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10, staged in St. Petersburg in 1915, IRWIN presents the pictures of their series in similar ‘Petersburg hanging’ fashion as the Suprematists did, Malevich’s Black Square hanging in the corner facing the entrance, the place where one would expect an icon to hang, thus turning it into an icon in its own right and becoming what this painting has been for years: the essential modern icon. IRWIN used Malevich’s Black Square, other Suprematist icons and other motives from the history of art and formulated them into a new whole. In 1995, when Was Ist Kunst was translated into icons, IRWIN selected a number of it’s own formulations out of the entire Was Ist Kunst body of works and started, following the tradition of icon painting, to copy them. Images from both series are connected by specific frames that are used to homogenize the diversity of aspects.”

The project is supported by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia

We would like to thank Ziva and Lazo Vujic from Visconti Fine Arts, Ljubljana, for their loan of Greek- Orthodox icons to the exhibition. We also would like to extend our thanks for their support especially to Adrian Notz, Cabaret Voltaire Zürich, Kunsthaus Zürich, and Geri Krischker.

During the exhibition, the gallery is open Tuesday–Friday, noon–6 p.m., and by appointment.

This irwin work entitled State in Time, was installed on the façade of Museum of Modern Art  in Moscow some days ago as a part of exhibition Impossible Communities curated by Viktor Misiano. It was on the wall for few days but than museum director Vasili Tsereteli for some reason decided that it has to be taken down since they have no permission to put it on the building. Officially they are waiting for some permission to put it on. He also said that some people called the museum that the message on a poster is problematic.

NSK STATE LIPSK & Zonic-Kunst present

“S.C.L.S.: State – Society – Landscapes – Society”
June/July 2011 – Leipzig/Germany
03.-05.06. / 09.-13.06. / 08.-10.07. 2011

Featuring works by NSK STATE collective, Jonathan Evans (AUS) & Veronica Moto (MEX), Barbara Lamoot (SK), Bettina Tita (ROM), Holger Karas (Leipzig), Laetitia Mantis (Leipzig) and others.

A small sensation!

NSK STATE section Leipzig in cooperation with the culture magazine Zonic is reopening an important venue in Leipzig’s art history: The original gallery space of famed German art group EIGEN+ART, located on Bornaische Strasse 31 (Tram 11, stop Pfeffinger Strasse) – possibly the final opportunity to tread these historical grounds.

During the opening hours of the exhibition, NSK state opens a consulate handing out visas for visitors and offering devotional objects from the state of art founded in 1992 as a non-physical, temporal entity. The collective presents the exhibition “It’s a beautiful country” which features images of anonymous, decontextualised landscapes which reflect the state’s universalistic approach as well as its imperial artistic tactics. Become a citizen of the first global state in the universe! The NSK passport office will be at your disposal during opening hours; everyone can apply to become a member of the NSK state in time.

In addition to the “Beautiful Country” exhibition, Australian Industrial artist Jonathan Evans (known for his work with “Last Dominion Lost”) and Mexican artist Veronica Moto present the video installation and performance “The second Death of Reason”, Slovak artist Barbara Lamoot explores the symbology of “landscape in philosophical predigestion.” Romanian born artist Bettina Tita offers insights into post-communist landscapes of her former home now lost, and Leipzig-based artist Dr. Laetitia Mantis documents several periods of her photographic work covering the connections between nature and culture in the theme of birth, while her images from “Kutna Hora” and Sintra/Portugal offer insights into the morbid beauty of humanity and make clear that there are still magical places if one has the ability to recognise them.

The exhibition opens on Friday, June 3rd at 7pm and is open over the weekend from 7pm. During the Whitsun days (June 10th through 13th) it can be viewed between 12 noon and 7pm, and during the first weekend in July (8th – 10th) doors open again from 7pm.

Special events:
Saturday, June 4th, 8pm: “Panorama of the State Machine” – Cultural theorist Alexander Nym discusses the history and phenomenology of the NSK state in time, followed by a screening of the documentary film “Predictions of Fire” (Michael Benson 1996) about the group Laibach and the associated artists of the Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) movement. Presentation in German; documentary film in English language.

Sunday, June 5th, 8pm: Jakobine Motz and Claus Loeser screen their documentary „Behauptung des Raums – Wege unabhängiger Ausstellungskultur in der DDR“ (2009), dealing with the incurrence and development of EIGEN+ART and its predecessors. After the film, the directors will be present for a Q&A with the audience. (German language)

Thursday, June 9th, 7pm: Reopening of the exhibition with the performance “The Second Death of Reason” by Jonathan Evans und Veronica Moto.
Friday and Saturday, June 10th and 11th, 2pm: London based cultural theorist and NSK-researcher Alexei Monroe will be giving guided tours through NSK-country and answering questions from tourists. (English language)

Contact & further information:
zonic@zonic-online.de
info@schillerndesdunkel.de

AUSSTELLUNG LAIBACH KUNST PERSPECTIVES 1980-2011
UGM l Maribor Art Gallery, Strossmayerjeva 6, Maribor, Slovenia
Press Conference: Wednesday, 23 February 2011 at 11:00
Opening: Thursday, 24 February 2011 at 19:00

The exhibition is dedicated to the academic painter Janez Knez (1931−2011).

The internationally renowned multidisciplinary collective and performance group Laibach are returning to the exhibition space! After 30 years of provocative activities and ‘performances’, Umetnostna galerija Maribor / Maribor Art Gallery presents a review of Laibach’s visual artwork.

Since their formation in the early 1980s, Laibach have been engaged in an obsessive dialogue with the totalitarian ideologies of modernity and their relation to art. Far from being solely intelligible in the cultural context of 1980s Yugoslavia, their work still offers critical perspectives to a globalised world which continues to be affected by modernity’s conceptions of the state, the individual, mass culture, art, and politics. Exhibition at UGM opens new perspectives on Laibach by highlighting their original beginnings as an ‘arts’ collective. Although Laibach have repeatedly rejected this designation, their self-fashioning as ‘engineers of the human soul’ is telling of the degree to which all of Laibach’s performances have sought to ironize and collapse clear-cut categories such as ‘art’, ‘politics’, and ‘popular culture’. Despite their influence on established artists, theorists and wider audiences, Laibach occupy an unframed position in the national and international art scene today. Their explorations into the world of popular music have gained them international renown. However, all of their performances have been radically self-reflexive in a way that responds to the functions ascribed to ‘political art’ in contemporary society, rather than to the consumerist and escapist nature of popular music. With their performances on diverse stages such as galleries, concert halls, opera houses, TV, internet, video, theatre, industrial power plants and shopping malls, Laibach represent a unique challenge to the categories established by Western art criticism.

The exhibition comprises twelve rooms presenting key stages of Laibach’s work from the first decade of their career in the 1980s up to the present. The works on display include multi-media installations, oil paintings, photographs, graphic works, and film. A new installation created especially for this exhibition, titled Artist Perspective, will be on view. This is the biggest Laibach Kunst exhibition in Slovenia to date.
The exhibition includes works from private collections of Neil Rector and Daniel Miller, works by Jane Štravs and Sašo Podgoršek and objects from the Maribor Regional Museum and the Institute of Anatomy of the University of Ljubljana. The exhibited works were created in collaboration with Janez Knez, Paola Korošec, Benjamin Kreže, Simon and Uroš Arnšek.

Curated by: Simona Vidmar, Laibach and Claudia Richter

A selection of NSK Folk Art artefacts, curated by IRWIN and NSKSTATE.COM
at the Taipei Biennial 10, Sept. 7 – Nov. 14, 2010

Presented artists: Peter Blase, Christian Chrobok, Danaja, Dape, Haris Hararis/NSKSTATE.COM, David K, Charles Krafft, Goran Lišnjić, Lili Anamarija No, Christain Nnoruga, NSK.IS, Avi Pitchon, Alex Ross & Chris Wade, Armin Zerbe

The internet was one of the key tolls for spreading the NSK State. In 1994 the NSK Electronic Embassy Tokyo website was launched which was active for quite some time and then in 2001 Haris Hararis from Athens launched NSKSTATE.COM which was maintained together with other NSK citizens and became the central meeting point for them. This was a crucial and unpredicted move and through this website citizens began to self organize.

We also discovered wide range of activities and artifacts related to the NSK and NSK State at various occasions and from time to time these authors would inform us about their works. It looked as if NSK citizens and others had begun to use the conceptual space of the NSK State in Time and the iconography of it and of various NSK groups in their own ways. Our decision was not to restrict such initiatives, but on the contrary to support them.

Here are some examples:

On the East Coast of the USA, a film maker Christian Matzke opened an NSK library on his own initiative. The library has opening hours and a whole set of tools for theoretical readings.

In Iceland, NSK citizens have organized, again on their own initiative, the NSK Guard of Iceland project and opened their own temporary NSK Embassy in Reykjavik.

Charlie Krafft from Seattle designed and produced sets of porcelain plates for NSK Embassies in mid 1990s.

In 2008 Irwin and NSKSTATE.COM began to collect so-called NSK Folk Art artifacts and decided to exhibit them.

As Alexei Monroe a London based theoretician and NSK citizen stated in his text NSK: The State which Ran Away with Itself for Irwin’s upcoming book:

“Although it has only become apparent gradually, NSK’s inherent, catalytic improbability has always been active behind the scenes, determining both NSK’s actions and, crucially, people’s reactions to it. Even now that NSK is far-better known and has several thousand citizens, it continues to generate unexpected responses emerging from the collective NSK space inhabited by fans and citizens, some of which have been even more surprising to the artists themselves. What we are dealing with here is a series of uncoordinated initiatives and responses, all inspired by the aesthetics or the concepts of NSK”

.

The artifacts shown in the frame of 10 Taipei Biennial were selected by Hongjohn Lin and Tirdad Zoldhar from the range of NSK Folk Art works registered by Irwin and NSKSTATE.COM, based on the Volk Art concept first outlined by Alexei Monroe.
Irwin was present at the previous Taipei Biennial with the project NSK Passport Holders. At that occasion video interviews were shown based on research into the massive surge in applications for NSK passports from Nigerian citizens in the years 2007-2008.

Irwin
Država v času / State in Time

Exhibition in Dolenjski Muzej, Novo Mesto, Slovenija (main hall)
Opening on Sunday Sept. 26, 2010 at 18.00
Runs till Jan. 16, 2011

In the exhibition will be included also Words from Africa, which was done together with NSKSTATE.COM

Opening speech by Peter Mlakar from Department of Pure and Applied Philosophy at NSK

State in Time

The NSK State came into being in 1992 as a result of the transformation of Neue Slowenische Kunst into the NSK State in Time. The Neue Slowenische Kunst collective (NSK) was formed by three founding groups – Irwin, Laibach and the Gledališče sester Scipion Nasice theatre group – back in 1984, still within the framework of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Collaboration, a free flow of ideas among individual members and groups, a declarative copyleft, which was not limited even by the indication of authorship, as well as mutual assistance and joint planning of particular moves and actions were key for the development and operation of NSK, although the groups were autonomous in their activities. Awareness of the specific conditions for operation in the field of art in the then Yugoslavia, which was largely defined by the closedness of the art system and a valorization system adjusted to local needs, led to the concentration of critical mass and confrontation with the art system. The antagonism generated in this way, as a consequence, clearly delineated the contours of and subjectivized particular groups and of NSK as a whole. Self-evidently, in conditions of strained relationships, the responsibility for art production and its reflection lay solely with us, and it was precisely through steering this confrontation that we established our autonomy. In short, collaboration and common wealth were the basis and the inevitable consequence of Neue Slowenische Kunst’s positioning in relation to the cultural and political reality of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

With the collapse of socialism in the beginning of the 1990s and the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the conditions of our operation changed radically as well, affecting the transformation of Neue Slowenische Kunst into the NSK State in Time in 1992. Along with the emergence of a multitude of new states, some of which, among them Slovenia, achieved the status of an independent state for the first time ever in history, NSK too objectified itself in the form of state. Instead of to a territory, however, NSK assigns the status of state to thinking, which alters its boundaries in accordance with the movements and changes of its symbolic and physical collective body. The commonwealth (state) is created by the speech act performed in making the civil covenant, according to Thomas Hobbs, who also writes in Leviathan: ”Nature is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal . This artificial animal (person) is the commonwealth”. At the time of its formation, the NSK State in Time was defined as an abstract organism, a suprematist body, installed in a real socio-political space as a sculpture, consisting of concrete body hear, the movement of spirit, and the work of its members. In fact, the NSK state exists precisely through appearances in a variety of projects, which follow one another through time, drawing out its image and content as a kind of outline drawing, which establish and multiply relations among its citizens and which gradually enable, through multiplication and layering, the appearance of articulations of concrete needs and initiatives.

Thanks to the particular circumstances at the beginning of nineties, it was possible for us to publish the passports of the NSK State in Time in cooperation with the Slovenian Ministry of Interior Affairs. For this reason, NSK passports are printed in the same printing-house, on the paper of the same quality and with the same protection measures (at least some of them, for instance special numbering) as Slovenia’s passports. As a result, NSK passports not only look like regular passports but also do not differ from the usual standards for such products with regard to the mode and quality of production. Up until now, more than two thousand persons have applied for and obtained our passports and thereby become the citizens of the NSK State in Time, while retaining their previous citizenship as you can imagine. Most of them, we believe, can be regarded as belonging to the so-called “art scene.” They may be artists or art lovers. This big group of NSK citizens comes primarily from the developed countries of Western Europe or the USA. It is possible to say that the majority of NSK’s population comes from the so-called first world. The reasons for taking NSK citizenship are primarily linked to their understanding of and participation in the field of contemporary art. Although the most numerous, this is not the only social group among NSK passport holders. At the time when we started issuing NSK passports, that is in the first half of the nineties, new states were emerging on a daily basis and the war in the territory of the former Yugoslavia was still going on. A lot of interest in NSK passports came precisely from these areas. The largest number of passports was issued in Sarajevo at the end of the war in 1995. Although we issued the majority of passports to people associated with contemporary art, the interest in our passports was not just artistic. At that time, the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina had serious problems traveling outside their country. There are many stories of how NSK passports helped people to cross borders more easily than if using the Bosnian passport. For a certain period of time, the NSK passport was defined by its usefulness and hence its understanding differed radically from the usual view of it as an artefact. Being aware that the NSK passport does not enable them to cross national borders, that it cannot be a replacement for other documents, a lot of them took a risk and used it in cases of necessity as a functional replacement of their passports.

Thus, NSK passport holders have so far been closely related to the field of art and although the reasons for possessing the passport differ according to the position and status of particular passport holders, it is possible to maintain that the NSK passport is understood as an artefact which was, in certain cases and out of necessity, also used for non-artistic purposes.
But about three years ago, applications for the NSK passport began coming from Africa: from Nigeria or more precisely from Ibadan. And among those who are sending passport applications from different addresses in Europe – beside Ibadan, the most common address for Nigerians seeking NSK passport is London – a great majority give Ibadan as their place of birth. It started slowly but in short time the number of applications from Nigerians has exceeded 1000. As most of the applications are coming from the same city, it is possible to conclude that the information spreads from person to person. The cost of the passport is not high, but for the habitants of so-called third world is hardly unimportant. We seriously doubt that the interest of people from Nigeria in getting the NSK passport is related to art. It seams more likely that in the third world NSK passports have ceased to be artefact and became useful documents. What is interesting – apart from the way in which this information spreads – is why, where, for whom and how this is useful.

How a symbolical object that has been sold in the market of the first world for fifteen years and is recognized – regardless of its ambiguity or precisely because of its ambiguity – as an art object has become functional document in the third world. In short, how the word became flesh.

How to highlight the close encounter of two totally disparate worlds; the comparatively complex, highly sophisticated and abstract space of modern art on the one hand, and the politically, culturally and economically deeply destabilized third world, where mere survival is often a key issue and from where people emigrate in masses driven by a desire for a better life? Europe is the most coveted destination and year after year the media report on the terrible tragedies many of them experience primarily as victims of shipwrecks during expensive and dangerous illegal sea voyages. Two worlds so far apart from each other that their encounter can only be understood as a result of modern technologies, of the internet, which enables the flow of information even where there was none before.

The results of NSK citizens’ self-organization manifest themselves ever more clearly at a totally different level yet in unusual accord with what has been said so far. An important fact is that NSKSTATE.COM , a key domain offering information about NSK, is organized and managed by NSK citizens. Around this internet project and through it, communication among NSK citizens has gradually been established and developed, recently outgrowing into joint actions, projects and so on. In this case, too, the “artefact” transforms itself into the reality of operation. In any case, the majority of NSK citizenship applicants from the Ibadan area, too, obtained information precisely through the internet. The number of letters sent to NSKSTATE.COM in which people ask for information, explain why they urgently need the passport, and describe their qualities which should qualify them for citizenship is in the thousands.

15 April – 6 June 2010
At the International Centre of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana.

Thirty years have passed since the founding of Laibach, a group whose music and performances have become part of cultural history. What many do not know, however, is that Laibach in fact began its career as a visual art group. Images that most of us know from the paintings of the Irwin group – the cross, the coffee cup, the deer, the metal worker – were originally Laibach motifs. They were part of the capital the group invested in the newly established collective Neue Slowenische Kunst in 1984. With the founding of NSK, the visual art tradition Laibach had been creating up to that time was taken over by Irwin.

Laibach brought an alternative post-modern form of creativity into Slovene art. The group drew connections between New Image painting, the do-it-yourself art of punk bands and the post-conceptual practices that were being promoted in the Belgrade and Zagreb art scenes. Laibach “welded together” various media – music, video, film and performance – “high” and “low” culture, pop culture, politics and art. And at the very start of the 1980s, they defined in clear terms the fundamentals of the Retro-Avant-Garde.

Laibach’s first realized exhibition (not including the one in Trbovlje in 1980, which was so controversial it was banned before it ever opened) took place in June 1981 at the Srećna galerija of the Student Cultural Centre in Belgrade. Some of the group’s members had been doing their army service in Belgrade and, in their spare time, had developed contacts with the alternative and New Wave scene that met at the student centre. Titled Ausstellung Laibach Kunst, the exhibition presented some of the group’s early prints and paintings as Laibach’s music buzzed alongside them from a cassette recorder.
The artworks represented a response to the contemporary art scene outside of Yugoslavia, especially the Neue Wilde artists in West Germany, who in the late 1970s depicted such urban phenomena as the punk scene and addressed certain suppressed topics from recent German history, specifically, from the Nazi and post-war periods. Punk and the reinterrogation of Nazism and other totalitarian ideologies was also an integral part of the subculture scene in Ljubljana.

This first show in Belgrade was followed by the extraordinary ambient exhibition Plane Crash Victims, in December 1981 at the newly formed Disco FV in the Rožna Dolina Student Village in Ljubljana; Laibach then went on to have fairly regular exhibitions at Galerija ŠKUC in Ljubljana, Galerija PM in Zagreb and the Student Cultural Centre in Belgrade. With the founding of NSK in 1984, Laibach redirected their energies into music, while the art tradition they had created was in large part taken over by the Irwin painters. With the disintegration of Neue Slowenische Kunst, which in the early nineties gradually reshaped itself as a utopian “state in time” (without its own territory), each of the member-groups continued to develop their own aesthetics and Laibach again started appearing from time to time in a gallery context. Thus, in 2009, at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Poland, Laibach had its first retrospective exhibition, which was very well received by the Polish media. Three large gallery presentations are planned for this year: in Ljubljana (at the International Centre of Graphic Arts), Trbovlje (at the Workers’ Hall) and Zagreb (at the Croatian Association of Artists).

The exhibition at the International Centre of Graphic Arts presents a survey of Laibach’s art in the first decade of their career, when they played a central role in the art of the 1980s subculture movement. The show presents Laibach as a multi-media group combining art, music and theoretical writings, with the transfer of theoretical thinking from Laibach to NSK shown using the example of visual culture. The exhibition is itself historic, for here paintings, prints, posters, publications, newspaper pages, invitations, record covers, photographs, concert stage sets, videos and promotional products are assembled and displayed for the first time in 30 years. Also on view are three new installations made especially for the International Centre of Graphic Arts exhibition. The exhibition is curated by Lilijana Stepančič.

The exhibited works come from the archives of Laibach, Barbara Borčić, Škuc Forum, Radio-Television Slovenia and the photographers Boris Cvetanović, Dragan Papić, Jane Štravs, Nikolaj Pečenko, Antonijo Živković and Siniša Lopojda, as well as from the collections of the International Centre of Graphic Arts, Neil Rector and Daniel Miller and the photography collection of the National Museum of Contemporary History.

The exhibition is on view at the International Centre of Graphic Arts, Tivoli Mansion, Pod turnom 3, Ljubljana, from 16 April to 6 June 2010, from Wednesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Info: Lili Šturm, t. + 386 1 2413 800/818, lili.sturm@mglc-lj.si, www.mglc-lj.si

Accompanying Exhibition:

2010 Laibach
21 April – 12 May 2010, Galerija Luwigana, Ljubljana
23 April – 14 May 2010, Galerija 14, Bled

Prints and posters are among the basic forms of expression for the group Laibach. Even at their earliest exhibitions, between 1980 and 1984, graphic art represented a core part of the group’s repertoire. Laibach still returns to printmaking on occasion, and now they are presenting their most recent graphic work an accompanying programme to the exhibition Gesamtkunst Laibach, Fundamentals 1980–1990. With never-ending artistic freshness, Laibach creates a path for reading images that will also appeal to the new generation born after 1980.

Info: Miha Poljak, Studio Černe, t. 08 82051 174, 01 541 72 10, miha@studiocerne.si, info@studiocerne.si, www.studiocerne.si
Galerija Luwigana, Gornji trg 19, Ljubljana, open Mon.–Fri. 3 p.m. – 8 p.m.; Sat. 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. / Galerija 14, Prešernova c. 14, Bled, open Tue.–Fri. 3 p.m. – 7 p.m.

A concert by Laibach, featuring music from the group’s first decade, is being planned in conjunction with the exhibition GESAMTKUNST LAIBACH; the details of the performance will be announced at a later date.

Laibach’s achievements place them among the world’s most acclaimed groups. Here we will mention only the fact that the British curator Catherine Wood, writing in the American art magazine Artforum in December, chose Laibach’s project The Art of the Fugue (LAIBACHKUNSTDERFUGE, Dallas Records, 2007), which the group presented at a live concert in London, as one of the top ten events of 2009.

IRWIN Exhibition at the Israeli Centre for Digital Art
6.2.2010 – 10.4.2010
Opening: Saturday, February 6th, at 20:00
Curator: Avi Pitchon

PRESS RELEASE:

The Israeli Centre for Digital Art is proud to host the Middle-Eastern debut of the unique and influential art group Irwin from Slovenia.

Irwin serves as the visual arts department within the NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst – New Slovenian Art) collective that also includes a music department (the band Laibach), a graphic design department, theatre department and a department for ‘pure and applied philosophy’.

Since its inception in 1984, NSK has become the most important disseminator of contemporary art in Eastern Europe in particular, and one of the driving forces of European art in general. The collective’s aesthetic and conceptual emphasis is the re-examination of the dramatic, heroic and tragic meeting point of the 20th Century’s utopian art movements and the totalitarian regimes of that century, and the way it resonates in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and hides behind values of contemporary capitalism.

The central characteristic of NSK’s art in general and Irwin’s in specific is the charged and provocative use of the aforementioned regimes’ aesthetics – they blend together socialist realism, fascist and Nazi neo-classicism, abstract suprematism and national, folk and ‘volkist’ elements. The five artists who comprise the Irwin group – Dušan Mandic, Miran Mohar, Andrej Savski, Roman Uranjek and Borut Vogelnik – have refused up until a few years ago to identify individually or sign their names on the artworks they created. The strategy behind this radical, confrontational attitude is what their compatriot thinker Slavoj Zizek termed ‘over-identification’. Instead of directly opposing the perils of totalitarianism, NSK and Irwin attempt to be ‘more righteous than The Pope’, more zealous in their impressive, seductive representation of the regime than the ways with which the same regime dares to present itself. This explicit, enthusiastic loyalty exposes more efficiently, according to Zizek, the dark elements contemporary state regimes attempt to conceal under a cool and pleasant façade. It goes without saying that in any of the cases where the state has prevented, censored or banned the activity of one of the NSK’s departments, the collective declared that this was the aim to begin with: testing the system’s validity and alertness, which proves, by the act of repression, that it defends itself well.

NSK started operating when Slovenia was still a part of Yugoslavia, and its use of fascistic elements disturbed the regime which maintained Tito’s legacy, since the victory over Nazism was indeed one of the founding myths of the entire Eastern bloc. In 1991 the collective declared itself to be a state in time, as opposed to space. This nebulous existence was nevertheless accompanied by the issuing of passports, stamps, currency, a flag and an anthem, and the establishments of temporary embassies operating alongside NSK exhibitions and events. NSK’s total identification with aesthetic signifiers of the state apparatus led to a dramatic blurring of art and life, when during the subsequent war an unknown number of citizens managed to escape from Sarajevo using NSK State’s fictional diplomatic passports. This same blurring rose to prominence again in recent years as NSK’s HQ were flooded with hundreds if not thousands of passport applications from African, mainly Nigerian, citizens, who hoped that NSK’s passports can grant them entrance to life in the European Union.

NSK have proven that their actions gain extra impact and validity on the background of dramatic change and upheaval. From the downfall of communism, through the war in the Balkans, and up to the new EU utopia. Therefore, the importance of exhibiting their work in Israel doesn’t merely revolve around providing the Israeli viewer with a chance to acquaint themselves with this fascinating body of work, but mainly around the collective’s activity as a model for artistic thought and praxis for us here and now. Israel, a state originating in a utopian concept which at birth sounded at least as imaginary and outlandishly refutable as the idea of the NSK State, is nowadays engaged in a struggle that borders civil war around the question of how to continue realising that original concept, when each camp claims monopoly over what Zionism is, convinced that the opposing camp will not only lead to the disappearance of Zionism as a unique utopian experiment, but to actual physical demise. At the same time, these camps face forces of critique that seek a paradigm to inherit and exchange Zionism, and all of the above can collectively feel the ground shaking underneath their feet due to the stamping might of the free market. Irwin’s work is throwing a gauntlet towards the Israeli art field that rarely investigates the meeting point of utopia-aesthetics-politics-state with an approach remotely resembling an overview. Contemporary art in Israel prefers either dissemination within the framework of the global market, or specific, issue-driven, critical political work – that is to say, both tendencies reveal a subscription to one of the many camps pulling each to its own direction, when no one demonstrates a desire or ability to inspect the big picture, the overall story, its roots, and accordingly, the vectors it may follow in the future.

To our dismay, the first gauntlet thrown by Irwin was not picked up. One of the projects presented in the exhibition is ‘NSK Guards’ – a series of photographic documentations depicting soldiers belonging to various (mainly East European) armies wearing armbands bearing the Malevich cross on their sleeves, and standing to attention in front of the NSK State flag. Irwin have formally invited the Israeli Defence Forces to participate in the project and be documented in the same manner, while performing military drills at the opening of the exhibition. The IDF flatly refused.

The exhibition will present a condensed retrospective of paintings and icons that are weaved through Irwin’s entire body of work, photographic and film documentation of NSK State activity in recent years with an emphasis on the operations revolving around embassies and passport issuing, and a new photographic project in which Irwin begin to touch upon the area of state and religion.

During the opening, the Israeli Centre for Digital Art will host an NSK embassy that will issue passports to interested parties, in return for a set fee and on the basis of a performance emulating formal procedure typical to any home office.

Curator Avi Pitchon first bumped into NSK in 1987, during a late-night screening of underground music videos presented by Yoav Kutner in the Tel-Aviv Museum, which included a live rendition of Laibach’s song ‘Die Liebe’. Pitchon holds, since 2003, a diplomatic NSK passport and in 2008 presented a commissioned edited sequence of Laibach’s documentaries and concerts in the exhibition ‘The White Sport’ he co-curated alongside Hannah Freund-Chertok.

Pitchon sees the presentation of Irwin in Israel a mission of goodwill and an integral part of fulfilling his formal duties to NSK State, abiding to the collective’s slogan ‘art is fanaticism which demands diplomacy’.

The Trbovlje exhibition will open in the Delavski Dom on September 27th, exactly 30 years after the (forbidden) very first Laibach appearance at the same place in Laibach’s home town.

Ljubljana exhibition at MGLC (International Centre of Graphic Arts) will open on April 1st 2010.

Zagreb exhibition date will be announced as soon as the date is confirmed.

During the last couple of years, more than 2000 of people from Africa, (mainly from Nigeria) tried to contact NSKSTATE.COM by email. WORDS FROM AFRICA is a collection of emails organized according to the words that was used in the messages.

NSKSTATE.COM in collaboration with Irwin presented “Outlook: Words from Africa” (the latest version of the project) in “Utopics” the 11th Swiss Sculpture Exhibition in Biel/Bienne on August 29th. The exhibition will be open until October 25, 2009.