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INTERROGATION MACHINE.
Laibach and NSK
by Alexei Monroe
References:
1. Mark Thompson, A Paper House The End of Yugoslavia,
1993, 39. (London: Vintage. 1993).
2. Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying With The Negative Kant, Hegel
and the Critique of Ideology. (2nd edit.) (Durham: Duke UP 1994,) 192-3.
3. This doctrine was based on a constant state of low-level
psychological mobilisation of the population In the event of war the population
was to confront the invader with partisan tactics based on elaborate planning
and pre-positioned weapons stores. This structure formed the material
and tactical basis for the rival paramilitary groups of the nineties.
4. See Erika Gottlieb, The Orwell Conundrum A Cry of Despair
or Faith In The Spirit of Man? (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1992)
156-7 and Francoise Thom, Newspeak The Language of Soviet Communism. (London:
The Claridge Press 1989,) 115.
5. Slavoj Zizek The Sublime Object of Ideology, (London:
Verso 1995, 5th edit.), 30.
6. From an interview featured on the Laibach Bravo video.
7. Slavoj Zizek, Why are Laibach and NSK not Fascists?.
M’ARS. Vol. 3-4. (1993), 3-4.
8. Ibid. Zizek argues that NSK suspend the efficiency
of regimes by over-identifying with their hidden aspects (for instance
the latent totalitarianism of the Yugoslav system).
9. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Kafka, Towards A
Minor Literature. (London: Athlone Press, 1996), 12.
10. NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst. (Los Angeles: AMOK Books,
1991.), 44.
11. Thom 1989, 22.
12. NSK 1991, 52.
13 A Beuys reference, these materials are used in some
Irwin pieces.
14. NSK 1991, 44.
15. Brejc, T. 1992, Slovene Images in Huttenbach, H. (Ed.) Voices From
The Slovene Nation. Nationalities Papers Special Edition. 142-3.
16. The three founding NSK groups each have their own specific retro terminologies.
In 1982 first Laibach began to use the philosophical/conceptual term "retroavantgarde".
The Theatre of the Sisters of Scipion Nasice used the term "retrogarde"
(conceptualised as a social & cultural movement) whilst Irwin described
their methodology as the "retro principle".
17. Zizek 1995, 55-6.
18. J.C. Finley, Barrett Watten, IRWIN: A Dialogue in
IRWIN Kapital. (Edinburgh/Ljubljana: CO-LABORATOR/Institut NSK, 1991).
19. Slavoj Zizek, Es Gibt Keinen Staat in Europa (There
is No State In Europe), In Irwin, Padiglione NSK (NSK Pavillion) (Ljubljana:
Moderna Galerija 1993). |
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Interrogation Machine: Laibach and The
NSK State
Terror as Therapy/Therapy as Terror
Theory as Terror/Theory as Therapy
LAIBACH-IRWIN-STATE
LAIBACH
"Laibach itself does not function as answer but as
a question."
Slavoj Zizek.
What is the best approach to exploring what Laibach, Irwin
and the NSK State represent? Fundamentally the work of all NSK groups
represents an artistic and also cultural response to the imposed violence
of ideology, culture and theory. This perception of violence is present
most acutely in Laibach's initial reprocessing of language and ideology
and to see how the machine operates it's necessary to return to these
traumatic roots.
When someone is confronted by Laibach what they are actually
confronted with is Laibach's confrontation with the series of political
and cultural regimes and systems that structure our environment and which
Laibach confront. Whilst Laibach might seem like the ultimate mechanism
for imposing ideology it is actually one for exposing it.
Laibach was created to "explore the relationship between
art and ideology" and was an attempt to create a counter-mechanism
able to retrieve meaning from the overwhelming contradictions of politics
and culture. Laibach distilled a series of competing Western and local
theories present in Yugoslavia. By 1980 Western philosophy and theory
were increasingly influential amongst the intelligentsia, and different
authors became associated with different Yugoslav "schools"
and institutions. This trend affected the Yugoslav party and even the
army. Soviet thought was treated with suspicion because of the legacy
of the break with Stalin in 1948 and the party's desire to differentiate
itself from Stalinism. All these ideologies supplemented and existed in
parallel with the all-pervasive self-management discourse (itself an eclectic
mixture of various ideologies), which was a constant presence within all
social institutions.1 Zizek depicts a situation in which the
various philosophical schools were in competition, within and between
the Yugoslav republics.2 According to Zizek the paramount schools
within Slovenia were Heideggerianism amongst the opposition and Frankfurt-School
Marxism within the party. In between these two lay an Althusserian school
attacked by both camps and the near-taboo Slovene Lacanian School centred
on Zizek. These ideologies structured the discourses through which the
different institutions communicated with the public and Zizek notes for
instance that the army's justifications of its military-ideological doctrines
("General People's Defence"3 ) employed Heideggerian
language. This institutionalised ideological cacophony amplified the oppressive
aspects of each theory, creating an infinitely more complex reality than
in other socialist states. If Yugoslavia failed it was as much because
it was too complex as too primitive.
Laibach and then NSK alluded to and incorporated elements
of most of the principal theories and "recapitulated" the terror
instilled in the subject by tautological and contradictory discourse.4
Laibach fused the competing theories into its own distinctive language.
Adorno's critique of popular culture is strongly present in Laibach statements
but its pronouncements on the role of the mass media also incorporate
the work of Althusser and Jacques Attali and both Hegelian and Heideggerian
traces are apparent in the texts of the NSK Philosophy Department.
Laibach created what it called "political poetry"
by "sampling" official self-management discourse, even appropriating
statements by Tito (as well as his image). In fact Tito has enjoyed a
strange after-life in the work of NSK and various other ex-Yugoslav artists,
and in the late nineties one artist even arranged for Tito to walk the
streets of Belgrade once again. The ruling discourse in Yugoslavia was
simultaneously ubiquitous and invisible. Laibach was able to appropriate
the codes of self-management ideology precisely because almost no-one,
party ideologues included, had actually read its core texts in any detail.
The ideology was still active but awaited a use. Zizek claims that in
practice developed totalitarian ideology has abandoned pretensions to
the truth: "It is no longer meant, even by its authors, to be taken
seriously - its status is just that of a means of manipulation, purely
external and instrumental; its rule is secured not by its truth-value
but by simple extra-ideological violence and promise of gain."5
Laibach took the dominant feature of the normative politico-linguistic
environment and made it strange by juxtaposing it with a wide range of
other contradictory discourses and artistic techniques. These ranged from
Fluxus art and conceptualism to Nazi and Stalinist art then on to Punk
and electro-acoustic music. So again while Laibach appears to be a total,
monolithic phenomenon it is actually composed of what Zizek calls an "aggressive
inconsistent mixture". To fix upon and condemn (or alternatively
celebrate) any one (shifting) ideological point within it is fatal since
as Zizek states in contemporary politics it is often a "...mistake
is to suppose that the fascists are fascists, that they behave like fascists."6
By never revealing a final cause or programme, this plural monolith translates
re-processes the alienation and fear generated by what it samples, returning
them to their sources. Laibach generates a de-stabilising effect by turning
the de-stabilsing, unresolved elements of each system against themselves.
The NSK strategy is particularly oriented towards rendering
visible/audible/ perceptible what Zizek7 terms the "hidden
underside" of systems and regimes. Within every system there is always
an excessive element that can often frustrate or incapacitate a system
if it is revealed.8 This can manifest as contradiction, inconsistency,
paradox or even excessive self-identification of the system. All these
normally concealed elements, essential to the normal functioning and reproduction
of ideology are the basis of NSK operations.
In a superficially-tolerant and pluralist environment which
is actually saturated by ideology (or as now by the market), traditional
dissident approaches are of limited value. To really de-stabilise authority
it is sometimes necessary to go beyond or behind it, to annexe the space
it cannot publicly admit to owning. To understand what this implies we
need to depart from orthodox Zizekism and bring in the work of Gilles
Deleuze and Felix Guattari9 , both criticised by Zizek. In
their seminal work on Kafka, Towards a Minor Literature, Deleuze and Guattari
interpret what they call the "becoming-animal" process in Metamorphosis
as an answer to the inhumanity of the (bureaucratic) machineries that
were increasingly impinging on daily life at the start of the 20th century.
Laibach's response to similar conditions was based on becoming in Zizek's
terms, "more x than x itself", becoming-systemic/state/ or machine-like
– apparently colder, more systematic and ruthless than the system itself.
In addition it means manifesting the repressed totalitarian desires of
a system.
Straying even further into Deleuzian territory we could
describe Laibach's approach as an example of what Deleuze and Guattari
term "schizoanalysis." That is, Laibach use the schizoid reactions
produced by the imposition of ideology and culture to analyse these impositions.
In order to analyse these intangible and spectral elements it's necessary
to construct the illusion of a total phenomenon, an interrogation machine
capable of interrogating the mechanisms that interrogate the subject.
For over-identification to be effective it has to (appear) total. Over-identification
transcends and symbolically re-activates the terror of the social field
(as structured by the regimes that shape it). The spectre of totality
gives the phenomenon sufficient "credibility" to sow doubt and
disquiet (as well as fascination). Sufficient "evidence" has
to be present to activate social and ideological defence mechanisms.
Every element in Laibach is a metaphor and a private archetype
of the systems it interrogates. For instance, the use of noise in Laibach's
work reflects generalised social and cultural violence inflicted by the
mass media and music industries. Laibach manipulate and perform such systemic
violence or "regime noise" against audiences and regimes alike
with a ferocity approaching the intensity of electro convulsive therapy
(ECT).
"LAIBACH practices sound/force in the form of a systematic
(psychophysical) terror as therapy and as the principle of social organisation.
Purpose: to provoke maximum collective emotions and release the automatic
response of masses;
Consequence: the effective disciplining of the revolted and alienated
audience; awakening the feeling of total belonging and commitment to
the Higher Order;
Result: by obscuring his intellect, the consumer is reduced to a state
of humble remorse, which is a state of collective aphasia, which is
in turn the principle of social organization"10
Added to this sonic and physical violence is a linguistic
and conceptual violence that
evokes Francoise Thom's description of linguistic totalitarianism and
its use of what she calls "...pedantry as a means of intellectual
terrorism".11 Laibach's use of language is terroristic
in that it is explicitly designed for use as a disorientating, alienating
device as violent as its sounds and images. Laibach's language is designed
both in its associations and its mode of expression to be oppressive,
an analogue to the violence of the concerts. Asked in one early interview
about their bureaucratic mode of communication Laibach explicitly stated
that their work is based on the linguistic-conceptual terror of ideology:
"Such a form of interview is the limit of comprehension,
within which the subject is prevented from feigning ignorance and communication
through non-communication. The way of its formation is simultaneously
also a process of permanent repression on linguistic models, and thereby,
also on the subjects which construct them. Such a form reduces the possibility
of individual influences on the structure of the expression itself to
a minimum; it is dictated through the totalitarian structure and understood
as the right to incomprehensibility. (LAIBACH thus constantly degrades
every communication on the level of the word, turning it into ideological
phraseology). The assimilating capacity of the consumer is limited and
depends on:
a: the knowledge of the symbol(s)
b: the level of development of the consumer
c: the technique of perception (speed-reading)
The consumer can only influence the third factor; LAIBACH
recommends a selection of sources of information."12
This last recommendation actually represents a coded instruction
to educate yourself, to follow the connections and attempt to reconstruct
the context of what you are presented with. As some of us know, following
Laibach means following all manner of sources, exposing yourself to the
diverse elements in order to re-construct meaning and not simply remain
a passive victim of spectacle. At the same time, Laibach's "right
to incomprehensibility" expresses one of the clearest features of
its work, a defence of ambiguity and of the right not to have to explain
every detail of an artistic process or adopt clear political stances.
Besides ambiguity, Laibach in its texts, images, music and concerts also
allows for simultaneity. The texts refer simultaneously to several sources
and associations and deliberately leave the resulting paradoxes to be
resolved by the "consumer". They are oriented towards a series
of regimes and adopt the linguistic and other codes of these regimes in
order to render perceptible characteristics normally kept hidden by such
regimes.
However its important not to overlook the kitsch and humorous
elements also present in Laibach and to be aware of a humane undercurrent
within what seems to be a reactionary format. A constant theme in the
first years of Laibach's work was exorcism, referred to directly in the
track Vade Retro Satanas and Laibach's work could even be seen as a type
of exorcistic bewitchment, a counter-spell for the spells cast by ideology.
"Explaining" its approach at the time Laibach stated:
"Our appearance has a purifying (EXORCISM!) and regenerative (HONEY
AND GOLD)13 function. With a mystical erotic audiovisual
constitution of the ambivalence of fear and fascination (which acts
on the consciousness in a primeval way), with a ritualized demonstration
of political force, and with other manipulative approaches, LAIBACH
practices sound/force in the form of a systematic (psychophysical) terror
as therapy and as principle of social organization."14
Going beyond Laibach's "terror as therapy" and
reversing it we reach the formula "therapy as terror", which
brings us back to Zizek. Laibach's alienating, mystifying language, which
incorporates psychoanalytic theory, also suggests the totalitarian underside
of therapy when used to normalise pathologies produced by phenomena such
as ideology, culture and theory. To the uninitiated, Lacanian and similar
theory can appear as terror, manifesting people's fear of complexity.
However to the initiated, a group that Zizek has vastly enlarged, theory
can also work as if not therapy, then as a strong cultural diagnostic
tool. So it is within this block,
Terror as Therapy/Therapy as Terror
Theory as Terror/Theory as Therapy
that Laibach and Zizek oscillate. Both use the appearance
of extreme means to generate illuminating and destabilising responses
from the terror/therapy/theory matrix and both use theory transgressively
and imperiously to bewitch, mystify and illuminate their audiences.
IRWIN
In Irwin's work we initially see similar aesthetic terror
tactics to Laibach, the transmuting of Laibach’s ambivalent imagery into
visually dense and semiotically overloaded "icons" designed
to captivate the onlooker. The icons were cross-media intensifications
of already powerful and traumatic Laibach images transferred to new spheres.
The Slovene art historian Tomaz Brejc wrote in 1992 of Irwin that:
"They have equated the cross with a hunting trophy,
high art with kitsch, the avant-garde with Biedermeier... The IRWIN
however, are totally committed to the functional reality of the total.
Spectacle is their style for they are aware that there is no need to
believe in it because it convinces the viewer by force."15
In addition Irwin retained the collective structure, attributing
work to the group and not the individual and also using intimidating or
mystifying and sometimes mystical language, if never quite as extreme
as Laibach's. However, while Laibach still has to continually re-create
distance from systems, Irwin now work more subtly, approaching power in
a lighter, more playful, but still interrogative mode. Irwin move from
the monumental to the (apparently) frivolous and like Laibach often simultaneously
flirt with kitsch.
Irwin now embrace and reflect the contemporary proliferation
of media, moving into installation, performance and digital practice,
interrogating more via seduction than intimidation. Even so, NSK's ambitious
approach to the totality of power is still apparent, for instance in Irwin's
NSK Garda projects, where uniformed troops of various states parade wearing
Laibach style black cross armbands. So even at their most "user-friendly",
Irwin still symbolically reject passivity in relation to the coordinates
of "actually existing" reality. This can be seen in Irwin's
move towards self-narration and self-curation and the attempt to use their
position as internationally-recognised "Eastern" artists to
turn this still-pejorative label into a virtue. Irwin have begun to auto-narrating
the recent history of East European art rather than waiting for it to
be absorbed into Western paradigms.
Irwin's final mode of interrogation is to deploy what can
be seen as a "resurrection dynamic" that is also present in
Laibach and other ex-Yugoslav art. By symbolically and inconveniently
resurrecting lost revolutionary figures such as Tito and Malevich (whom
Irwin brand "the corpse of art"), Irwin are asking who has the
right to declare that a regime or style has passed into history or, for
that matter, that history has ended?
Irwin have previously spoken of their concern to "produce
time" and time is also becoming an increasingly overt theme in Laibach's
late work. Irwin's multi-layered, multi-temporal paintings and installations
are effectively viral artefacts - artefacts as temporal viruses containing
embedded disruptive codes. The viral (active) elements are the traumatic
and spectacular archetypes used to generate dissonant conceptual energy.
Irwin icons simultaneously bring forward supposedly defunct symbols (totalitarian
or national motifs) and drag back supposedly contemporary, modern elements
(pop art, contemporary design or packaging).
Such a process is inimical to stability since systemic order
depends not purely on the concealment and defence of source codes and
archetypes but on a kind of temporal cleansing. Old data or icons that
would conflict with the current program imperatives have to be removed
and operators have to be vigilant against a build-up of debris accumulated
from previous operations. Yet what NSK work from is precisely the restoration
of material that should have been deleted, de-activated or obscured in
order for the system to continue smooth operations in the present.
Restoring such "dead" material to "live"
status works as a kind of data forensics, re-instating compromising or
incriminating evidence. Irwin's 1991 installation The Golden Age (Stedelijk
Museum, Amsterdam) was a particularly acute example of this. Just as Slovenia
broke with a Yugoslav federation that was still nominally socialist and
re-launched itself as independent Western-style democracy Irwin re-activated
the discarded symbols of the old regime. At the centre of the work are
five wall signs for local offices of the Yugoslav Communist Party taken
from across Slovenia, including Ljubljana and Trbovlje. This conflicted
with the nationalist historical agenda in Slovenia, which sought to erase
traces of the recent socialist past and present it as a foreign, un-Slovene
deviation. This retrogarde16 strategy interrogates contemporary
stylistic and political regimes through a return to styles and moments
relegated to obscurity by political correctness or changing fashion, both
of which are often actively suspicious of archetypes per se.
STATE
"The Lacanian answer to the question: From where
does the repressed return? is, therefore, paradoxically: From the future...
As soon as we enter the symbolic order, the past is always present in
the form of historical tradition and the meaning of these traces is
not given; it changes continually with the transformations of the signifier’s
network. Every historical rupture, every advent of a new master-signifier,
changes retroactively the meaning of all tradition, restructures the
narration of the past, makes it readable in another, new way."17
Shortly after Irwin resurrected Communist symbolism and
Slovenia gained independence, NSK carried out its ultimate distancing
action, the NSK State in Time, the result of its previous interrogations
of other systems and the endpoint of the "becoming-state" process.
Without this step NSK would have been claimed for the Slovene nationalist
narrative as artists interested only in the triumph of the Slovene political
project, the NSK process would have re-materialised and become static
when in fact it has always been in motion. As some American critics observed
in 1992:
"Icons originally designed to make statehood seem
eternal and omnipotent are defined in Irwin's work as a series of moments
rather than as a total and ongoing condition."18
With the device of the state NSK maintained temporal, conceptual
and territorial autonomy within it’s own space and opened a symbolic system
of autonomy across national borders. For NSK, Yugoslavia and the notion
of the state were the ultimate conceptual and artistic "ready-mades"
for re-processing and re-construction. NSK became state using the utopian
and dystopian dynamics of the Yugoslav state, appropriating the Balkanizing
dynamic it contained and incubated and presenting the only positive conceptualisation
of "state" to survive Yugoslavia’s death. NSK also played on
the post-1989 confusion of new states, sub-states and the resurrection
of supposedly dead states and national state projects. In the chaos of
the mid-nineties the emergence of one more obscure "Eastern"
state was unremarkable and quite plausible, so much so that people have
travelled successfully using NSK passports.
At a moment when history was being de-written and re-written
day to day, even according to shifts in front lines, it was natural for
NSK to intensify the process of temporal manipulation. The national histories
of the "new" post-1989 states underwent systematic revision
and reconstruction in this period and as ever this was linked to totalising
if not totalitarian political forces. Where NSK's approach differs from
this political resurrection dynamic is that the manipulation is on the
surface. NSK has never concealed the fabrication of its history and until
recently there was no systematic external history of NSK. NSK openly recapitulate
the totalitarian dynamic of reconstructing the past to fit the future.
This dynamic is of course also present (though rarely seen on the surface
of) our own media and its constant reprocessing of history.
Again, the question is since retroactive falsification and
manipulation of the past and of images are systematic imperatives of the
media and governments why should NSK or similar autonomous groups not
re-appropriate these tactics against such regimes? The new nationalist
and corporate histories are streamlined, accessible and simplified whereas
NSK's history is built on paradox and retroactivity, the retroactive synthesis
of meaning. So looking back from the perspective of the NSK state we can
see all the previous NSK works as leading towards the state as an inevitable,
inherent project. NSK's state is composed of the totality of all previous
NSK works and the interrogated systems they incorporate. The NSK state
issues an explosive challenge - who now has the right to declare or refuse
to recognise a state and how do we respond to the compromises and demands
of all "given", "actually existing" statehoods?
NSK appropriated both the utopian and dystopian extremes
of the notion of state. Our actually existing managerial market-states
have disowned the protective, idealistic aspects of state power in favour
of bland pragmatism. At the same time they publicly disown and condemn
totalitarianism "elsewhere" while racing to enforce biometric
passports and mass electronic surveillance. Open totalitarianism is being
replaced by banal market-state authoritarianism, with the potential to
become infinitely more total than the "old" totalitarian states.
In these conditions it is more critical than ever that there should be
framework incisive and imaginative enough to interrogate these forces
and the cultures that support them - the interrogation machine remains
the most effective counter-spell to the spells cast by power.
"... today the concept of utopia has made an about-face
turn - utopian energy is no longer directed towards a stateless community,
but towards 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 cords of ethnic origin, indigenousness
and rootedness."19
26.04.2004
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