EXCERPTS FROM INTERVIEWS GIVEN BETWEEN 1991-1995

QUESTION: There's a conviction that after the Party lost its role as totalitarian element, the Slovenian scene became "totalitarianised" by the Church. Some place you side by side with Conservatism and Christian ideology. (DNEVNIK - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Religion represented the obsessive neurosis of humanity, and Christian ideology, with its religious activity in critical periods of history, is the most important mass-psychological means of preparing the ground for a takeover by Fascist ideology. We are aware that the Church lobby is once again taking the initiative in the international (sexual) political organisation of capital, and as such the Church concerns us, of course. We are enthusiastic collectors of all religions and, most interestingly, as pagans we can believe in all of them at the same time; but as free spirits all our sympathies go to the devil, who was the first to taste the poisonous fruit of the tree of knowledge.

QUESTION: How would you then comment on the statement by Mc Hammer, one of today's most popular rappers, "Energy is a bless of God"? (DNEVNIK - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Quite possible, but according to this definition God belongs in the domain of the theory of relativity.

QUESTION: Andy Warhol once said he didn't want anyone he could get, and Truman Capote claimed he could get anyone he wanted. What about Laibach? (DNEVNIK - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: LAIBACH doesn't want anyone it can't get.

QUESTION: I remember that in announcing the video spot "Across the Universe", Maiken Wexo expressed great appreciation for it. What she particularly liked in it were the moving Adam's apples of the singing boys. What is LAIBACH's attitude towards MTV? (DNEVNIK - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Through the channels of cable and satellite television, rivers of the uninterrupted programs of world television stations flow (like MTV), radically brainwashing millions of young people, altering - in substance and essence - their psychosomatic structures in the direction of monstrous mutations, thus implementing the totality of rock'n'roll music and the TOTALITARIANISM of its determinants. In this way the psychosomatic structure becomes the outermost extension of the network of rock'n'roll communication, a kind of bottomless box in which its contents are poured, creating and satisfying needs, exhausting and seemingly regenerating its energies.

The system of rock'n'roll moronisation by means of TV programs like MTV lowers the intelligence level of its devotees below the indispensable level of sound judgement.

To those with more distance MTV is of course nothing but chewing gum for the eyes, and Maiken Wexo stretches it for us with great dexterity.

QUESTION: Who do you esteem in the fields of politics, art, theology and economy? (DNEVNIK - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: We respect large systems, organisms, bodies and immortal inventions, we also have esteem for great artists, but our praise would sound like vengeance.

QUESTION: Having succeeded to penetrate the most demanding market, the group LAIBACH represents a model of success and marketing lucidity. What is the difference between the European and American audience and between the European and American market? (DNEVNIK - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: The difference is smaller than it is as seen from a satellite. America will be Europe's master as long as holiness is a matter of business and business a matter of manners.

The immense popularity of American culture shows us that Europe is merely an unfinished negative of which America is the proof. And this in turn tells us that Europe is nothing but a big auction-house, and Europeanism imperialism with an inferiority complex.

QUESTION: Is it still possible today to perceive Laibach as a danger, as happened ten years ago? (DNEVNIK - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: LAIBACH in itself is not a danger; the true danger resides in people, it is implanted in human beings like the age-old fear of punishment, and from it the earthly seed of evil stems. Our evil is its projection, so we are a danger to those who in themselves are dangerous.

QUESTION: Do you think music should take on the role of a propagator of political ideas? (START - YUGOSLAVIA)

LAIBACH: Music must use the language of politics in such a way that politics takes on the role of a propagator of music.

QUESTION: Should a musician avoid daily politics? (START - YUGOSLAVIA)

LAIBACH: A musician should first of all avoid daily music.

QUESTION: Do you think music can change the world in the sense of Live Aid and Nelson Mandela? (START - YUGOSLAVIA)

LAIBACH: The world is, in general, unchangeable, and in the context of such actions music can change only itself.

QUESTION: Why did the East collapse according to you, and what is your opinion of democracy? (BRAVO)

LAIBACH: The East collapsed because it blindly believed in the Western utopian definition of freedom of the individual. The West only survives because it slyly established a system which insists on peoples freedom. This is to say, under democracy people believe they are acting according to their own will and desires. Democracy snares people through the utopian injection of desires and fantasies into a social bloodstream. Its hypodermic needle is the entertainment culture industry. It's a shared needle, and a shared needle leads to the spread of disease.

LAIBACH: In democracy, there is no cure against its own disease.

QUESTION: What is, in your opinion, the cause of the war in ex-Yugoslavia? (BRAVO)

LAIBACH: Yugoslavia was created in the period of late Surrealism and Hypersocial Realism. It came to its climax in Modernism, and began to dissolve in Postmodernism. In fact, it was an eclectic Retro-formation and not a homogenized modernist surface. In other words, the war in ex-Yugoslavia is the logical result of the end of the utopian dream.

QUESTION: What was the reason for establishing the NSK State and what is the attitude of this state towards the Republic of Slovenia? (BRAVO)

LAIBACH: LAIBACH and NSK related themselves to the territories of Slovenia in its utopian dreamstage. Utopia automatically canceled itself when it became reality. Because we concern ourselves with reality and not a dream, we have created our own state with its own apparatus, passports, embassies, etc. It's a mobile state without borders and territory which can exist anywhere and inside any pre-existing system. It functions to convert material capital into the spiritual kapital essential to its well-being.

QUESTION: Reactions to LAIBACH reveal extreme controversy and it seems that many people misunderstand you. Do you feel responsible for the consequence of your actions? (BRAVO)

LAIBACH: Our only responsibility as engineers of human souls is to remain irresponsible. We cannot concern ourselves with the fulfillment of other people's expectations of us. We believe that in art morality is nonsense, in practice it is immoral, in people it is a sickness.

QUESTION: Can utopia ever become reality or must it always be a dream away? (CHRIS BOHN INTERVIEW - UK)

LAIBACH: A "dream away" is a reality we live in and we don't call it utopia. On the contrary utopia is a total lack of reality and as such it does not exist for LAIBACH as a relevant problem. The purpose of utopia is not to be realized, and LAIBACH on the other side is a project of constant self-realization.

QUESTION: Utopia can only work with the application of force? If force is necessary does it immediately negate the idea of utopia? (CHRIS BOHN INTERVIEW - UK)

LAIBACH: Force is real and utopia is unreal. Certain systems can only exist through the systematic use of force and they are not less utopian for that reason. In the original Thomas Moore "Utopia" there was available, for the fighting of wars, an unpleasant race of mercenaries, who fought "hardeley, fyerslye and faythefullye", and the more of them were killed, the better the utopians thought it.

QUESTION: In Western Rock terms utopia is usually interpreted loosely in terms of rock communities, festivals, charity acts etc. How does LAIBACH vision relate to this diminished ideal of community/utopia? (CHRIS BOHN INTERVIEW - UK)

LAIBACH: We don't relate at all. We've got no affinity towards ideals of the rock world anyhow and in any existing form.

QUESTION: It is a fact that the stage appearance of your band is very militant, with all its set, slides, films, the sound itself, rhythm ... (VECER - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: The militant is not necessarily bad. A militant stance is one reflecting stability, decision, an immutable fact. Our stage appearance is not only militant, it is mechanised. We live in the age of the cybernetic machine, of a new ontology of survival and death, in which "the militant" means both cause and effect.

QUESTION: What is your vision of the end of the Yugoslav crisis? (VECER - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: A war like the one currently going on in the Balkans - seen through the eyes of a cynic - is hurting no one but the people who live there. The Yugoslav crisis will therefore drag on for some time, for this is in the interest of the West. From the point of view of capital, this is a classic example of depleting a potential market, potential spheres of interest, a production testing ground. Because of national and ethnic clashes the situation is still very unclear at the moment, but when it calms down Capital will enter the burned-out scene, buy up territory with minimal effort, and renew it according to its own image.

Why is the title of the record Kapital? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Kapital is the fundamental law of civilization and communication. Its different interpretations in the 20th century divided Europe and the whole world into two poles, two prevailing systems of ideology, the East and the West. In Western (capitalist) Europe and USA the definition of capital as "the means of appropriating the surplus value", set up a pragmatically-economic social system, based on the logic of market and competition, and the ideology of profit as a vital force of reproduction, while outwardly it projected Non-Order as a utopian ideology of freedom, typical examples of which are the pop industry, Hollywood and the pre-election circus of presidential candidates. The Eastern (communist) systems translated the power of capital as the definition of Non-Freedom into a utopian ideological Order, which through actual production relations in fact created economic disorder. The consequence of this is saturation of the market in the West and its scarity in the East. The adjustment of spiritual capital to the standards of the market (the translation of the spirit into material value) resulted, in the West, in a cynical view of the world, while in the spiritual production of the East the non-existence of real market relationships triggered the process of a "naive vision of the world" (naive imitation of Western fashion trends etc.). The East collapsed because it had blindly believed in the Western utopian definition of freedom of the individual, and the West survived because through its corporative economic logic it discretely introduced a system of unconscious collective non-freedom. In other words, the ideological, formalistic totalitarianism disintegrated in the East due to its utopian criteria, and it actually (including Japan and Korea). The wide gap in the communication between the East and the West is based on this essential difference and not on the level of economic development. The point in question is totalitarianism.

QUESTION: Isn't it true that the division of Europe into the two models that you are referring to, is a thing of the past? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: The division into two models is a matter of terminology. The difference between the East and the West is greater today than it was ten or twenty years ago. Today Europe is again classically divided into the developed and the undeveloped, the rich and the poor, the economically superior and the economically inferior. Although both models are faced with economic and spiritual depression, in the West this results from the process of radical privatization, the saturation of the market and information aggressiveness, while in the East it is the consequence of ideological discontinuity and an awkward grappling with the new economic reality in the framework of obsolete market mechanisms.

QUESTION: In spite of this, the East wants to form a single entity with the West and to become part of the European Community. (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: This is because the new Eastern states hope that by becoming members of the European Community they will gain economic and political privileges, while their innocence would remain unblemished. However, the political and in particular the cultural sovereignty of small and economically weak states in such organisms as the United States of Europe is not new. It was first expressed in public by Marquess of Salisbury (11 April 1888 in Caernarvon) and Winston Churchill (19 September 1946 in Zurich), after the victory over Hitler, who had similar ideas. European Community became a topical issue again in the time of Cold War and the increasingly expansive American and Japanese capital in Europe and the whole world. The idea was to establish a unified market mechanism in the divided and scattered West European countries, common defense, as well as a common trade and political strategy with respect to America, Japan, and - of course - the countries of the Warsaw Pact. To some extent, the idea of European unification accelerated the dissolution of the East European bloc. Today, however, after the disintegration of the communist part of Europe and at the renewed expansion of German capital, the West European union is - on the eve of its implementation - again questionable. The history of Europe is the history of regions/states and the history of differences and the dictation of the majority, in particular in our time of "satellite civilisation". Western Europe is forming a unity on the basis of economic and not spiritual postulates, on the law of the market and not out of ethical motives, because of fear and not because of courage. If in 1992 formal unification of developed European states takes place on such basis and without the full cooperation of Eastern Europe, it will lead to a new radical division of the Continent, whereas within the Unity itself the increased growth of technocracy and politocracy (the management) will completely abolish the metaphysics.

QUESTION: During this year's European tour in June you announced that capitalism was dead. Why then is the whole East adopting the Western model? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Eastern states are not adopting the Western model but the model gradually dictated by the West. The difference can of course be fatal, since there are different forms of capitalism. The collapse of communism no longer means a permanent triumph of classical capitalism. In its core there is a tendency of self destruction. Communism was born out of social discontent, caused by the industrial revolution and the radical pre-monopolist capitalism. The swing of the Communist International reinforced, in particular in classical capitalism, the social awareness and the role of trade unions, which forced the system to transform from liberal into monopolist capitalism, then into state capitalism and "socialist" capitalism, or even into socialism (cooperation between the state, private enterprise, community and individual). The fundamental self-destructive substance of capitalism and its driving force is, of course, GREED. It is characteristic of greed that it only appeases its hunger when it destroys itself. The interaction between greed and its subduing thus defines the civilization level of capitalism; in fact, it defines the stage of its death.

QUESTION: How were you accepted on your tour in Germany, where you performed both in Eastern and Western part of the country? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Due to its enforced separation after World War II, Germany is, naturally, a specific case. Its division into two diametrically opposite systems coincides in a way with the German character of being either extreme right or extreme left. It is characteristic of both extremes that after the Way they resorted to a conspiracy if silence, covering up in it the feeling of guilt. The Germans themselves have never openly confronted their recent history - it has always been discussed by others, in terms of imposed moralizing and cultivation of the myth of constant Teutonic threat and imperialism. The truth, of course, is different, for Germany is one of the few European countries that in contrast to England, France, Holland, Spain, and others, actually never had any proper colonies of its own. One of the reasons is probably the fact that at the time of the discovering and conquering of new continents, Germany did not act homogeneously and as a naval force. After the greatest vindictive genocide in the history of mankind, when American aircraft, assisted by other Allies, systematically bombarded and demolished Dresden and other German cities before the end of the war, the Germans, forced to accept the shameful division of the nation and the country, shut themselves in and kept quiet for several years. The West Germans canalized the scars of war and the suppression of their ideological identity into work (Arbeit...), into passive economic prosperity, while the East Germans masochistically transplanted their guilt into a new ideological utopia and for a number of years believed - in a self - denying and disciplined way - in their salvation. The miracle, however, never took place, and for a second time in this century (not taking into account World War I), the Germans had to deny their existence. At the cost of honor, Capital overcame the Utopia. Germany, which - in contrast to Serbia - always loses wars and wins in peace, met with the world recession at this point of territorial and national revival, and gained a leading role in Europe and the whole world. "Germany will either be a world superpower or it will not be at all," wrote the defeated Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. Thus we can interpret the accelerated process of economic unification of Europe also as an effort to neutralize German expansion. We are well-known in Western Germany because we have performed there regularly since 1983. We have experienced all sorts of things there - threats from the left and from the right, protests, the burning of our equipment truck - but in spite of this we have to say that the Germans accept us correctly today. No wonder, really, since we are one of their greatest groups.

QUESTION: What do you mean? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: The Slovenians, as former German farm hands, adhered to a victorious coalition in World War II, and were consequently free from the frustrations of guilt and defeat. Safely in the lap of Yugoslavia, we were able to consider the key issues of our common metaphysics unburdened and with certain (self-) critical historical distance. The favorable liberal - communist climate and innate discipline made it possible for the Slovenians - in spite of the socio-economic blockades of the socialist self-management system - to reach enviable spiritual and satisfactory material prosperity with respect to other European nations.

QUESTION: Western systems swear by individualism. Communist regimes, on the other hand, are based on collectivism, and so is Laibach. Do you persist in this position? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Collectivism is one of the theoretical principles of communist ideology. In practice, however, it asserted itself much more pragmatically in the corporativism of the West. In the corporative public-entertainment industry, the utopian projection of success of the individual and personal freedom (the realization of the American Dream) is carefully tended and cultivated by a large group of anonymous individuals who project their desires and phantasmas onto a collective substratum (e.g. the phenomenon of Michael Jackson or the White House family) and then draw on it again. LAIBACH follows the principle of collectivism on the basis of the simple fact that four is more than one. This principle prevents the release of individual frustrations and, by way of a conscious renunciation of personal freedom, has a therapeutic effect.

QUESTION: On the basis of what you are saying about capital, the East, and the West, we could conclude that Western ideology is more totalitarian than the Eastern one? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: The Eastern ideological (communist) totalitarianism occurred exclusively as a reaction to the economic colonialism and totalitarianism of the West; as a political system totalitarianism is a typical phenomenon of West European nihilism, which operates with the power of financial capital.

QUESTION: What then is the difference between totalitarianism and democracy? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: There is no difference at all. Democracy is just a euphemism for developed totalitarianism.

What is the opposite of totalitarianism? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: By definition, totalitarianism is all-inclusive.

QUESTION: What would you consider as an ideal state? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: The NSK state, of course.

QUESTION: And what are its characteristics? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: It has no territory and no physical borders, and it daily makes Utopia a reality.

And Slovenia? What do you think of it as an independent country? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Nowadays, independence is the illusion of the small and limited. We are all integral parts of the mechanism working constantly on the basis of interdependence. Therefore we can only discuss the degree of this dependence. A state such as Slovenia will be independent to the extent of its ability to actively cooperate with others in the chain of interdependence. Its smallness can in this respect be its great advantage.

QUESTION: What is your opinion with regard to the decision for denationalisation and privatisation in Slovenia? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: We are convinced that in the process of denationalisation and privatisation no America will be discovered. Both are delicate and, considering the present situation, probably exigent dialectical issues, but privatisation and denationalisation are not an answer to all questions. The term "privatisation" comes from the Latin "privare", which literally means "to take something from someone", while to "denationalise" means "to deprive of national rights", or "to return nationalized property to previous owners". The differences in content are minute and difficult to determine, but it is obvious that we are dealing with retroactive processes which, in the process of distribution, will unavoidably lead to new injustices, since you cannot give something to someone else. The flow of capital associated with such distribution will be associated with so many different questions, causing much more serious conflicts than ideology, since it involves capital, which is not only a book-keeping term but the basis of any - also of political - power.

QUESTION: And who are the politicians that you rank among artists? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: All those who convincingly convert their defeats into victories.

QUESTION: In 1985 you wrote that you were proud of participating in the time and the struggle that would change the world - spiritually, politically, and geographically. In 1990 and 1991 this actually happened, but is it not the question of disintegration rather than change? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: The quantitative aspects of disintegration are only the consequences of qualitative causes, that is of changes in the process of the degradation and capitulation of Modern Man. European civilization is weak, much weaker than is usually believed. It is weak psychologically and structurally, and it is the weakest morally, ethically and spiritually. This inner weakness is similar to a severe disease on the verge of its complete decay. Our world is sliding down, the social layers are falling apart from each other and confusion is increasing. A mechanism has been triggered, raising old problems from the surface to their climax. We are living in chaotic times which threaten to pull down the whole European Order, just as the Roman Empire was once pulled down. It is perfectly clear that it was not destroyed by barbarians. It disintegrated as a result of anarchy and internal intrigue, corruption, crime, terror, violence and greed, therefore for the same reason contemporary Europe is being poisoned. The process of the decaying of values may be productive for a technological system, but not for society itself. Due to the "autonomization" of interests and aims of the individual and the community, the homogeneity of the unity is disappearing. The ties of interdependence, which are the basic condition for the survival of the community of mankind, are being torn apart. This leads to the dissolution of society, its vitality and harmony, in which individual interests and aims are subordinated to the universal common aim. The ideological and practical basis of the regressive process is parliamentary democracy. As a system, parliamentary democracy generates and cultivates the lowest, egoistic passions, suppressing and preventing on the other hand all forms of the ideals by which the individual and society could surmount their particular interests. The institution itself of party politics presupposes a divided society with all the different and conflicting interests in confrontation. And since the majority of voters tend to the programmes that promise - above all - material security and immediate benefit, this explains why, as a rule, parties that win at elections are the mediocre ones, competing in demagogy, meanness and unfair imputations of the lowest kind, all in the name of national or some other disaster as the indispensable finale of parliamentary democracy. The liberal, idyllic concept of democratic society as a "free market", a creative arena in which different entities are supposed to compete on the basis of equal rights, is a pure illusion. The reality of this arena is subtle yet brutal inequality, ranging from trusts, cartels and multinationals, down to exploited minorities and individuals. The top of this hierarchy of inequality leads to monopolies, and the bottom - consisting of groups and individuals with no rights at all - to terrorism as the last means of self-defense. The means thus become the aims, and society the victim of these means. Monopolies are loosing their control over the laws of economy they had activated, just as criminals exert control over terrorism and the nuclear weapons which are already stored in their arsenals.

My final question: are you Fascists or not? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Isn't it evident?

What about the future of metaphysics? (ZITTY - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: We cannot talk about the future; we live in the present time which is constantly decanting into the past and this past is our future. We are therefore tommorow's future. ("Every minute of the Future is a memory of the Past." - Life is Life)

QUESTION: Fascism brought the "Gesamtkunstwerk" into a reality of the greatest content. What is fascistic in what you do? (ZITTY - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: Your question is ambiguous and it operates with the old fashioned terms; in these terms everything is fascistic in what we do.

QUESTION: Ambiguity is boring, isn't it? (ZITTY - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: But boredom will always find a way to masturbate with it.

QUESTION: Language and music, message and sound, the left and the right brain, the artist and the audience - is there an alternative to this basic schizophrenia? (ZITTY - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: Schizophrenia cannot be understood without understanding despair. Schizophrenic behavior is a special strategy that a person (and society) invents in order to live in an unlivable situation. There is an alternative to the basic schizophrenia you're talking about, but from the position of political correctness it could easily be wrongly understood.

QUESTION: Political correctness is a term newly re-established. It means in the widest sense: Be aware of evil capitalism. How politically correct are you? (ZITTY - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: Capitalism is always "evil" and political correctness is it's instrument; it has been re-established, after its recent victory, to negotiate with the fact. In other words, political correctness is telling us that there is a "good capitalism" as well. Politically LAIBACH is, of course, always incorrect.

QUESTION: An example of an attack on your self-confidence? And what did you learn from it? (ZITTY - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: An attack on our self-confidence was the doubt that we should not be completely dedicated to something we have complete confidence in (because people are usually always fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals when these dogmas or goals are in doubt). However, soon we learned that our dedication is not a result of doubt but a product of pleasure.

QUESTION: As a Christian person, I believe in the apocalypse and that it is yet to come. Does that sound foolish to you? (ZITTY - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: Always in a time of depression, "energy crisis", Stock Exchange crash and a fall of monetary values, increased inflation, recession and unemployment the idea of apocalypse becomes very alive inside the Christian world. They believe in it but they think it is yet to come. Apocalypse for them is always a step away. That is why they live their life in fear of tommorow and never really reach revelation. We have no fear of apocalypse and it does not represent a problem for us; it is here now and we live it all the time.

QUESTION: Your idea of a state in time without boundaries? (ZITTY - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: Europe is coming closer and closer to a state of non-statehood where state mechanisms are losing their binding character. The authority of the state is being eroded from the top by trans-European regulations from Brussels and the international economic ties and from the bottom by local and ethnic interests, while none of these elements are strong enough to fully replace state authority. 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-face 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. As far as art, according to definition, is subversive in relation to the existing establishment, any art which today wants to be up the level its assignment must be a state art in the service of a still-non-existent country. It must abandon the celebration of islands of privacy, seemingly insulated from the machinery of authority, and must voluntarily become a small cog in this machinery, a servant to the new Leviathan which it is summoning like a genie from the bottle. This is why NSK is founding its own state. The NSK state in time is thus 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 to territory but to mind, whose borders are in a state of flux, in accordance with the movements and changes of its symbolic and physical collective body.

QUESTION: What does that mean for ex-Germany in relation to Italy or France? (ZITTY - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: That means that if all Germans would become a citizens of the NSK state, we should have serious problems temporary proclaiming Italian or French territory our own.

QUESTION: Culture and art - two sides of the same illusion: that people are condemned to progress? (ZITTY - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: All that is human must retrogarde if it does not advance. What WE call progress is the exchange of one illusion for another illusion, but YOUR "progress" is but a gradual discovery that your questions have no meaning.

QUESTION: Where are Laibach heading at the end of the millennium? (INTERVIEW FOR NSK EMBASSY IN VENICE/FILM BY MARINA GRZINIC - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: At the end of the millennium LAIBACH is heading to where there are no flies.

QUESTION: So you have your own NSK State. At the same time, Laibach declares itself as an organism, a collective whose members have no individuality of their own. Is the NSK State, too, a state of non-individuals? (NEDELJNI VJESNIK - CROATIA)

LAIBACH: This arduous pleasure is required by LAIBACH only from its members, not from the citizens of the NSK State. Citizens fall under the definition which says "a multitude of one million divided by one million equals one individual".

QUESTION: In the document "Laibach and NSK: The Birth of a New State" the word democracy is nowhere mentioned. Is the NSK State totally undemocratic? Can NSK passport bearers in any way influence the state's will? (NEDELJNI VJESNIK - CROATIA)

LAIBACH: Democracy is a system exercising the subordination of the minority to the majority, in Communism the reverse is true, whereas the NSK State is an all-embracing alloy in which subordination is the universal imperative of common happiness.

QUESTION: NSK and Laibach are a product of European culture and, therefore, its representatives. How do you view the unfriendly looks and insulting words exchanged between American and European cultural pundits, and, generally, the relationships between these two cultures. Who do you address your comments and views on this problem to? (HEROINA - CROATIA)

LAIBACH: We are as much a product of European culture as European culture is a product of African and Asian culture. We are not Europocentrists, and the conflict between America and Europe does not affect us in the least. In our opinion, these are not critical problems and don't need to be dealt with more seriously, it is already too late for anything like this; there is therefore no problem, and where there is no problem there is no solution either.

QUESTION: From Laibach's very beginnings, a suspicion has dragged on about its moral-political standing, evoked, among other things, by the use of militant instrumentations taken over from the bright times of "totalitarianism". That is to say, from military, police and fire-fighting marches, drummers' regiments for the mobilization of people, Aryan operas... But despite all these, still-present means of encouragement, NATO infuses the original texts with inherited pacifism. Are you pacifists? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: We are poets of hemoglobin and soldiers of reason who exercise the right to the conscientious objection of the heart. "We prefer to be violent if violence is in our hearts, rather than mask our own impotence under the pretense of non-violence" (Mahatma Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War, 1984). We advise you to listen carefully to that text once again.

QUESTION: Two years ago you released Kapital, as bulky and heavy a read as if the book with with same title by a German political economist were in question. Now you are back with competitive covers and smaller formats regarding both the record itself and the duration of individual pieces. Have the NSK headquarters ordered a fuller attack on top-ten lists, and has this, undoubtedly more affable, product been dictated by the market? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: The market is a barometer of civilization, and although we are not obsessed with it (or with civilization), we never pretended to ignore it; never was it our intention to swim against the "mainstream"; we always penetrated it, drank from it and then poured into it again. We enjoy this.

QUESTION: With its technology NATO could easily find its way to the ear of dance-obsessed Europe. Are you going to perform in some German or British discotheques and at rave parties as well? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Europe has been imbued with the mentioned technology for a long time, and it is perhaps for this very reason that contemporary Europeans haven't the slightest idea about dance, unless by dance you mean mass trampling-in-place and a schizophrenic rubbing of dislocated limbs.

QUESTION: In the video spot "The Final Countdown" Laibach's elected speaker is distinguished from the other three members only by a few facial hairs. Have you invented an ideal homunculus, have the other members finally totally blended with the collective? (MLADINA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: At the turn of the century, in the years of deepest engagement in the study of atom structure and the development of quantum theory, Physics discovered the alchemy of collective work - even more: at that time Physics itself became the greatest collective work of science and showed the way to twentieth century art. Unfortunately, the artists did not understand the experience of Physics, and that is why in the second half of the twentieth century the structure of the Ego, and with it art, radically retrogressed. So today we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation: in this time of the total dictatorship of market ideology, the artist and its work voluntarily participate in a mechanism whose main task is the suppression of individualism, although he believes that at every step he sovereignly represents the illusion of absolute individuality. Self-quote: "LAIBACH works as a team (collective spirit), following the example of industrial production and totalitarianism, which means that it is not the individual who speaks but the organisation." (From the first item of the Covenant, LAIBACH: 1982). Thus, our "homunculus" already has its age.

QUESTION: Why the title NATO? Why are you concerned with NATO at all? Wouldn't a title like Warsaw Pact, for instance, be more interesting, more provocative for the West (as was often your intention)? (DELO - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: We do not choose titles for their provocation but to name a particular theme we are dealing with at a given moment. What would be more provocative for the West is therefore not our problem, but the fact is that the Warsaw Pact is dead matter and NATO living; in choosing between life and death, LAIBACH would decide for the former.

QUESTION: The changed text of the song 2525 on the record NATO deals with the future. A few years ago you stated you could not take an attitude towards it since it is unnameable. Why do you then predict the future? (DELO - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Because today the future is no longer what it once was.

QUESTION: The members of Laibach have never presented themselves by name. Why? (DELO - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Quite simply, because such is our modus operandi. We work as a team (collective spirit), following the example of technological production and totalitarianism. We reject individuality as meaningless for the evaluation of our work, which we believe should be examined only on the basis of the laws of which it is made. We do not believe in the originality of authorship either, and we claim that plagiarism does not exist. Why then names?

QUESTION: And finally, how long do you intend going on as the group Laibach? When do you think the time will be right for its abolition or dissolution? (DELO - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Your question is difficult to understand. Its abolition or dissolution is not in our hands; LAIBACH is an organism constantly regenerating itself, and only God can bring it to heel. The devil and mortals never.

QUESTION: If it is true that in its activity to date Laibach has artistically redefined the political map of Europe, it can be expected that the selection of mostly pacifist and anti-war songs, including the title itself of the new album, will have a positive impact on the promotion of the peace-making process in the Balkans. Is it utopian to expect such results? (REPUBLIKA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Shortly before his death in 1898 Bismarck said that "if at any time in the future another war in Europe takes place, it will happen because of some damn stupid matter in the Balkans". The war has already been lost in the Balkans. It has been lost by the whole of Europe. Thinking of NATO as a peace-promoting project is therefore thinking of the wrong group and wrong record at the wrong time. LAIBACH is as anti-war oriented as peace is indivisible. What is devastated cannot be called peace; this is a period of cold peace, which in political jargon denotes a period of diplomatic bargaining between two wars. And such is our record as well. To expect anything else would be utopian.

QUESTION: Nevertheless, NATO is Laibach's most listenable record to date. Is the East European diction of the texts part of a marketing policy or a matter of artistic ingenuity? (REPUBLIKA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: The mentioned diction of the texts is the dictate of the motif, and the decision for it is not made in the relation between the East and the West, or between marketing policy and artistic ingenuity, but between general education and necessary propaganda. Education produces a wide population of people capable of reading (and listening) but unable to discriminate between what is worthy to read and what not, and how things are to be understood; our propaganda is art which does not disclose facts, but offers, through diction, the key to the reading and contents.

QUESTION: Through the NATO album, Mars, the planet of war, is constantly appearing among a multitude of other symbols. In the video spot "The Final Countdown" Mars is the location of an embassy of the NSK State, which maintains peace. How? If we forget for a moment that this is only a computer animation, could you perhaps reveal part of the secret to the United Nations? (REPUBLIKA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: To the United Nation we propose to hold sessions of their bodies and to establish "virtual embassies" in conflict-territories, with mandatory participation of all committee-men who would continue holding sessions until War itself asked them for Peace.

QUESTION: The NSK State is the first virtual state in the world. Will this pioneering idea get imitators? (REPUBLIKA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Impossible, because epigonism is unknown to us. The NSK State is a global state incorporating all other countries and systems of the world as its sub-directors.

Is the NSK State "acting more and more indulgently" and are its citizens allowed to enjoy "all freedoms"? (REPUBLIKA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Of course, "power is in the hands of the people" in our state, and its citizens are totally free. Free to do what the state permits them to do. Nothing else.

QUESTION: Laibach advocates the thesis that there are no more or less democratic communities, only different levels of totalitarianism. At which level would the NSK State be found, and is it ever going to demand UN membership? (REPUBLIKA - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Democracy is a system exercising the subordination of the minority to the majority, in Communism the reverse is true, whereas the NSK state is an all-embracing alloy in which subordination is the universal imperative of common happiness. UN membership will be placed on our agenda only when the above- mentioned joint-venture organisation expresses sufficient interest.

QUESTION: Why does it cost money to become an NSK citizen? (ICOL - HAIR - ISRAEL)

LAIBACH: It costs money to produce a passport and keep the citizens informed. There are people paying with their heads to become the citizens of a decent state.

What role does Laibach play in the Slovenian scene? (ICOL - HAIR - ISRAEL)

LAIBACH: We play the role of Danish prince.

QUESTION: Laibach is often accused of borrowing music and artwork related to Fascist ideology. How do you respond? (ICOL - HAIR - ISRAEL)

LAIBACH: We don't. Accusations are based on bad or no arguments, produced to offend. LAIBACH cannot be offended and it need not defend itself.

QUESTION: Has something changed in your way of covering European pop hits/hymns ("The Final Countdown", "In The Army Now") since your version of "Life is Life" and "One Vision"? (ICOL - HAIR - ISRAEL)

LAIBACH: Europe has changed: it is "in the army now" (Balkan war), waiting for the "final countdown" (end of century) and praying for "one vision" (EU). Except life is still life.

QUESTION: Do cover versions have a special significance in your overall musical output? (ICOL - HAIR - ISRAEL)

LAIBACH: What cover versions? We only do originals.

QUESTION: Suppose you found out that your music has been sampled and used without your permission. What would you do? (ICOL - HAIR - ISRAEL)

LAIBACH: If we would like the result, we would send greetings to the author. If we wouldn't like it, we would persecute him for bad music.

QUESTION: Which guide-lines did you follow when titling your new album - NATO? (VECER - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: North - South - East - West.

QUESTION: Could your music be designated as rock? (VECER - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: It could, we've survived even heavier blows.

QUESTION: Does the passport of the NSK State, issued to your citizens, also have any real value? (VECER - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Its symbolic value is NSK 15 (DEM 45), its real value is linearly proportional to the value of each individual citizen.

QUESTION: What are your weapons? Do you have them in sufficient quantities? (VECER - SLOVENIA)

LAIBACH: Our weapons are the weaknesses of others. And these are always in abundance.

QUESTION: Last year a Laibach concert film was advertised to be shown as part of a Slovenian programme. This film was canceled and in its place a debate was screened discussing "The Laibach Concept" in which those taking part knew either very little or nothing at all about Laibach. In addition, the programme closely associated Laibach with the skinhead movement. (HMK - HUNGARY)

LAIBACH: We cannot help those who are desperately riding on prejudices and who make judgements about things they know either very little or nothing at all about. In judging us they make judgements of themselves. They should change their horses first and then we can ride together.

QUESTION: What is the group's opinion about the revival of European fascism and radical events occurring in certain countries? Is the operation of such movements acceptable from the point of view of Laibach ideology which suggests that problems should be solved by reviving old conflicts? (HMK - HUNGARY)

LAIBACH: Fascism is not reviving; fascism is the product and the shadow of democracy: under the disguise of democracy it is the rule of financial capital itself. Illuminate evil and it will disappear. For a while.

QUESTION: Is there any role for the individual or a single artist in such a crisis? (HMK - HUNGARY)

LAIBACH: An individual artist has to live according to his artistic will and desire and not according to a moral right or wrong. If his art is not a fake one he will always do the right thing.

QUESTION: Would the members of the group, if necessary, have taken part in the conflict between Belgrade and Slovenia in 1991? (HMK - HUNGARY)

LAIBACH: If necessary we would conflict the conflict.

QUESTION: Where - in the context of the "Laibach" production - does NATO stand? Does it mean the return to the conceptual "Opus Dei" phase of your work or does it mean a new creative beginning since it represent a heavy diversion from the previous record "Kapital"? (BBC - UK)

LAIBACH: In the context of LAIBACH NATO stands "west of Eden", as we work in concentric circles that periodically repeat themselves and since only the first beginning is the innocent one. NATO doesn't represent a "return to innocence"; NATO comes out from KAPITAL and carries the costume/face of OPUS DEI.

QUESTION: In the interview with "Select" magazine you claim that "for a certain dialogue democracy is not good since it only deals with market logic". What kind of market are you targeting with "NATO"? (BBC - UK)

LAIBACH: In general this record is targeting all the victims of War and Peace and in particular it targets those particles of human flesh and mind that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization cannot reach or find with their missiles.

QUESTION: Some months ago I spoke with Slavoj Zizek about neo-nationalism and racism in former Yugoslavia and also in Western Europe. In this discussion he explained to me his thesis of "the vanishing mediators". To put it shortly: The new social movements of the 80's in Slovenia - punk, gay movements, etc., and also NSK, which opened the field for social changes - vanished and lost their influence at the very point when the new Slovenian State was being established. What do you think about this thesis? What influence, in your opinion, do (sub)cultural practices have in Slovenia now? What changed in this field from 80's to the 90's? (SPEX - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: Such social movements in the new Slovenian state did not vanish entirely with the introduction of parliamentary democracy. They were neutralized by an ideology of tolerant ignorance which swept them - mostly - into state-subsidized oases of perfect and perfectly sufficient freedom, where they're permitted to carry on the nurturing of small - and not so long ago forbidden or subdued - pleasure. With the swing to the free market, lumpencapitalistic media competition has additionally limited and ghettoized the influence of civil society, in essence installing a structure of neglect when it comes to the views of its citizens. But it seems the (former) civil society is satisfied with what they've been given: "democracy after the measure of man". For the majority, their ambitions never stretched any further than the satisfaction of their limited interests and their private needs. LAIBACH and NSK don't see ourselves (and we never did) as part of this civil society, so the question is, as far as it relates to us, irrelevant.

QUESTION: In the 80's you confronted the ideological pathos of the former system with the utmost symbols of political and religious ideology, with all the signs of totalitarianism in this century. Now there is an aggressive burst of nationalism, not only in the countries of former Yugoslavia. Do you think in this situation you can continue to propagate the idea of a romantic aesthetic nationalism? What do you think about this new coincidence? (SPEX - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: In the last few decades the prevalent idea was that nationalism had become obsolete. But powerful nationalistic feelings quickly re-emerged when the world order suddenly crashed at the beginning of the 90s. Today, the familiar sound of nationalism is the most cogent language used by many communities in understanding the difficulties thrown up by a destablished world. It seems more realistic than socialism and it also seems to offer more immediate solutions than capitalist liberalism. It is strong, because it psychologically recapitulates the structure of the family. Nationalism represents authority, ensuring guardianship, offering the option of identification and warmth. As such it is here to stay and the post-imperialistic world is an equally fertile breeding ground for nationalism to bloom. Until recently, short-sighted intellectuals have harbored the illusion that international communication, multinational corporations, regional and global government and courts of justice (European Union, International Court of Justice, reinforced United Nations, etc.) would bring to an end local political disputes. The evidence of Somalia, Ruanda and certain regions of Europe and the former Soviet Union has dispelled that illusion. There is absolutely no connection between international economic trends and local political practice. Liberal interludes during the last two centuries are comparatively rare, limited to the experience of only a few nations and countries. This interlude - the "renaissance" in Europe - was based on optimistic universalism, which left us with liberalism (capitalism) and socialism: two opposed visions for the emancipation of mankind. The death of socialism might be openly embraced by some but at the same time it is a warning that liberalism itself is also mortal. Such mortality inexorably proves that liberal civilization is not intrinsic to human behavior. It is only possible to build and preserve liberal civilization by battling against human nature. If that is true and if nationalistic particularism itself is created out of the mould of human beings, than we have to learn not only how to understand it, but also when and with what kind of standards we have to stimulate or to keep in check its aspirations.

LAIBACH: 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 to 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. Also in the countries of ex-Yugoslavia.

QUESTION: In 1992 you said in an interview that you are against the unification of Europe under the dictate of capitalism and that your strategy against this false unification is to maintain the national differences, different history, and the different national cultural identities in Europe. Today neo-nationalists and neo-racists - take for example the Neo Right in France around Alain de Benoist - are arguing by using the same terms of cultural differences. What do you think about this fact? (SPEX - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: The fact is that traditional notions defining and separating Left and Right are, in today's Europe, entirely misty. The collapse of socialism has led to a fear of political excommunication amongst the old, now totally decimated, Left. In the process of losing its political identity, it has become an advocate of both Euro-centralism and soft liberalism "after the measure of man". The political spectrum is now dominated by the proliferation of middle-of-the-road "politically correct" parties. The former Right, meanwhile, has polarized round two respective poles. At one end of the spectrum is the extreme Right, while the more populist Right has taken advantage of constitutional disorder to occupy the ground vacated by the demoralized and "baptized" Left. That's why today - especially after the last elections in Italy and the ex-republics of the Soviet Union - the confusion is complete, and, regarding the new breed of political parties, any traditional political compass gives completely unreliable readings. Of course there is a difference between the tendencies of French racists and nationalists, who are the reverse payback of France's raw, uncompromised colonialism in North Africa, and the nationalists of the Baltic states. That's why it's necessary to deal with all these movements separately and to analyse each of them as precisely as possible.

But really we have already expressed our opinion on the pros and cons of united Europe many times and it remains unchanged today: Europe is not North America. It has marinated in blood several thousand years of political and cultural differences between regions, each with its own powerful traditions. It cannot turn itself into a characterless melting pot without causing pain, frustration and conflict. Unification will create new dominant political and military blocs (essentially, the reality behind united Europe), the dictatorship of the majority and the suppression of differences. Anyone left outside the new blocs will be subject to pressure and economic blackmail. Western Europe is forming a unity on the basis of economic rather than spiritual postulates. It is acting out of fear, not courage. The union is not the outcome of the "good will" of certain European leaders and nations, but an enforced fact based on supposition that individual states' authority has been eroded and underlined by multinational companies and other global economic trends. It follows that capital within the borders of a single European state is untenable. But if the formal unification of developed European states take place without the full cooperation of the economically poorer eastern and southern regions of Europe, it will lead to a radical new division of the continent and new distrusts between regions. Within the union itself, fear of political disharmony will lead to a proliferation of new laws, both within the technocracy and the politocracy. Increased surveillance, using increasingly sophisticated surveillance technology, will result in the abolition of metaphysics. It will no longer be possible to talk about regional, cultural, etc. differences in such a future, only of a centre and its satellites.

QUESTION: In the manifesto "10 items of the Covenant" you wrote that the material of Laibach manipulation is Taylorism, Bruitism, Nazi-Kunst and Disco. Please explain why you use this material for your ideological attack, and the role Nazi-Kunst has within it? (SPEX - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: "LAIBACH analyses the relation between ideology and culture in the late phase, presented through art" (from the 2nd item of Covenant). To this end we use all expressions of history united or combined in the following four symbolic definitions:

1. Taylorism is the rationally organized working process in (capitalist) factories - how to maximize the productivity of working labour and machinery (demarcation, intensive specialization, time and motion studies, piecework...). Regardless of the cosmetic improvements of the last few decades, taylorism is still the basis of capitalist production process and, by extension, the basic regulatory principle of (western) society and its psychology.

2. Bruitism is the art/philosophical movement that shows the world as it is in its most elemental, naked and brutal form.

3. Nazi-Kunst is mainly the label for the art of the Third Reich and as such clearly defines the fundamental relation of art and ideology.

4. Disco is both the most precise psychological expression of contemporary culture, and surrogate of the other three terms (Taylorism, Bruitism, Nazi-Kunst)

(Mix the four elements together in precisely calibrated measures and you have LAIBACH.)

Now, 12 years later, would you say the material of Laibach has changed because the situation has changed? And if so, in what way? (SPEX - GERMANY)

If the "time" has changed, than LAIBACH will automatically change, because we are "fused to the grid of time".

In your work you have combined images of socialist realism and of fascist art. Why? Do they have anything in common? (SPEX - GERMANY)

Our work refers to the entire history of art, politics and mankind in general. If anything, Soc Art and Nazi-Kunst have in common the prejudices of art historians who deny both a place in history of art on the grounds that they are not authentic historical styles. They are only allowed to serve art history and its museum keepers as definitions of what art is not. As long as this is the case, art history will only stay a collection of prejudices, and collection of prejudices is only useful if it is not called art.

QUESTION: How would you comment on the trend that conservative intellectuals use to equate real socialism and fascism under the label of totalitarianism? (SPEX - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: Totalitarian is by definition all-embracing and intellectuals, who understand equality only as a sublime convention, are caught up in it without ever catching on to its essence. (And about the intellectual mind we know first of all that it is catching itself).

QUESTION: Do you think that now, after the end of communist systems, we are in a post-totalitarian situation? If not, why? And if so, what does this mean for your strategy to answer totalitarian power with an over-identification with its codes and rules? (SPEX - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: First, the communist systems have not vanished yet. In terms of people practising it, China alone outnumbers the entire ex-communist world, including the Soviet Union. Second, we must emphasize yet again that totalitarianism is by definition all-embracing and it is certainly not only the privilege of the political systems, communist or otherwise, which operate according to its principles. If we understand the term democracy to mean the forms of government practiced by developed economic systems in the mainly western part of the northern hemisphere than we say democracy it is only a polite expression for developed totalitarianism. It would then be illogical to describe as post-totalitarian the socio-political relations and systems governing the rest of the three quarters of the world.

QUESTION: The postcommunist East is now penetrated by capitalist western ideology. What is your answer to MTV-culture, to the loss of meaning of words and symbols in the global media-network, to the victory of popism and capitalist realism and the integration of counter-culture in the commercial mainstream? (SPEX - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: It was never our intention to swim against the main stream. We have always penetrating in it, pumping out of it and emptying ourself into it again. As to the East, hasn't it finally got what it wanted all along? And doesn't the counter-culture always want to become part of the commercial mainstream?

QUESTION: Could the conception with which you worked mainly on the albums Let it be, Opus Dei, Sympathy for the Devil, be described with a german proverb: "Wenn sich zwei streiten, freut sich der Dritte.", i.e. free yourself by letting one symbolic order loose against the other? (KODEX - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: Yes, but even better it could be described with an American proverb: "Only the strong survive!", i.e. free yourself by enslaving the other.

QUESTION: Are there still some validity in the ideas expressed on Kapital ("The hunter who chases two rabbits misses them both... hunt two tigers.") (KODEX - GERMANY )

LAIBACH: Hunting has entirely become a secret pleasure, shared and passed on like a message between prisoners; the message goes: Hunt two tigers and you'll catch rabbits as well, because rabbits ride to and from upon tigers which they dare not dismount. (And the tigers are getting hungry...).

QUESTION: There seems to be a renunciation of the use of strong symbols on Kapital. But Kapital is described as the totalitarian thing as such. By what means do you reach this effect? (KODEX - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: By all means.

QUESTION: There were some German authors who wanted to lift society to the level of art. But they mostly had to admit that they lived a schizophrenic life by wishing to do so. Do you want to lift art to the level of society and what consequences would this have for your artist existence? (KODEX - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: We don't consider ourselves as artists and, as a matter of fact, we don't have a high opinion of art - but to lift art to the level of society? Society is like the air, necessary to breathe, but insufficient to live on.

QUESTION: Doesn't the emphasis on the non-existence of a difference between art and life contradict the fact that there is never a social mask that hides some kind of real human being behind? (KODEX - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: For the real human being life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises - like the answer to your question.

QUESTION: Are the female voices on Kapital monsters (the non-existing sacrifice that you had to offer to the social order) or are they the expression of a hidden utopia or both? (KODEX - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: The female voices on Kapital belong to the hand that rocks the cradle, and the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.

QUESTION: You've said in an interview that Kapital needs an antithesis to survive and that this was the reason why your Kapital is a negative utopia. Is there a contradiction to the fact that the antithesis to Kapital already exists, is called civilization and the poor, and is called barbarism, "wonderfully" illustrated by the war in Ex-Yugoslavia? (KODEX - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: No contradiction at all: Kapital will always find the way to fertilize itself and war is the ultimate result of its fertilization and trade. In other words, kapital needs the dead to expand and poverty to protect itself. The result of such aggressive expansion is a destruction of a natural "eco system" and restoration of "barbaric" relations where barbarism never existed before. Barbarism therefore is not in contradiction with Kapital and capitalism; - it is its unmasked essence, wrapped and delivered as a tragic persiflage.

QUESTION: If this is so, if industrialization and the poor will be evacuated from Europe (including Slovenia) more and more, while these countries transform themselves step by step into gigantic leisure parks, would we be back at the old modern utopia which they established at the borders, especially in the third world? (KODEX - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: Yes, Europe loves utopian fairy tales and it is desperately trying to turn into one of them. But her premises are based on segregation and supremacy; it is safe and static Utopia, constituted on pragmatic boredom, which will soon bring to an end its cynical culture.

QUESTION: Do you think that in socialism there was a bigger abyss between the subject and the superstructure because of its perverse monopoly of opinion and that this abyss is invalid with the victory of Kapital? (KODEX - GERMANY)

LAIBACH: In socialism the abyss between subject and superstructure was large enough to produce skepticism; in capitalism there is no abyss between the subject and the superstructure, because superstructure and subject are brutally melted together. The superstructure carefully creates sentiments to disguise this brutality. Sentimentality in the victory of Kapital therefore acts as a superstructure covering brutality and eliminates the abyss between subject and itself.

QUESTION: They say you have brought into reality what had been suppressed: the existence of nationalistic myths and the Fascist desire for subordination. As we can see today, the banished is surfacing and coming back publicly. Has Laibach's context been exhausted? (FERAL TRIBUNE - CROATIA)

LAIBACH: If it is true what they say, then this context of ours - alive and sound - has come back for us to exhaust us.

QUESTION: During your latest European tour, Laibach appeared for the first time in its career in Russia and Belorussia, i.e. in Moscow and Minsk. What are your experiences of these concerts and your stay in Russia and Belorussia? Could you compare them with your concerts in Great Britain and the U.S.A.? (VECERNJI LIST - CROATIA)

LAIBACH: There are differences, of course, but we ignored them, which means that we treated Englishmen and Americans as if they were Russians or Belorussians, and Russians and Belorussians as if they were Americans or Englishmen.

QUESTION: Do you remember your first appearance in Zagreb twelve years ago? What are your feelings now, when you are coming back to Zagreb in 1995? (VECERNJI LIST - CROATIA)

LAIBACH: For quite some time we have a feeling that time has stopped or that, somehow, it even runs backwards, so we are coming to Zagreb with mixed feelings; we are glad we are returning to a time period which no longer exists, but we are ill at ease because we are coming back to something which, by every rule, should no longer exist.

QUESTION: People and mass-media preach, over and over, love, peace and freedom against violence and hate. Which, for you, is the right way to achieve those principles? (ROCKERILLA - ITALY)

LAIBACH: People preach love, peace and freedom but produce violence and hate. Maybe the way to produce love, peace and freedom is in the opposite. If one is not able to hate, how would he know what love is? If he never experienced war, what does he know about peace? And if he was never jailed there is no freedom for him.

QUESTION: You say that European and World order need a change. Which is the first step in that direction? (ROCKERILLA - ITALY)

LAIBACH: Europe should get rid of its superioriority complex and the Globe should turn around by 180 degrees.

QUESTION: Heroism, Hierarchy, and Imperium are three essential values in the spirit of the golden age. What kind of importance do you give to those principles? (ROCKERILLA - ITALY)

LAIBACH: In a technobureaucratic age, none. These "used-to-be" values have turned into pragmatic daily principles without any metaphysical meaning. Hierarchy is the basic principle of a modern society, based on the economic rules and the dictate of Kapital, inside the ever growing Imperiums of mega-corporations and trans-national companies. And Heroism is just the privilege of the privileged.

QUESTION: Someone said that war is the health of the world. is there a grain of truth in it for you? (ROCKERILLA - ITALY)

LAIBACH: It is healthy for the rich and a deadly disease for the poor. War is capitalism with its gloves off.

QUESTION: Is it possible to speak of the art of symbols in your work? (ROCKERILLA - ITALY)

LAIBACH: Symbols are not the work of art; they are dead or live things and art can only give them new meanings. In so far as a symbol is a living matter, it is the expression of a thing not to be characterized in any other way. The symbol is alive in so far as it is pregnant with meaning. Our work is pure because our symbols are pregnant without any meaning.

QUESTION: Is it correct to say that NSK is a cultural collective in which art is to politics what thought is to action? (ROCKERILLA - ITALY)

LAIBACH: We are not politically correct enough to correct anybody's opinion. We can only help you to create your own answers to your own questions.

QUESTION: In which measure is tradition important in your work and life? (ROCKERILLA - ITALY)

LAIBACH: Equally to experimentation.

QUESTION: What is the real function of music in the NSK institution? (ROCKERILLA - ITALY)

LAIBACH: Music creates order out of chaos, rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony compatibility upon the incongruous. Music is the law of the Institution.

QUESTION: Which criterion was used in the choice of title for "NATO"? (ROCKERILLA - ITALY)

LAIBACH: Easy: TATI - TITO - TOTO - NATO.

QUESTION: Which is, instead, the message of "Kapital"? (ROCKERILLA - ITALY)

LAIBACH: Kapital is a dead work which could only stay alive through vampirism: sucking the blood of live work. The more it sucks the livelier it is.