In honour of the 30th anniversary of the existence and work of Laibach, the group has decided to release two very special limited edition albums in CD and vinyl versions.

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!

Following this year’s major and successful retrospective exhibition AUSSTELLUNG LAIBACH KUNST – RECAPITULATION 2009 at Museum Sztuki in Łodz (Poland), which opened on May 26th and lasted until September 1st, Laibach is announcing a number of large-scale exhibitions for next year (2010), this time in Ljubljana, Zagreb, and Trbovlje. Each of these exhibitions will present a different aspect of Laibach’s visual and multimedia art.

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.

Laibach and Juno Reactor will join forces on an EU double headline tour in December.

The premiere show of the tour was already held on 18 October 2009 on the occasion of the long-awaited opening of Kino Šiška, a new concert and cultural venue in Ljubljana, Slovenia. For this occasion Laibach created new versions of some of their older tracks from the first half of 1980s, which will now also be presented on the upcoming tour.

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Laibach announced a special, double headline, concert featuring Laibach and Juno Reactor on the occasion of the long-awaited opening of Kino Šiška, a new concert venue in Ljubljana (Slovenia), on 18.9.2009.

Photo by Marco Pirc

Especially for this occasion Laibach created new versions of some of their older tracks from the first half of 1980’s.
Laibach and Juno Reactor will join forces also on the selected dates on December EU tour.

Laibach announced the opening of a large-scale Laibach exhibition in Muzeum Sztuki in Łodz (Poland), on May 26th 2009.

Ausstellung Laibach Kunst – Recapitulation 2009 focus on the visual phenomenon of Laibach. The group which has mainly been linked to the field of popular music in the public consciousness is to be reconsidered as a unique project uniting various media.
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Laibach are contributing a specially edited sequence lifted off their Mute-released DVDs for the group exhibition ‘The White Sport – Myths of Race’, curated by NSK Diplomat Avi Pitchon, and Hanna Freund-Shertok, opening on May 5th in Minshar Gallery in Tel-Aviv, standing until June 19th.

This is the first time Laibach are officially and directly involved in a project taking place in Israel.

The sequence combines selected excerpts from ‘Bravo – A Film About Slovenia’, mainly parts where Slavoj Zizek is explaining Laibach’s ‘over-identification’ strategies and the way these strategies expose the ‘hidden reverse’ of a regime or ideology. This brackets a live clip of ‘Tanz Mit Laibach’.

While the above does not directly relate to issues of race, it demonstrates generally the ways and reasons Laibach deals with Nazi kunst and its aesthetics – the way, for example, the drummer girls on ‘Tanz’ emulate images in the spirit of Riefenstahl or Hitler Jugend. The aesthetics of physical perfection mobilised for a totalitarian goal.

These aesthetics and the strategy behind their presentation corresponds with the approach of the rest of this group show that features only Israeli artists, some of which are internationally active and successful, like Anat Ben-David’ Karen Russo and Sigalit Landau.

Several of the works in the exhibition relate to the way ‘holy grail’ style mystical myths were constructed to support the concept of racial purity or superiority. Other works demonstrate the presence of race in areas of contemporary popular culture like Hollywood films, advertising and supermodels as perfect modern-day ’saviours’.

A quote from the curatorial text:

“Tracing the construction of the race myth, from the 19th Century, through The Third Reich and up to present day, acknowledges that in the foundation of something horrible one can find seducing beauty – a form of kitsch that informs of its power to influence. Behind the most terrible acts and the ugliest ideas often stand enchanting, seductive myths and symbols, their beauty magically mesmerising for ignorants and thugs, thinkers and scholars, as well as for us. This should be a trivial statement, because, if those myths weren’t beautiful and seductive, if those myths were so separate from us or alien to us, there would never have been a problem in the first place.”

In addition to ‘The White Sport’, another group exhibition is on in Tel-Aviv until mid-May, where Avi Pitchon is presenting a series of photographed icons – Laibach’s ‘Volk’ metal pin is presented alongside other band symbols, for example the anarchist punk band Crass, the street punk band Anti-Nowhere League, the pagan post-metal band Neurosis, the Krishna hardcore band Shelter, and the neo-folk/martial industrial band Von Thronstahl. This presentation is an additional meditation on the subject of how mythical, mystical, totalitarian and libertarian aesthetics are represented in underground music culture.