The Truth is in the Retrogarde

By Nikica Korubin

The past always call for us. Superior, timeless and inevitable. That is demand by the future. Not because the future wants that, but because there is no chance for choosing. The only absolute thing. Unchangeable. Admirable. The past is ancient and generous, and it returns us at the beginning. At the beginning of our peculiar mistakes. In addition, sometimes the mistakes of the others. People do not know to demand answers. In that place where they silently wait their own solution. The question of their own present. Like a play of magic, a play of life and facing.

Theater does not exist between the Spectator and the Actor.
Theater is not an empty space.
Theater is a State.

The formal tendency of the State is stability and power, while in terms of content every state is basically disorganized.

The only truly Aesthetic vision of the State is the vision of the impossible State.

The Style of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater is not an authentic one. Retro is a method. While revitalizing the arts, the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater is also renewing their Styles. Herewith it does not deny that an authentic Style is possible; however, it declares the avant-garde the last authentic Style of the contemporary Civilization ending in the defeat of Revolutions.

The Scipion Sisters Theater regards the utopian instinct as an innate, but not acquired, value which exists in man in the form of a desire for unison with the Cosmic, Aesthetic, and Moral elements. That is why the creation of Style of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater cannot originate in the Actor, Space or Staging, but only in Culture and Civilisation, renewed and recurrently traumatized in the retro-production of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater.

Sester Scipion Nasice

We have shaped the paintings in our fantasy. The common memory gives us a motive. A motive to search about the truth, the truth of evil memories. They are dramatic, but attractive at the same time. They are attractive with their own power. With their primordial power, all the time we have the possibility to inquire into the sounds of the past. And to shape the paintings. The paintings of luxury, that creates our fantasy. Nevertheless, we can not catch the drawing. All the time it disperses in a million little traces, which demand a search. And again, the search is our own. Who else can it be?

- A painter has always been a chronicler called upon to speak of the things he knew best.
- A single painter’s canvas is never more persuasive than five. A collective is in a position to express the difference by repeating the same motif.
- To have an impact of the understanding of works by dead artist is the supreme responsibility an artist can assume.
- The choice of subject is a personal decision. The method of painting is responsible to time. Only shallow art-buffs judge the value of a work of art by its motif, and only superficial painters judge a work of art by its form.
- Once though and form unite, a painting can be endowed with any given theme.

Western modernism rests on the code of permanent revolution, utilizing the principles of negation, irony and implicit tragedy, whereas IRWIN goes beyond the historical experience of modernism and dialectically provides in with a superstructure by asserting the national culture, the triumph of collective spirit and by glorifying those properties of fine arts which distinguish it from Western modernism. IRWIN asserts the continuity of Slovene past as the only future horizon. Consequently, art represents a ritual of the past in the assertion of death as a dynamic element within life. The ultimate purpose of IRWIN’s activities is to reassert Slovene culture in a monumental and spectacular way.

Irwin

The revival is a demand by the music in the most perfect way. The sounds will always resound in their transformation. What once has been, it will be again in equally original mode. Therefore, only those who know the spirit believe in their own ancient truth. People have just once truly created things and then everybody else repeated the same. However, do they know how and when? The moment of time is not always the moment of origin. Nevertheless, originality demands authenticity. Cultural and civilization ones. Or at least, a respect. Unconditional and honest. Like the memories about the beautiful things from the past. Realistic ones. And who knows to read the history code?

LAIBACH analyzes the relation between ideology and culture in a late phase, presented through art. LAIBACH sublimates the tension between them and the existing disharmonies (social unrest, individual frustration, ideological oppositions) and thus eliminates every direct ideological and systematic discursiveness. The very name and the emblem are visible materializations of the idea on the level of a cognitive symbol. The name LAIBACH is a suggestion of the actual possibility of establishing a politicized (system) ideological art because of the influence of politics and ideology.

LAIBACH excludes any evolution of the original idea; the original concept is not evolutionary but entelechical, and the presentation is only a link between this static and the changing determinant unit. We take the same stand towards the direct influence of the development of music on the LAIBACH concept; of course, this influence is a material necessity but it is of secondary importance and appears only as a historical musical foundation of the moment which, in its choice is unlimited. LAIBACH expresses its timelessness with the artifacts of the present and it is thus necessary that at the intersection of politics and industrial production (the culture of art, ideology, and consciousness) it encounters the elements of both, although it wants to be both. This wide range allows LAIBACH to oscillate, creating the illusion of movement (development).

LAIBACH is the knowledge of the universality of the moment. It is the revelation of the absence of balance between sex and work, between servitude and activity. It uses all expressions of history to mark this imbalance. This work is without limit; God has one face, the devil infinitely many. LAIBACH is the return of action on behalf of the idea.

Laibach Kunst conserves lasting values.

NSK is a model for preserving its own national and cultural continuation. Forever new again, as much as the culture offers, but never heading upon absolute originality. Authenticity is a common thing because of its own origin. Nevertheless, authenticity presented to other very same one, with all inevitable influence, makes it problematic and contradictional. When we have a direct speech by the truth, that makes the fear. The fear is emotional because it can not deal with itself. Everybody knows it, they become aware of it in the perfect way, and that is the reason for the brutal denial. In that mode, the truth becomes a lie, an intentional provocation. Besides, we can expect such thing from them. From those who do have own attitude. Moreover, a way of their own. Mistakes and unsolved problems from the past become imposed guilty. A hidden fear. On the other site, the truth is where it has been forever. He, who has eyes, will see it. He, who has courage, will not cover it. He, who has an idea, will keep it for himself. Anyway, it belongs to him. Meanwhile everybody else will look and they will criticize. But, the spirit is superior even over its own continuance. Because its power is equal. Continuous. From the Beginning to the Beginning.

LAIBACH and NSK analyzed nationalism through the aesthetic dimension. By placing "national and subnational" symbols alongside each other, we demonstrated their "universality". That is, in the very process of one nation defining its difference against the other; it frequently uses the same, or almost the same, kind of symbols and rhetoric as the other. In short, nations are not very original at all when it comes to defining their own originality - their "raison d'etre" - against each other. Indeed, they often use exactly the same arguments and symbols (compare, for instance, the use of the eagle symbol by the Germans, Americans, Albanians, Austrians, Poles, etc.). Paradoxically, then, nationalistic conflict between nations are usually not the result of differences, but because the differences are too small (for instance, only a few English people know that they're essentially an English-speaking Germanic tribe). Such nationalism is based on "the narcissism of small differences". It is the most popular, most European and most fatal.

Originally published in Urban Magazine (Skopje).
Tranlated by the author.