NSK Staat Berlin, Volksbuhne, designed by New Collectivism

Invited by the Volksbuehne theater in East Berlin, NSK organized a major show on the premises of the house and on its roof. It consisted of two Laibach concerts, an exhibition of Irwin & guests, a New Collectivism Studio installation, an academy by the Noordung Cosmokinetic Cabinet, and lectures delivered by Slavoj Zizek, and by members of the Department of Pure and Applied Philosophy and Irwin. The activities took three days, from 8th to 11th October 1993, during which time the Volksbuehne building was declared territory of the NSK State, while entry was only permitted to passport holders with valid visas. A consulate office was open non-stop issuing information and documents of potential NSK citizens.

The Volksbuhne theater, once among the most prominent theater establishments of the twentieth century, is located in the historical centre of Berlin - the Rosa Luxemburg Platz. Famous names, in terms of culture history, are connected with the place, including Max Reinhardt as the stage manager from 1915 to 1918 and Erwin Piscator from 1925 to 1928. The latter worked with playwright Brecht and stage designer Georg Grosz a great deal. The theater reached the peak of its glory in the seventies when Benn Besson, a French director of Swiss origin and Brecht's student, was stage manager. He worked in the German Democratic Republic for no less than twenty-five years. Besides Besson, the poetry of the house was tailored by the director team of Manfred Karge and Matthias Langhoff, while Heiner Muller was among the regular participating playwrights.

In the 92/93 season, the theater was taken over by the ambitious east German director Frank Castorf who achieved the naming of the Volksbuhne as theater of the year by as many as twenty of the forty critics asked. In this way, Volksbuhne is expanding the radical and aesthetic tradition of the theater which, in these politicized days, cannot restrain itself solely to performing its function of entertaining.
To Castorf, the Volksbuhne is a place where the viewer must make a stand: either for or against. It was in this theater that Castorf invited NSK to declare its State territory.

The program began on 8th October with the opening ceremony, speeches rendered by representatives of the local authorities, the Volksbuhne and NSK. Constituent parts of the ceremony were the transfer of keys to the theater and the unveiling of an NSK State plaque. A press conference in the Green Salon and an informal diplomatic meeting in the Red Salon concluded the evening.

At the conference, NSK representative presented to the press the Theses of the NSK State, its passport and the programme of the Occupation of the Volksbuhne theater building. In the second part they gave detailed answers to individual questions from the audience.

The following day, Slavoj Zizek, a guest of the Department of Pure and Applied Philosophy, addressed the crowded Green Salon, giving a marathon three-hour lecture on "Woman, Evil and Europe" and offering discussion on the topic. The founder of the Ljubljana Association for Theoretic Psychoanalysis, ambassador of science Slavoj Zizek is not unknown to Berlin audiences, since several of his books have been published in Germany, so the extent of interest in his lecture was no surprise.

His lecture was followed immediately by the Berlin premiere of "Bravo", a film on Laibach by the Retrovision group, Daniel Landin and Chris Bohn, after which Laibach gave a concert entitled "Staat Generator" (State Generator) promoting their "Kapital" album.

An academy of the Noordung Cosmokinetic Cabinet should have taken place in one of the cinemas at 11 pm with a lecture commemorating the 100th anniversary of leutenant Herman Potocnik Noordung, a cosmologist whose book - "Das Problem Der Befahrung Des Weltraums" (The Problem of Space Travel) - was published in Berlin in 1929 by Richard Carl Schmidt und Co.. On account of organizational difficulties and excessive interest among the audience, the head of the Cabinet vanished in a conspirative fashion, taking with him a part of the surprised audience. He led some 50 people through the bowels of the theater, up the spiral staircase, and to the very roof of the NSK State where he gave his speech illuminated by the city lights below and the glow of starry heavens above.

At 5 pm on the next day, Irwin and their guests received the public in the Green Salon. In their lecture entitled "From Capital to Embassy" they centred their attention around the problem of modernism in painting, concentrating on defining so-called "eastern modernism". They gave a description of the events at the NSK embassy in Moscow, presenting the relevant book. In a lively discussion which followed the academic introduction they gave account of their views regarding the decision to join the independent NSK state. In the same room Irwin prepared a display entitled "Ljubljana, Zagreb, Beograd" which included their works interacting with those created by Goran Djordjevic, Mladen Stilinovic and early Laibach.

At 8 pm they showed "Bravo" in the great hall, followed by another appearance of Laibach.

At 11 pm a member of the NSK Department of Pure and Applied Philosophy tackled a tricky, but topical subject, "The Face of God and German Sexual Discipline". The core research problems were the questions of God, the essence of sexuality and its place with regard to the absolute and evil. Through a theontological/psychoanalytical dissertation, he attempted to prove by his practical approach that the meaning of pleasure was a totalitarian essence reflected in the sexual, and that it was evil.

After his lecture which was warmly accepted by experts as well as by laymen in the audience, members of NSK threw a cocktail party in the Red Salon, inviting journalists and other guests.

Over the three days, the theater also hosted an NSK library with audio tapes and an NSK video library with information centre. Besides Retrovision, the video library featured films on NSK by Marina Grzinic, Aina Smid, Daniel Landin, Goran Gajic, Michael Benson and others. In cooperation with the individual groups, but above all with the architects' wing, the New Collectivism group took over the external and internal design, having also designed all official state documents, including the seals, visas, the passport and the NSK plaque; the plaque was given a permanent place on the theater's protocol wall after the event. By this symbolic gesture, the NSK State occupied a territory of a foreign country for the first time in history, declaring it temporarily its own.