My walk into the universe of Laibach Kunst Maschine

by Ronald Sengers

The beauty lasts forever, and the beauty of the permanent creativity defines the eternity. Not as a pretentious try to express the non-temporality and the immortality but as a so sought and needed continuance. The continuance itself is what makes the truth historical category, and the moment of creation a possibility for own creation of the spirit of time which with each expression powerful enough, strong and complex, becomes a collective spirit. In spite, the collectivity in this case does not stand for imposition of the own mind but its omnipresence. At least, only in the mind and the spirit of our time. Laibach have brought us back again so we could come here where we have reached or how the reality sees its own truth.

After all years past creating music and sense, the group that is often recognized by what it says, not by what it makes as a music product, this time had the courage and knowledge to express its stand for the sensitive issue of the nation and its definition of what an identification point of a nation is. Laibach’s latest album, called Volk which is a German word for nation, musically analyses the essence of the nation as an idea through artistic-creative expression immanent for their creation. Laibach are the ones who always look the problem in the eye directly not even thinking of making compromises with the truth of their own attitude which imposes as a powerful expression presented  as least expected for a conflict problem such as understanding the nationality as something which should at least partially explain the difference, finely and subtly.

The nationality is the identification thread, one of the rare untouchable things of each country or at least it should be a sign for the difference. The nation should be superior for itself, to give self-confidence and to praise the people. The origin of the nation is problematic as much as the manipulation with the history in defining the nation as an idea. The moment of the establishment of the nation somewhere in the 19th century does not mean a respect for the history, no matter how big is the absurd of the respect, but is a selection of the positivism which surmounts the negativism. The one creating the image for himself forgets that historicism is what it is, and the truth even maybe invisible for itself, regenerative or even eternal for everybody: the ones who believe and the ones who escape from their own belief, is the one which always returns with all its strength. The nation is the choice which is adopted and with the course of time becomes the thing in which to believe, not the thing to be felt. And so the image created becomes reality, and the reality a hidden desire waiting to be revealed. This time as a torment truth drawn of its context.

Laibach’s Volk album speaks about many things, not always likable; nevertheless, the stand doesn’t have to be liked by someone but has to officialize its presence. Its truth as reaching for the truth which was being built for years, as a right to be creator of its own time. The album is actually a subtle esthetic product, a conceptual one with incredible atmosphere, supreme production speaking from musical point of view and an incredible synthesis of powerful, determined and absolute lyrics on an extremely gentle and a bit traditional-nostalgic music base. The thing that doesn’t seem to go along, on this album is actually one thing, as an allusion of the contradiction and the selectivity while creating the nation on equally brutal way as the try to create our reality. Probably the criterion for the choice of the national anthems treated (which are actually created with completely new music compositions) is the imperial moment of the nations in different periods of history. Of course, the “anthem” of the NSK state in time is present as well as the anthems of Vatican as an imperial moment of brutally imposed religious belief and of ex Yugoslavia, this time as a message to everyone on this side of the story about the East, however understood it might be (politically or purely historical, since the difference between the two is very big).

The “new” anthems are too strong in their expression, the provocation is not a reasonless nervousness but a deeply thought essence, the beautiful and the ugly side of the story where the evil always comes last, but never remains obliged nor to the creator not to the observer, as a shadow seeking for its character. The courage is not evil, nor calling the things by their proper names are disrespect or insult. The things are returned to the beginning so the story could be told once again, this time now, with a spirit which sounds terrifying since the same truth has not the same power each time.                                 

Unfortunately, we have missed again the chance to see Laibach in Skopje and let the reason for it remain another question regarding the things that happen to us in our reality, in this world of strangers. And again we reach for the nearest occasion (Nish, Thessaloniki, Sofia) and again we wonder why the nice things always happen elsewhere. The concerts of Laibach are certainly of the kind, on a level of intellectual and visual spectacle, with quantum of energy equal to our greatest wish to be here whenever everybody is, to be creators of our time and to look for the answer to one of the many questions asked each day. What is actually our reality, what is actually the question we want to ask ourselves?