Mobile States | Shifting Borders | Moving Entities: The Slovenian Artists' Collective Neue Slowenische Kunst
"We always refer to objectivity and subjectivity, but never to “trajectivity”. The anthropological discussion of the nomadic life and of sedentariness explains how the city emerged as the most important political form in history; but there is no understanding of the vectorial aspects of our species and its progress to and fro across the earth. Between the subjective and the objective there is obviously no room for the "trajective", that is, for the fact that movement takes place from here to there, a movement from one to the other, without which we will never really understand the different rules for the perception of the world." (Virilio) (1)
At the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties, political events have led to a disintegration of the previously valid world order, according to which the world was separated into two antagonistic blocks. This formerly prevailing order is now being replaced by globalization tendencies with world-wide effect, causing new mental cartographies to emerge and so demanding radically different systems of coordinates. Two strategies of reaction are now becoming visible: on the one hand, there is reversion to a static, defensive understanding of one's own location ("space of regression, ethnospace"), and on the other hand, the possibility of what might be referred to as a more situative or dynamic location of the self ("world spaces / transit spaces"), which is intended to guarantee a means of orientation within the now mobile global
spaces.
Space of Regression / Ethno Space
After the recent end of the once prevailing division of the world
into antagonistic blocks, a new order of the world is emerging; one which, according to Baudrillard, is "characterized by white fundamentalism, protectionism, discrimination and control". This "real, white - that is, morally, economically or ethnically 'whitened', uniform and cleansed Europe" (Baudrillard) (
2) is a result of the concept of ethnopluralism, which, whilst it perhaps underlines the right to be different, only allows this right in conjunction with a guarantee of the inviolability of personal identity - that is, which functions by means of a segregation of the other (
3).
In present day Europe, the concepts of national-cultural identity which have been conceived in this way find expression in a tendency towards increasing subnationalisation. But this particularism in fact represents no more than a transference of the well-known "lebensraum concept" to the regional area. Within the context of the preservation of "lebensraum" for European nations, in political practice both an increasing tendency towards the hermetism of the external boundaries of the territories they enclose is emerging in political practice, and a simultaneous increase in their ideological overloading, inasmuch as the territory is becoming a significant point of reference with regard to separation from the other / the others.
Although it appeared to have been overcome, the concept of the territory is gaining a new explosive nature in the nineties: as the crystallization of present-day political conflicts.
In the nineties, artists are investigating the mechanisms which constitute the political, territorial status quo. In this process, they create subversive orders which function parallel to the status quo, and which are always aimed at a transformation of the territory, that is, at breaking through the established territorial boundaries. On the one hand, the artists of the nineties attempt to create alternative counter-ideas to the newly underlined political fixation with territory, ethnic groups and borders; on the other hand, they question the sense of a territory defined in national-cultural terms and - to cite Fredric Jameson - attempt to develop new productive categories for the definition of social space:
"The new political art - if it is at all possible - will have to deal with the 'truth' of postmodernism, that is, it will have to hold onto the most important fact, onto the new kind of world space created by multinational capital. In this, a breakthrough ought to be possible, a breakthrough to new, as yet inconceivable means of representing this space, means with which we can again begin to determine our position as individual and collective subjects. [...] If there is anything which may be referred to as a political manifestation of the postmodern age, then this would be called upon to design a global cartography of our perception and cognition, and to project this into a social space open to precise evaluation". (4)
World Spaces / Transit Spaces
At the present time, it is becoming obvious that the previously valid rules for the perception of the world are not the only valid ones, and that besides or below the former systems of world order, new and alternative forms and rules for the perception of the world are possible. Our cognitive process towards the perception of the world is a process which has, with the use of analogous media and the increased extension of transport routes, undergone fundamental changes since the 19th century. Since the 80s, a process of increasing dislocation (that is, of increasing removal from any spatial ties) has been accelerating with the employment of digital media and global (at the same time globalizing) computer networks, a process which makes the development of new regulative criteria necessary. According to Virilio, the world is shrinking due to the acceleration of information and transport routes, and the most recent aspect of this process is the "disappearance of distance". Whilst the past was determined by spatial order, temporal order will be the key to the future.
Shrinking physical, territorial space is set off by digital territories, from whence emerges, according to Druckrey, "[...] a neuro-geography
of cognition, an utopos of networks, forms of electronic reception, and of post-territorial community [...] whose hold on matter is ephemeral, whose position in space is tenuous, and whose presence is measured in acts of participation rather than coincidences of location." (
5) The French urban planner and dromologist Paul Virilio also points to the alternative possibilities of perception when he refers to trajectivity and the vectorial as two constants neglected by our perception.
Since 1991 the Slovenian artists' collective 'Neue Slowenische Kunst' has been developing the "NSK State in Time". This state concept, which is neither based on a concrete geographical territory, nor on an
ethnically fixed Staatsnation, but rather on the notions of 'time' and 'movement', could be seen as a project addressing these aforementioned constants.
The 80s: Facing Ideology - "NSK - More Total than Totalitarianism" (6)
Founded in the Slovenian republic of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1984, the multimedia artists' collective 'Neue Slowenische Kunst' ['New Slovenian Art'] consists of the music group 'Laibach' (* 1980), the painters collective 'Irwin' (* 1983), and the performance group 'Gledalisce Sester Scipion Nasice' (* 1983). According to the declaration 10 Tock Konventa written in 1982 by the precursor of NSK 'Laibach Kunst', NSK did not define itself as a union or an alliance of single individuals but rather as an explicitely uniform collective. This collective took the State as its model, committing itself to the "directive principle" and the principle of industrial production, and adopted the "identification with ideology" as its main working
method.
This well-calculated taking over of elements and the play with fragments and scraps belonging to official ideology, understood as "ready-mades" (Duchamp), was about taking up existing codes of power and "answering those languages
by / with themselves." (
7) It was a strategy defined by Slavoj Zizek as radical "over-identification" with an ideology understood as regulating all societal relations. 'Laibach Kunst' and later 'Neue Slowenische Kunst' appeared on stage as an organisation that seemed to be "more total than totalitarianism" (Groys), using all moments of identification pregiven implicitly and explicitly through official ideology. NSK embodied a provocative hint towards the ideological structure underlying the "semitotalitarian system" (Barber-Kersovan) of Yugoslavia (
8).
'Retrogarde': Focussing on collective traumata
All the groups of the NSK were bound to the working method of 'retrogarde', which through an "emphatic ecclecticism" used all those texts (signs, images, symbols and forms of rhethoric), that retrospectively have become identification signs for certain artistic, political, religious or technological 'salvation utopias' of the 20th century. These very different 'salvatory utopias' or 'ideologies' have been formulated aesthetically as well, and it is exactly these aesthetic signs that - following NSK - are associated with certain collective traumata still at work today. Rather than through the invention of a new sign language, it is through a recourse to existing traumatic texts that it is possible for NSK to return to, name, point to and re-work those specific moments in history in which the turning-point from genuinely utopian dispositions into traumatic experiences has crystallized. For NSK one such turning-point is the assimilation and consecutive abolition of the artistic avant-gardes into totalitarian systems at the end of the 1920s.
Through using and interconnecting signs taken from different contexts, e.g. Russian suprematism and socialist realism, NSK does not want to point to the formal differences (in this case abstract / naturalistic); rather the aim is to confront layers of meaning lying behind the signs, and thus to make us aware of these meanings. The question is whether these layers of meaning connected to the signs are compatible or radically different. The working method of 'retrogarde' evokes the historical meaning of these signs as well as the meaning that retrospectively was added to these signs through the course of history, and insofar can be understood as a "reconstruction of complex systems of thought." (Grzinic). The eclecticistic use of "symbolical forms" (Cassirer) from different cultural traditions as well as from different periods clearly refers to the assimilatory character of Slovenia's 'eclecticistic' cultural history, understood as a european microcosmos. NSK's 'retrogardist', or emphatically eclecticist working method, can be seen as a radically intertextual artistic practice, adopting and developing further the concept of intertextuality originally formulated in the field of literature.
NSK's strategy does not aim at overcoming the power of ideological signs through irony, parody or satire, but it is rather about calling our attention to the power of these signs. Their strategy works towards a return to, a reconstruction of, and, consequently a deconstruction of ideology into the aesthetical elements that constitute its power. The Slovenian collective is convinced that these ideological sign cannot be overcome. It is only through calling our attention to these aesthetical foundations of an ideology that ideology can be partly deprived of its power.
Thus the 'retrogarde' method, most clearly formulated in the paintings of 'Irwin', has to be distinguished from other artistic strategies, which at first glance might seem similar, e.g. from american postmodern 'appropriation art' as well as from the Soviet sots-art or the Moscow conceptualism of the late 70s and the early 80s. Even if we can suspect that during the formation period of the retrogardist working method it was influenced conceptually by american postmodernism, this influence was restricted to the early beginnings of NSK and its predecessors, and got completely assimilated into - one could even say appropriated by - the concept of 'retrogarde'.
Subversive strategy
The radical artistic strategies employed by NSK in the 80s can be understood as an aesthetic transposition / conversion of the theory of the Slovenian Lacan school, developed in the early 80s around the psychoanalytic and Lacanian Slavoj Zizek. This new theory, which members of NSK already referred to in the beginning of the 80s, became an important theoretical foundation of Ljubljana's subcultural scene.
The activities of the artists' collective are not merely to be seen as reactions to events in Slovenian, or Yugoslav daily politics. Rather, NSK should be understood as a research enterprise that, through 'over-coding' the ideologic-aesthetical foundations of the State, set out to subvert the so-called ideological superstructure of the Yugoslav state. The emphasis is put on subversive, because NSK's strategy did not consist of an overtly critical or moral discourse vis-à-vis the state and its ideology; it did not distance itself from
ideology through satire or irony, but rather 'over-identified' with the ideology in power.
'Over-identification' with the 'hidden reverse' of ideology
According to Slavoj Zizek and Peter Sloterdijk (
9), overtly criticizing the ideology of a system misses the point, because today every ideological discourse is marked by cynicism. This means that every ideological discourse has internalized, and thus already anticipated its own critique. Ideology does not 'believe' its own declarations anymore, it assumed a cynical distance towards its own moral premises. Consequently it became impossible to adequately encounter cynicism as a universal and diffuse phenomenon through the traditional means of critique of ideology (e.g. through enlightened engagement). Vis-à-vis a cynical ideology, according to Zizek, the means of irony becomes something that 'plays into the hands of power'. The public declarations and values of an ideology are 'cynical'; they are actually not to be taken seriously.
But as soon as an 'adequate distance' no longer is kept, when an 'over-identification' with ideology takes place, the so-called 'ruling ideology' has a problem. According to Zizek an ideology consists of two parts: a) public 'explicite' values of a political system and b) the so-called 'hidden reverse', i.e. the implicite values and premises of an ideology that have to remain hidden in order for the ideology to reproduce itself. NSK addressed these 'implicit' ideological premises (i.e. violence, fascination, enjoyment / jouissance) and, through the strategy of 'over-identification', brought the 'hidden reverse' to the light of day.
Creation of a dysfunctional ideology
Zizek perceives the offer of jouissance (enjoyment) as one important element in the functioning of ideologies; i.e. the fact that an ideology offers the individual a chance to take charge of the ordering of the Real. The ideological discourse consists of single elements, the so-called 'shifting signifiers' or sinthomes. These sinthomes, which bear no meaning in themselves, gain their ideological meaning only within the context of the discourse of an ideology.
According to Zizek, the deconstruction of ideology - which is performed most effectively by 'Laibach' performances - has to be understood as a process working on two levels: 1. as a de-contextualisation, i.e. as an extrication of single elements from the context that confers meaning to the phenomena, and 2. as a re-contextualisation of these meaningless fragments (sinthome) within a dysfunctional or pseudo ideology created by the collective.
This supposed offer for identification, which seems to be inherent in all the ideological elements used by NSK, dissolves after the removal of the context granting meaning. The elements and splinters of ideology that are left over can now be experienced in the 'complete stupidity of their material presence' (Zizek). The goal of this 'excorcist strategy' (Benson) can be described as 'holding up a distorting mirror', aiming at a cathartic 'self-enlightenment' of the public by revealing the inherent jouissance (enjoyment) within any ideology.
The Slovenian Syndrome
The NSK was founded at a time when the domestic political situation in the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia was characterized by mounting differences between the individual republics. Soon after Tito's death in 1980 a process of political re-orientation started. It rapidly became clear that the majority of responsable politicians on the federal level tried to tackle the looming political dissolution of the country by taking authoritarian measures: by re-centralization and by fighting liberalization. These decisions also implied a renouncement of the autonomous rights of the Yugoslav republics guaranteed by the Yugoslav constitution, as well as of the decentralized organisation of the state. These steps taken were directed especially against Slovenia; in comparison with other Yugoslav republics, a more liberal climate prevailed in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. The hard-liners called this climate the "Slovenian Syndrome" -- a quite derogatory and almost pathological expression.
The development of this more liberal climate in politics and culture could take place due to the relative open-mindedness of Slovenian authorities towards the alternative movements which had begun articulating themselves in the early 80s. This open-mindedness became obvious, at the latest, around 1986/87. The alternative or subcultural scene had begun formulating alternative social and autonomous cultural concepts long before the process of party formation in 1988, which in politological terms is normally equated with pluralization and democratization. The activities of the 'alternative' triggered a process which can be seen as an important factor in the development, or rather the re-emergence, of civil society in Slovenia.
It is important to know that the carriers of this process were neither dissident intellectuals nor reform communists; rather a network of alternative groups developed, communicating through deviating subcultural forms (e.g. punk), or through new 'alternative' art forms and social interest groups (the New Social Movements). This 'alternative' didn't have reform of the existing political system in mind, nor did this 'alternative' perceive itself as a 'dissident' movement ex negativo. Rather it tried to create its own autonomous structure of an alternative public and, according to the new contents, to create and use different forms of communication. In the 80s, the formulation of alternative societal outlines was clearly linked with the creation and development of new artistic and aesthetical forms of articulation.
NSK's 'subcultural escalation games’
Within the 80s subcultural scene of Ljubljana, 'Neue Slowenische Kunst' represented the most radical exponent of the 'alternative'. NSK consistently combined all the elements that existed within the alternative scene: In the 80s, the artists' collective was playing "subcultural escalation games" (Dieffenbach), which were constantly pointing towards the aesthetics of power. The NSK did not perceive itself as a 'moral instance' opposed to a presupposedly 'amoral' state. Rather, it displayed the absurd theatre of the fascination of power, using the pre-given available ideological material. Even 'Laibach's 'exorcist' strategy can be subsumed under the new form of communication: It was about
bringing the hidden phantasm into the open, on stage; not by explaining rationally how suppression works, but by making this mechanism psychically and physically understandable and thus depriving it of its power. Right from the beginning, the aesthetic principle of 'Neue Slowenische Kunst' was anti-enlightening: It exhibited not a single millimeter belief in the cold power of rationality. It was a provocation of a political-ideological system based on pathetic anti-fascism, but which "remains mute when it comes to the structure of [totalitarian] longing." (
10). By addressing all the traumatic experiences of European as well as Slovenian history, by breaking all taboos, NSK brought to the surface those things that had remained concealed: the existence of nationalist
myths and the subcutaneous longing for
voluntary subordination. Zizek has called this subversive strategy "traversing the phantasm".
Catalysing democratisation processes
How is it that an artists' collective that declared itself 'totalitarian', was perceived as one of the catalysts of the pluralization and democratization processes? How is it that, according to Alenka Barber-Kersovan, the 'totalitarianism' of the "spiritual terrorists" (
11) of NSK became an "essential element for the democratization of a semi-totalitarian system" (
12)? Besides the fact that NSK's artistic activities were a genuine part of the complex activities of the alternative scene, the effects of the collective's artistic strategies have to be emphasized in two directions: towards the public / the audience and towards the state authorities. By refusing to take an unequivocal stance regarding their genuine position and by refusing to taking a clear didactic role concerning the evaluation of certain phenomena (e.g. 'totalitarianism'), NSK remained an ambivalent phenomenon, permanent trigger of public discussion. NSK's ambivalence called for a constant self-control and for a permanent positioning of the individual towards collective identification patterns.
But it was also the socialist regime that had to react to this ambivalence. The regime perfectly understood the pathetic mockery produced by NSK provocateurs. The measures taken against NSK by the authorities in the 80s can be understood as an indicator of the readiness of the Yugoslav authorities to allow actions outside the sphere of the officially sanctioned discourse; respectively the form of this discourse. NSK was challenging these boundaries / limitations; it was about testing how far ambivalent cultural phenomena and strategies diverging from the official discourse could induce the state to react politically. The state could not avoid reacting to the challenge of NSK, and whatever the reaction was, it allowed an insight into the 'nature of power'.
Anti-enlightened strategies with an enlightening effect
Behind the 'anti-enlightened' strategies of 'Neue Slowenische Kunst' in the 80's one can perceive a driving force which can be described as having a thoroughly enlightening effect. It was really through the ambiguity, through the seemingly open 'totalitarianism', through its collective form of organisation which proved to be latently menacing, that the NSK forced the single individual to constantly check his or her own political position. Retrospectively the unusual artistic strategies of 'Neue Slowenische Kunst' can be seen as one of the factors in the social changes that were happening during in the 80's in Slovenia, a societal change which became the decisive condition / presupposition for the political processes of pluralization and democratization taking place at the end of the 80s.
The 90s: Facing Global Politics
The political events that were taking place in Yugoslavia in the beginning of the 1990s have not left unaffected the work of the artists' collective 'Neue Slowenische Kunst'. Parallel to the declaration of independence of the Republic of Slovenia in 1991, NSK, previously an 'organisation', declared their transformation into a 'State'. The artistic concept of the NSK Drzava v casu ('NSK State in Time') comments on concrete political developments in ex-Yugoslavia in a specific way: through an artistic counter-sketch (plan, project) NSK tries to offer a hint at an alternative to the political fixations on territories, ethnic groups and borders that gained strength since the beginning of the 90s (not only in ex-Yugoslavia, but certainly there in its most extreme shape).
Time & Movement: new categories for defining space
As an artistic state concept, the NSK Drzava v casu defines itself neither through a concrete geographical territory, nor through an ethnically fixed Staatsnation. For the definition of a proper 'spiritual' territory the concept of NSK emphasizes the notion of time. The notion of time is understood as a new productive category for the definition of space. Within this terminology, 'time' is equated with the individual accumulation of 'experiences':
"The role of art and artists in defining time which belongs to them individually is more effective than in defining territory. The real, not imaginary, 'fatherland' of the individual is limited to the circle of the house in which he was born, the classroom or the library in which he acquired knowledge, the landscapes in which he walked, the spaces to which he is oriented, to the circle of his own individual experience, to that which exists and not that he was born into.
The territorial borders of the NSK state can by no means be equated with the territorial borders of the actual state in which NSK originated. The borders of the NSK state are drawn along the coordinates of its symbolic and physical body, which at the time of its activity acquired objective values and objective status." (13)
The artistic concept defines the "NSK State" as an 'abstract body' whose borders are in a state of constant flux, depending on the activities of its 'physical'
and 'symbolic' body, and whose 'territory' is situated in the consciousness of its 'members':
"The NSK state in time is an abstract organism, a suprematist body, installed in a real social and political space as a sculpture comprising the concrete body warmth, spirit and work of its members. NSK confers the status of a state not upon territory but upon the mind, whose borders are in a state of flux, in accordance with the movements and changes of its symbolic and physical collective body". (14)
By putting an emphasis on the factor of movement, another productive category
for the definition of 'space' is given. It is through movement, i.e. a physical change of location, from one place to another, and through the ensuing intellectual preoccupation with the 'other place', and with the 'other spiritual territory', that new experiences become possible, leading again to the creation of 'time'. "The relation between place and time is the key relation. Movement implies temporality, i.e. produces time." (
15) Within Irwin's terminology, this specific form of movement can be equated with a 'transplantation of knowledge':
"There are basic differences between the perception and interpretation of the sign language of Irwin's paintings. This is one of our main concerns, because signs change with time and place. A sign may have one meaning in Russia, and yet another meaning in the West. Recognition of signs and symbols functions in such a way that their meanings differ with places; but nevertheless they have certain elements in common. Differences and similarities provide logic to our research. Irwin's starting point is to proceed from the specificity of the place of its origin, and to transfer experience [to the West]. This is transplantation of knowledge". (16)
The 'immaterial state' NSK Drzava v casu performs this movement by materializing in different time intervals under the form of an 'embassy' or a 'consulate' in various places (
17). This means that the members of the different NSK groups, as performed for the first time in 1992 during the "NSK Embassy Moscow" (
18) in Russia, travel to a certain place together (in Moscow, a private apartment), and then through lectures of NSK members and participants from Slovenia or ex-Yugoslavia as well as local theoreticians and artists, and discussions with the audience, stimulate an exchange of experiences. For the duration of the 'embassy' or the 'consulate' the place of the event is declared to be state territory of the NSK Drzava v casu. The central element of this exchange of experiences is accompanied by exhibitions ('Irwin', 'Neuer Kollektivismus' [= 'New Collectivism'; the graphic department of NSK], concerts ('Laibach') or performances ('Kozmokineticni Kabinet Noordung'). As of today, the NSK Drzava v casu has been installed temporarily, as well as permanently, in Moscow, Gent, Venice, Suhl, Berlin, Florence, Amsterdam and Umag.
One would suspect that the transition from the 80s to the 90s brought about a fundamental change in NSK's working method. With the loss of the clearly defined contextual reference system which NSK's 'overidentifying' strategies were addressing in the 1980s, we can now question the viability of continuing these strategies within the context of today's globalization tendencies and the gradual vanishing of clearly localizable (power) centers in the 90s. NSK's disorientation since the early 1990s, triggered by the cessation of reference systems, becomes clear in the visual metaphors used in the 1992 'Laibach' music video "Kapital": In the hermetically sealed-off cockpit of a space ship whose walls are decorated with suprematist black and white crosses, the 'Laibach' crew flies into deep, dark space. The visual material that has been accumulated by NSK in the 80s doesn't find reference points anymore in the as yet unknown and unsurveyed ("black") space of the 1990s.
More promising seems the direction under formulation since 1991 - with the creation of the "NSK State in Time" - mainly by 'Irwin' and Eda Cufer (member of NSK): The concept of the "NSK State in Time" leads away from the hermetic entity which NSK defined itself as in the 80s; away from NSK as a declarative setting (Setzung) using totalitarian emblematics meant to confront the single individual with his or her (own) fantasized partaking of, or participation in power.
On the contrary, in the 1990s the concept of the "NSK State in Time" puts the emphasis on the moment of communication, of open interaction, of exchange of experiences. The temporarily materializing 'embassies' of the "NSK State" are not only about a self-referential re-working of the own history. Rather, the aim can be described as the wish to communicate the specific experiences made in a certain place in the 80's to another 'different' place, and thus to make these experiences productive. Which differences can be perceived; what are the possible similarities or homologies? How can the specific experiences made in the "East" be communicated to the "West"; how far can these experiences be adapted or actualized and made productive for the 1990s? To what extent can the contemporary - potentially totalitarian - projective discourse formations be met by using strategies developed by the NSK in the 80's? Can the deconstructive procedures by which NSK was revealing and pointing to the affective functioning of ideologies within mass societies be transferred to the more subtle - and thus much more perfidious - working of 'Leitbild' formations within the mass individual societies of the 1990s?
During the one month journey of the "NSK State" through the United States of America in July 1996 ("Transnacionala. A Journey from the East to the West") these issues, among others, were also addressed. These are question that NSK has to ask themselves critically, but questions directed to the audience as well.
The NSK State without territory
In
his text "Es gibt keinen Staat in Europa" (1992) ["There is no state in Europe"] Slavoj Zizek laid out the theoretical foundations of the artistic concept of the "NSK State in Time", linking these to the concrete events in ex-Yugoslavia since 1991. Describing the relation to the state of both the left and the right, Zizek asserts that "[t]he utopian perspective, which henceforth opened up towards both the radical left-wing as well as the antiliberal right-wing, was the abolition of the State or its subordination to the community." (
19) According to Zizek, the war in ex-Yugoslavia can be
understood as a result of the dissolution of state authority as well as the subordination of state structures to ethnic interests:
"Today's experience, summed up in the word 'Bosnia', confronts us with the reality of this utopia. What we are witnessing in Bosnia is the direct consequence of the disintegration of State authority or its submission to the power play between ethnic communities - what is missing in Bosnia is a unified State authority elevated above ethnic disputes." (20)
Contrary to the utopian ideas of both the
extreme left as well as the ultra right, it now becomes clear "that there is nothing liberating about the breaking of the state authority - on the contrary: we are consigned to corruption and the impervious conflict of local interests which are no longer restricted by a formal legal framework. (
21) Following these ideas, Zizek formulates his philosophical-theoretical state concept, which at first glance seems paradoxical, confronting the reader with a complete reversal of previously valid concepts:
"From all this it is thus necessary to draw what at first glance seems a paradoxical, yet crucial conclusion: today the concept of utopia has made an about-turn - utopian energy is no longer directed towards a stateless community, but towards a state without a nation, a state which would no longer be founded on an ethnic community and its territory, therefore simultaneously towards a state without territory, towards a purely artificial structure of principles and authority which will have severed the umbilical chords of ethnic origin, indigenousness and rootedness." (22)
Transposition: Zeppelin = Vehicle / Traject and Vector
In the 80s NSK could be described as static, bound to place, analyzing the flux of aesthetic-ideological signs through territories. In the 90s the artists' collective, through its transformation from an organisation into a state body, itself becomes an immaterial 'organism', fluctuating through real territories.
As such, the NSK State in Time becomes a trajective vehicle of a 'pure exterior', a core without interiority, a border without territory. The only form of existence of the NSK State are its embassies, ephemeral temporary materialisations serving to make visible symbolic differences.
The aim of the transposition of NSK, of movement,
of travelling and the ensuing changes of location of the entire NSK organism can be seen in communication and exchange with this other (different) place.
"[...] an autonomous NSK territory can be defined; a territory capable of moving, not confined by geographical, national and cultural borders; a territory realizing its own notional space." (23)
1 Paul Virilio, Revolutionen der Geschwindigkeit [Revolutions of Velocity], Berlin 1993, p. 62 [back]
2 Jean Baudrillard, 'Kein Mitleid für Sarajevo' (1993) ['No Compassion for Sarajevo'], in: Lettre international, Berlin, Winter 1995, p. 91 [back]
3 see Rainer Ansén, 'Die Ethnisierung Europas. Zur Philosophie der Neuen Rechten' ['Ethnicizing Europe: On the philosophy of the New Right'], in: Lettre international, Heft 24 / 1994, pp. 89 - 90; Boris Groys, 'Sammeln, gesammelt werden. Die Rolle des Museums, wenn der Nationalstaat zusammenbricht' ['Collecting and being collected. The role of the museum when the national state collapses'], in: Lettre international, Heft 33 / 1996, pp. 32 - 36 [back]
4 Fredric Jameson, 'Postmoderne: Zur Logik der Kultur im Spaet- kapitalismus', in: Andreas Huyssen / Klaus Scherpe (eds.), Postmoderne. Zeichen eines kulturellen Wandels, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1989, p. 99 f. [back]
5 Timothy Druckrey, 'The Fate of Reason in the Global Network: Teleology, Telegraphy, Telephony, Television, Telesthetics', in: ars electronica (ed.), Mythos Information: Welcome to the Wired World, Wien / New York 1995, p. 152 [back]
6 see Boris Groys, 'The Irwin Group: More Total Than Totalitarianism', in: Irwin, Kapital, exhibition catalogue, Ljubljana 1991 [back]
7 Laibach, cit. in: Claudia Wahjudi, 'Zwoelf Jahre musikalische Zitatenschlacht zwischen zwei kontraeren Systemen', Interview mit 'Laibach', in: Neues Deutschland, 13. 8. 1992 [back]
8 see Alenka Barber-Kersovan, ''Laibach' und sein postmodernes 'Gesamtkunstwerk'', in: Helmut Roesing (ed.), Spektakel / Happening / Performance. Rockmusik als 'Gesamtkunstwerk', Mainz 1993, pp. 66 - 80 [back]
9see Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, London / New York 1989; Slavoj Zizek, Liebe Dein Symptom wie Dich selbst! Jacques Lacans Psychoanalyse und die Medien, Berlin, 1991; Slavoj Zizek, 'Das Unbehagen in der Liberal-Demokratie', in: Heaven Sent No. 5 / 1992, p. 44 - 50; Peter Sloterdijk, Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason], 2 vols., Frankfurt a. M. 1983 [back]
10 Katja Dieffenbach, 'Slowenien und die 90er: Kunststaat', in: Spex, No. 10, Oct. 1994, p. 52 [back]
11 H. Davenport, 'Partisan Performances', in: The Observer, July 19, 1987 [back]
12 Alenka Barber-Kersovan, ibid., p. 75 [back]
13 Eda Cufer & Irwin, 'Concepts and Relations' (1992), in: Irwin, Zemljopis Vremena / Geography of Time, exhibition catalogue, Umag 1994 [back]
14 Eda Cufer & Irwin, 'NSK State in Time' (1993), in: Irwin, Zemljopis Vremena / Geography of Time, ibid. . Note: NSK makes a distinction between its 'citizens' and its 'members'. 'Citizens' in practice are anyone who can scrape together the money for a passport, while 'members' are specially fifteen people. (M. Benson) [back]
15 'Irwin', in: "Transcentrala (Neue Slowenische Kunst Drzava v casu)", video by Marina Grzinic & Aina Smid, 20.05 min, Ljubljana 1993 [back]
16 Ibid. [back]
17 As an addition to the embassies and consulates, the NSK Drzava v casu issues passports, which are understood as a "confirmation of temporal space" (NSK) and which can be obtained by any person irrespective of citizenship or nationality. [back]
18 Neue Slowenische Kunst, NSK Embassy Moscow. How the East sees the East (Irwin in Collaboration with Apt-Art International and Ridzina Gallery, Moscow May 10 - June 10, 1992), Obalne Galerije Piran / Loza Gallery Koper (eds.), Koper [1992] [back]
19 Slavoj Zizek, 'Es gibt keinen Staat in Europa' (1992), in: Padiglione NSK / Irwin: Gostujoci umetniki / Guest artists, exhibition catalogue XLV. Biennale di Venezia 1993, Moderna Galerija (ed.), Ljubljana 1993 [back]
20 Ibid. [back]
21 Ibid. [back]
22 Ibid. [back]
23 Miran Mohar (Irwin), in: Eda Cufer, The Symptom of the Vehicle, Interview with Irwin (NSK), 1995 [unpublished manuscript] [back]
Suggested
