As part of the NSK Wunderkammer at Marcus Campbell Art Books, comes a talk by Alexei Monroe on Laibach, introducing their work and early beginnings:

“Twenty years to the day after the London date of the Kapital tour, Alexei Monroe will discuss Laibach’s most complex album and this memorable London performance.”

Alexei Monroe is the author of MIT publication: Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK. The book will be on sale at the shop, alongside other NSK and Laibach records, posters and ephemera from the NSK display.

Monday, 14 May 2012 at Marcus Campbell Art Bookshop by Tate Modern, at 1900.

This event is free but space is limited. To reserve a place RSVP to info@marcuscampbell.co.uk

NSK State News for April, 2012, with retrospective coverage of the first London events planned for this Spring.

IRWIN: State in Time, London, 2012
in collaboration with Calvert 22 and Tate Modern
Billboard location: Elephant & Castle

Calvert 22 is delighted to welcome the most influential art movement to emerge from the Balkan region in the latter half of the 20th Century – Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK).

TIME FOR A NEW STATE is part of a London wide presentation in cooperation with Tate, who will be hosting a Symposium (14 April), and which will also comprise of a music performance at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall (14 April), an exhibition of archival material at Chelsea Space (Chelsea College of Art) and a seminar at UCL.

Neue Slowenische Kunst was established in what was then Yugoslavia. Concerned with the political unrest in the region at the time and issues of national identity NSK projects broke through the limitations of the visual arts. Highly collaborative and based around a constant flow of ideas, NSK provided a platform that brought together theatre, music, painting, literature, philosophy, design and performance, reaching into society at large.

TIME FOR A NEW STATE will be the first major exhibition of IRWIN, the visual arts component of NSK, founded in Ljubljana (Slovenia) in 1983. This ambitious display will feature seminal projects from the past twenty years including a special adaptation of Transnacionala (1996), an interactive installation enabling participants to become NSK citizens and have their own passports created. Also on display will be Kapital (1991), a site-specific installation that mixes taxidermy with religious icons, appropriating and recycling the symbols of past totalitarian governments and utopian art movements.

Public artworks across London will include an installation located at one at of London’s busiest interchanges. This specially commissioned billboard by IRWIN features an appropriated advertising slogan originally used, by a leading drinks brand, in Lagos alerting us that it may be ‘Time for a New State.’

In addition, the exhibition will examine in depth the group’s strong connections with Moscow art scene of the 80s and 90s by hosting a special event to mark the twentieth anniversary of the seminal NSK Moscow Embassy (1992), one of the most influential of all apt-art projects, central not only to IRWIN’s own practice but also to the development of avant-garde practices across the entire ‘former East’.

The downstairs exhibition space of Calvert 22 will present a selection of NSK Folk Art; a diverse collection of intriguing artefacts created by the citizens of the NSK State in Time. This virtual state, formed in 1992, today contains over fourteen thousand citizens from Dublin and Taipei to Sarajevo and New York. As it has evolved over the last 20 years, members have developed a strong sense of collective identity, which has manifested itself in the creation of a unique Folk Art, expressing citizens’ devotion to the state and ideologies of NSK. Works on display include NSK passports, stamps, plates and films made by NSK state members.

IRWIN’s constantly evolving practice continues to be at the forefront of the contemporary art scene of the former ‘Eastern Bloc’ countries. Their work encourages the viewer to critically examine the art history of ‘Western Modernism’ as they counter this with their own ‘Eastern Modernism’, pointing to the continued exclusion of contemporary Eastern European Art. IRWIN has actively and concretely intervened in social and historical activities in an era that redefined the status of art in Eastern Europe.

NSK State News for March 2012 with updates on upcoming events in Iceland and England, as well as retrospective coverage of the NSK Passport Office held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City last month.

Laibach’s soundtrack for the forthcoming film Iron Sky will be available on Mute shortly.

In the last moments of World War II, a secret Nazi space program evaded destruction by fleeing to the Dark Side of the Moon. During 70 years of utter secrecy, the Nazis construct a gigantic space fortress with a massive armada of flying saucers, getting ready for the invasion of Earth!

This is Iron Sky, with an epic soundtrack by Laibach.

With a theatrical trailer viewed by more than four and a half million people on YouTube and an amazing reception from the fans, the film had its successful worldwide premiere at the Berlin Film Festival on the 11 February 2012.

Laibach / IRWIN / New Collectivism / Scipion Nasice  Sisters Theatre

March 20th – April 21st, 2012
Private View: Tuesday 20th March 6 – 8.30pm

CHELSEA space proudly presents Neue Slowenische Kunst 1984-1992, a timely show dedicated to the radical Slovenian art collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovenian Art), focussing on the archives of Laibach, IRWIN, New Collectivism and Scipion Nasice Sisters Theatre, in Ljubljana and the David Gothard archive in London. The exhibition traces the impact of their work and the important role London played in the collective’s activities.

The show also marks a distinct component in a unique three-part presentation of Neue Slowenische Kunst’s activities in co-operation with TATE Modern and Calvert 22, and will provide a fascinating insight into the complexities of one of the most important artistic movements to emerge from Eastern Europe widely considered to be the last true avant-garde of the twentieth century.

Highlights in the exhibition include archive material from the theatre performance Marija Nablocka (1985) by Scipion Nasice Sisters Theatre and directed by Dragan Živadinov, hosted by Richard Demarco and shown at the Fringe Festival, Edinburgh; Was ist Kunst exhibition by IRWIN at AIR Gallery and at Riverside Studios, London in 1987, and from the performance No Fire Escape in Hell (1986) by Michael Clark & Company featuring Laibach.

Curated by Michele Drascek

CHELSEA Space 16 John Islip Street London Sw1P 4JU
For more information please contact: m.bajec@chelsea.arts.ac.uk

Poster action by New Collectivism studio in Ljubljana.

This speech was given as part of the inauguration event for Print Studio, an interactive space at MoMA to explore the evolution of artistic practices relating to the medium of print. The event featured an NSK Passport Office, and additional presentations from Miran Mohar, Conor McGrady, and Gediminas Gasparavicius.

Friends and Citizens,

Even a state built upon appropriation of the past will eventually find itself in the present, at least for a moment. Behind us, at an ever-increasing distance, we see our genesis: stories about passports, artifacts as raw as flint knives. As this distance grows we must ask ourselves, how will we meet this opportunity, this new vantage point that time offers us?

A little over a year ago, in October of 2010, the first NSK Citizens’ Congress was held in Berlin. An international group of delegates convened to discuss matters of the State. Miran and other founding members of the NSK collective were present, and waited expectantly for the citizens to take the reins. There was no consensus among the delegates to do so. There was a great reluctance to stray far from our founders.

In reports published in the wake of the Congress and in the recently published book, State of Emergence, which documents it, this reluctance is illustrated and examined. Delegate Igor Vidmar, in the transcripts, declared that we should “articulate our over-identification with NSK and the NSK State” as part of our work at the Congress. Delegate Avi Pitchon, in a report, suggests that rather than take the reins of the State, the delegates first had to demonstrate their understanding of the State and its principles (“How can one go above and beyond the law before earning the sovereignty to do so by merit of mastering it?“). My own impression was that the delegates did not feel empowered to change the status quo, nor did they desire to. There was an abundance of respect for the NSK collective and the state as they had created it.

This is not surprising. Who better to attend a First Citizens’ Congress than citizens of such passion for their state and its history? Citizens well-versed in the Yugoslavian context, to whom the hidden reverse was familiar territory? This rich history and the multifaceted analysis of it cast a long shadow at the Congress.

That shadow continues through the present day. The existing expressions of the NSK State are so intriguing that it often seems that by simply revisiting them, or re-enacting them, we should be able to invoke their original heroism. But can a re-enactment be heroic? Can an imitation be so timely as the original deed?

The tools of state have evolved over time and distance from Slovenia, 1991. The value of a passport to a refugee from a dissolving country, or a citizen of a newly cast one, is inestimable. The power of a sanctioned printing press in this role is transcendent. But is this still so, at this moment, here within our stable North American borders where only a third of our citizens bother get passports? Is the printing press still such a transcendent tool of the state? Of course, although its application may be less obvious. The power of the sanctioned press of the state, as it is used here, today, is most expressed not in the production of passports, or instruments of national identity, but in that they almost literally produce our bread and butter, in the production of money.

Is anyone here carrying money? What could be less obscure? More crass? Why should something so workaday as money be worthy of the same interrogation as national identity, or the cruel binary logic of national borders? Its ubiquity? It’s unquestioned role in our lives? Certainly. But further, consider this. A recent article in Businessweek described a scene that could have played out almost a century ago, along the border of a dissolving Russian empire: police in Argentina have recently begun using specially trained dogs to sniff out valuables leaving their country. They are not looking for gold, or jewelry. These dogs have been trained to detect “papyrus, the dry touch of birch and a hint of aldehydes for the slight metallic accent”, that is, the smell of American dollars.

For a state, its currency is more than just a means of exchange. It is tool of control, and a hallmark of sovereignty. With its printing presses, a state can produce as many copies of your bills as it pleases. It can give those bills more zeroes, or take them away. It can even sublimate its currency into another, to conjure up a new group identity. To press a point that is often made in alarm, but is correct, there is no innate value in our printed currency; it is not backed by a commodity like gold. It’s only worth is imposed by the will of the state, by fiat.

This point is central to the arguments made by David Graeber, one of the architects of the Occupy movement. Before he manned the lines at Zucotti park, he was writing a book about our notions of money, and debt, and how the state’s enforcement of their value is a means of control. He refers to debt as “human arrangements“. Compacts that we are theoretically free to tinker with if we choose.

And some people do. Like a state, money is an abstraction, one that we have seen become more and more abstract, more and more malleable, as our financial professionals become more and more creative. These are our true artists.

Surely, when the state so actively compels us to participate in such an arrangements, NSK State must be there. The NSK State is more than its history. It demonstrates a unique set of intellectual tools. The power of recontextualization to bring the present moment into a past one, the ability of overidentification with the Other to defy our pat judgements. These tools must be continuously applied if the State is to flourish. As non-virtual states mutate and adapt, we cannot let their new paradoxes go unaddressed. Rather than reveling infinitely in the wounds of another, ripped at again and again until it becomes a cheap horror film, we must bravely expose fresh wounds, our own, or they will pass by unexamined, unhealed. We should not fear that the NSK State is not relevant to our new world, to our new wounds. The NSK State is always relevant.

But often our time, our energy, and interest is consumed by the past, reliving it, re-examining it. Can we escape the past of our State in Time? Can any victim or transgressor escape their past? The past is not there for us to escape. But it is there for us to take. We must appropriate this past, and make of it something uniquely our own.

A spring and summer tour starting in April 2012, featuring Laibach live, presenting and promoting the science fiction dark comedy, film Iron Sky. Laibach has composed the soundtrack for this film and will perform selected songs from it live in concert, along with other material including some preview songs from their two forthcoming albums and a set of classic Laibach songs spanning from the early 80’s to today.

Iron Sky is a dark science fiction comedy about Nazis escaping to the dark side of the Moon in 1945 and returning to Earth in 2018. Towards the end of World War II the Nazi scientists made a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity. From a secret base built in the Antarctic, the first Nazi spaceships were launched in late ‘45 to found the military base Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) on the dark side of the Moon. This base was to build a powerful invasion fleet and return to take over the Earth once the time was right. Now it’s 2018, and the Nazis are returning…

Iron Sky is one of the most anticipated films coming out of Europe in 2012. The film was inspired in part by Laibach and especially their 2006 album VOLK (Mute/EMI), therefore from very early on the film’s director Timo Vuorensola wanted to have Laibach create the music for it. When both the band and the filmmakers connected, the vision started to become a reality.

Laibach’s involvement is a match made in heaven. Their music for this film is loaded with references to Wagner (as is the whole film) and was created very carefully with the unique Laibachian style, sense of humor and dark tone, and it works perfectly with the noir/steampunk look of the film. A release of an album with the film score on Mute will follow later this year.

Iron Sky is a Finnish-German-Australian co-production of about 7,5 million € budget, to be released worldwide in 2012. It’s directed by Timo Vuorensola and produced by Tero Kaukomaa (Blind Spot Pictures), Samuli Torssonen (Energia) as the visual effects producer, Oliver Damian (27 Films Production), Cathy Overett & Mark Overett (New Holland Pictures), with San Fu Maltha as the executive producer. The cast includes Julia Dietze (1½ Ritter), Götz Otto (Tomorrow Never Dies, Schindler’s List, Downfall), Christopher Kirby (The Matrix Reloaded & Revolutions, Daybreakers, Space: Above and Beyond), Udo Kier (Dogville, Dancer in the Dark), Peta Sergeant (Satisfaction), Stephanie Paul (Separation City, Film School Confidential) and Tilo Prückner (The Neverending Story, Die Fälscher).

What makes Iron Sky especially unique is the wide ranging collaboration with fans and community: the fanbase was able to join in creating ideas and content for the movie in a collaborative movie making platform called Wreckamovie. They were also able to give the film added publicity by sharing information online and even fund the movie by designing and buying merchandize and by other means.

Iron Sky premieres at the Berlinale on 11.2.2012 and will be released on the 4th of April 2012.

NSK State News Update for December, 2011 with retrospective coverage of the State of Emergence book tour and the NSK Folk Art show in Ljubljana, as well as a special message from Simon Bell.