Address delivered at the opening ceremony of the 1997 festival
for Ljubljana as a cultural capital of Europe

Transcript of Peter Mlakar's speech - which he delivered bare-chested and wearing a butcher's apron - for the opening ceremony of the 1997 festival for Ljubljana as a Culture Capital of Europe. Upon hearing the speech, the Archbishop of Slovenia left the venue in protest.

Honorable Mister President and your wife, esteemed religious and secular authorities, respected diplomatic corps, visiting guests from abroad, citizens and members of NSK, gentle audience members!

If I look within and around myself, a light shines on me and I hear a voice saying: "Know that you've become such as you are, flesh and blood, an animal - for me, who seeks sexual satisfaction in a perfect woman, in a black hole; know that you're bereft of sulfur and electricity, that you've become uninteresting and dull. This sinewy creature and the world as it exists today no longer arouses any real excitement in me, they are past. Here I've already sucked and screwed it all."
Audience members, one must be attentive to this voice. But among us things are even simpler. The picks, shovels, axes and pliers, forks, knives and screwdrivers that help us through our lives are broken and rusting away: politics is a lame whore making nobody erect, the nation is dead, money is impotent and unable to enrapture modern man. Finances are for the poor - not for the likes of us. None of this satisfies the requirements of our origins, whose substance is a living unity of forces - living outbursts of sense and pleasure.

Yet, if the day is not far away when we'll be able to replace the head of you, you or you, to rejuvenate you in a process of cyber-treatment so that, centenarian, you'll give pleasure to a heifer, or make your copulation in the virtual world a reality, this doesn’t mean that we’ve grasped God, and we know that this still isn’t where real excitement lies.

What then? It has to be said that real satisfaction won't be attained if we do not fail first to arrange matters in such a way that panic and despair seize the human soul. The real world is that which doesn’t exist, or it is a monster at odds with real life. This monster has no connection with culture. Culture, that isn’t art. Every peasant can have a fat potato: that is culture. But what art is, only God knows. We don’t need culture; what we need is God’s ointment of endurance.[1] Hominis tota vita nihil aliud quamad mortem iter est.[2] Real life is outside this life. It's beyond the reach of absolute woe. It dwells where evil becomes our patient. We need this ointment for such a life. Lubricated with it, dear audience, we penetrate through the fires of hell into Heaven’s hole. That’s why I’m telling you: the sense, the truth of everything, lies in something that is neither life nor death. This is a matter of orgasm.

[1] A reference to the Slovenian maxim, "What cannot be cured, must be endured."
[2] All of man’s life is nothing other than a march toward death.