Wonderloch-Kellerland
Biesentaler Str. 6
D-13359 Berlin

contact@wonderloch-kellerland.org

ENTRY: 5 EURO.

Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos
26-31 July 2010

Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos is pleased to host the internationally renowned artists collective IRWIN, members of NSK (New Slovenian Art). Over a one week period of screenings, lectures and panel discussions, Towards a Double Consciousness: NSK Passport Project will take as its point of departure, NSK’s artistic intervention State in Time and its increasing significance in Africa especially within the context of Nigeria. State in Time, one of the most (in)famous projects produced by NSK, evolved out of their earlier activities, finding formation as a ’state’ at the collapse of Yugoslavia and the coming into existence of the Republic of Slovenia in 1991. NSK’s State in Time transcends a physical geographical location or a defined statehood within a prescribed ethnic, cultural or religious belief, providing what IRWIN collaborator and writer Alexei Monroe describes as “a conceptual form of identification for individuals from diverse nationalities.”

Since the initial presentations around the world in the 1990s of State in Time the project is currently receiving a substantial number of requests for citizenship of the NSK ‘State’ from Africa especially from Nigeria. This has resulted in many Nigerians assuming a dual identity as holders of NSK and Nigerian passports. In view of these new developments IRWIN conducted interviews with African/NSK citizens living in London, to ascertain their reasons for applying. Could it be in support of the initial artistic purpose of NSK? Do they see it as an avenue with which to move from one territory to another? Or is it for other socio-political reasons? Towards a Double Consciousness: NSK Passport project will allow further debate on both the artistic and political implications of the NSK State in Time action, offering an examination of their original artistic interventions within the Nigerian context.

This project forms part of CCA, Lagos’ year long programme On Independence and The Ambivalence of Promise celebrating 50 years of independence by seventeen African countries including Nigeria on the 1st October 2010. It provides an avenue to interrogate notions of nationhood at a time when our ideas of citizenship is continuously being challenged by state policies such as Nigeria’s contentious ‘federal character’ system or through religious and ethnic disturbances such as the recent unrest in the city of Jos, as well as the perennial civic unrest of the oil rich Niger Delta. Towards a Double Consciousness attempts to interrogate the way in which artists propose and individuals search for alternative – real or fictional – possibilities that goes beyond notions of a fixed identity or geography.

IRWIN is a collective of artists Dušan Mandič (b. 1954), Miran Mohar (b. 1958), Andrej Savski (b. 1961), Roman Uranjek (b. 1961) and Borut Vogelnik (b. 1959), which comprises one of the core groups within the artists’ collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK). IRWIN was founded in 1983 in Slovenia. Recent exhibitions include: The Promises of the Past, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2010; The Eye of the State, The Israel Center for Digital Art, Holon, Israel, 2010; Third New Old Cold War, Moscow Biennial, Red October; Modernities, Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), Barcelona; State in Time, Kunsthalle Krems, 2009.
The members of the group live and work in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Programme

26th – 31st July 2010
Screening: Research interview of NSK Citizens as well as artists based in Nigeria.

Friday, 30 July 2010 Time: 3 pm
Topic: Introduction to media art and the use of video in relation to other forms of new media, technology and performance in contemporary art.
Speakers include; Dr. Inke Arns, IRWIN members: Miran Mohar and Borut Vogelnik and Performance artist Jelili Atiku.

Saturday, 31 July, Time 2pm
Screening: 2:00pm Screening of interviews with African NSK passport holders living in London.
Panel Discussion: 3:00pm
Topic: NSK State: The Nigerian connection. A discussion on the significance of an artistic action made in Europe in the 90s on contemporary African consciousness.
Speakers include; Dr Inke Arns, IRWIN members: Miran Mohar and Borut Vogelnik, NSK member Eda Cufer and Nigerian NSK passport holders. Moderated by Loren Hansi Momodu.

Curator: Loren Hansi Momodu
Curatorial Advisors; Dr. Inke Arns, Director, HMKV, Dortmund and Bisi Silva, Director, CCA,Lagos

The Advanced Cultural Management Programme and Towards a Double Consciousness are supported by the Goethe Institute, Johannesburg and Nigeria.

Anat Ben-David

Lillevan &  Codex Europa

Patenbrigade Wolff

The dates and venue for the Berlin congress have now been finalised. The congress will run from 21st to 23rd October.  We are pleased to announce that the venue for the Congress will be Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, Berlin’s House of World Cultures. More details of the programme will follow shortly.

Delegates will be contacted shortly to confirm the new dates and arrangements. The congress is being organised in cooperation with the Berlin cultural agency “Βüro für Κulturelle Αngelegenheiten” and they will deal with practical arrangements for the delegates. Please remember that all delegates have now been selected. Non-delegates are welcome to attend the public events but must make their own travel and visa arrangements.

In the year 1945 the Nazis went to the Moon, and in 2018 they are coming back. This is the premise of the sci-fi film Iron Sky, the upcoming movie project from the creators of the hugely popular internet hit Star Wreck.

The soundtrack of the invasion will be provided by Laibach, in collaboration with Ben Watkins (Juno Reactor) as a co-writer and producer of the score. You can get the first taste of the soundtrack on the new teaser that was published today.

Iron Sky has a budget of 6.5 million euros, which makes it one of the most expensive Finnish movies to date.

“I was actually sitting in a sauna with our team when one of us, Jarmo Puskala, came up with the idea that we should do a film about Nazis on the Moon. I agreed, and my number one demand was that if so, I want Laibach to do the music“, commented the Iron Sky director Timo Vuorensola about their choice of artists. “It was a far-fetched idea at the moment, but stuck into my head as a general style guideline not just for music, but for the general approach for the film, and finally, when I heard they would be interested after we contacted them, I was in ecstasy. Their unique sense of humor and nice and twisted approach will really light a spark in the wretched genre of film music. We’re hoping to create something like Vangelis did for Blade Runner – not just a soundtrack, but a whole new world that echoes through the music.”

“A few years ago we were approached by some crazy Finns on one of our tours in Finland to cooperate on film with them, but we didn’t take them that seriously at first“, said the spokesman of Laibach. “A year later we received a call and shortly afterwards the Iron Sky people visited Ljubljana. We went to our mountain shelter in the Julian Alps and they told us the story about the film they wanted us to collaborate on. They also showed us the work they had done so far and we were convinced straight away.”

“We were always fascinated by the secret histories of politics and power, as well as by space and the universe itself. We firmly believe that there is actually a great possibility that many Nazis survived the defeat after the Second World War and they escaped not only to South America and the USA but very probably Across the Universe, and especially to the Moon and creating a settlement there. In their last phase the Nazis certainly developed highly sophisticated equipment which theoretically could have helped them to reach and colonise the Moon.”

“This is of course a hypothetical film, but in our sincere opinion it is not entirely impossible and in fact quite logical. If it ever came true this film would be a perfect illustrated prediction about the clash between the two greatly Nazified civilisations existing on the same expanded time scale, so close but so far away from each other. We can’t wait for the result and we definitely want to be there when it happens!”

The movie creators collaborate actively with their audience and fans on all fronts, from publicity through content to funding. People who are interested in Iron Sky may demand to see the film in their home city using a system called Crowd Controls, collaborate in creating the movie in the acclaimed film creation playform Wreckamovie and fans can invest in the movie.

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.

Delegates will need to arrive in Berlin by the 3rd and can depart on the 7th. Alongside the Congress itself there will be a public programme of events including an exhibition, screenings and talks. More details will follow soon.

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’.

If you were not selected remember that there will be a programme of public events accompanying the congress (unfortunately we are not able to assist you with visas or accommodation in order to attend these events.) You can also take part in or follow the debates on the Congress microsite in advance of the event and remember that some elements of the event will be streamed live online and there will be regular online bulletins and videos while the congress runs. There will also be some satellite events taking part in other cities and details of these will be announced nearer the time.

You can view latest NSK news and begin to discuss the event here and on the congress microsite.

IF YOU HAVE NOT HEARD FROM US BY THE END OF 2009 YOUR APPLICATION WAS NOT SUCCESSFUL. DUE TO THE NUMBER OF APPLICATIONS RECEIVED WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DISCUSS THE REASONS FOR INDIVIDUAL SELECTIONS.

The LAIBACH REVISITED double album will include a complete version of the first classic Laibach album (LAIBACH, 1985), re-mastered from the original tapes with additional tracks included on the disc one. The second disc will present newly arranged and recorded versions of selected songs from the period 1980 – 1986, including Brat moj (Brother of Mine), Država (The State), Mi kujemo bodočnost (We Are Forging the Future), Krvava gruda – plodna zemlja (Bloody Ground – Fertile Soil), and others. This album is due to be released in May 2010.

The VOLKSWAGNER double album will present a unique Laibachian interpretation of Richard Wagner’s music. Disc 1 will present a studio version of recorded and mixed material created in collaboration between Laibach, the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, and Izidor Leitinger. Disc 2 will present a selection of tracks recorded from live performances of the VOLKSWAGNER suite. This album is scheduled for release in the second half of 2010.

Both albums will be produced as valuable collector’s items, equipped with richly designed booklets featuring exclusive photos, pictures, texts, essays, and information. The vinyl version will also feature a special poster. Precise descriptions of the albums and the exact release dates will be announced closer to the release date.

You can reserve a copy of the albums!