Monday Night 12.16.02 — "Predictions of Fire" (about NSK) — Screening
Comments Off on Monday Night 12.16.02 — "Predictions of Fire" (about NSK) — ScreeningMonday Night 12.16.02 — “Predictions of Fire” (about NSK) — Screening
Contents:
1. About this Monday
2. About NSK
3. About Video
4. Divine Intervention Screening
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2 notes: in addition to the
screening tonight, we want to
let you know that
a. this Tuesday
Alwan is organizing a screening
of Elia Suleiman’s most recent film
“Devine Intervention”. Of course, you
will be able to see it at Angelika in
Jan. this is a special preview, and those
who may have seen some of the earlier films,
a few of which were screened at 16Beaver
will surely not want to miss this film.
(see #4 for more details)
b. this Friday
we have tantatively scheduled
an evening with Yerevan based
artists Davit Karayan who is
here on an Artslink grant, more
detail forthcoming.
==============
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1. About this Monday
When: 7:00
What: Video Screening
What: “Predictions of Fire” by Michael Benson
Tonight we will be presenting a video about the famed
Slovenian collective NSK, working on many fronts, with
mutiple wings including the Irwin Group and Laibach,
this video documents their work, strategies,and
interventions.
Pairing this evening with our Lithuanian film screening,
and the upcoming event this Friday with Armenian Davit
Karayan we will embark on a series (for 2003) of evenings
which will present works/projects by artists/groups from
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics.
___________________________________________
2. About NSK
Below is a very limited set of links and texts
any simple search on Google will result in many more
links and materials, if anyone find:
a. About NSK State
http://www.nskstate.com/athens/main.asp
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/pop/topic_1/4062/1.html
http://www.ljudmila.org/trans/
http://www.heck.com/rep.htm
http://www.ljudmila.org/embassy/
http://www.ljudmila.org/kinetikon/
http://www.synet.net/sonic-boom/ai/arc/laibach.html
b. Mobile States
http://www.v2.nl/~arns/Texts/NSK/finale.htm
Mobile States | Shifting Borders | Moving Entities: The Slovenian Artists’
Collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK)
Inke Arns, Berlin
in: nettime / Geert Lovink, Pit Schultz (Hg.), Netzkritik: Materialien
zur Internet-Debatte,
Berlin: Edition ID-Archiv 1997, S. 201-211 [German]
in: Irwin, Trzy projekty / Three projects: Transnacionala, Irwin Live,
Icons, Centrum Sztuki Wspólczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski [Centre for
Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle], Warszawa [Warsaw], 7 Dec 1998 – 24
Jan 1999, pp. 59 – 76, ISBN 83-85142-49-5 [Polish/English]
“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.
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