(Slovenia)
http://www.nskstate.com
To trigger ambiguous situations at politically sensitive moments (the crisis
of the Yugoslavian federation and the subsequent war amongst its member
states), using German names and a totalitarian aesthetic: this was the strategy
of the NSK (Neu Slowenische Kunst = New Slovenian Art). Now considered one
of the landmarks of European arts experimentation in the last twenty years,
NSK began working in 1984 as an umbrella for various radical groups that
shared a provocative approach and a similar style of expression in different
media: music (the group Laibach), visual art (Irwin), graphic design (Novi
Kolektivizem), theatre (Scipion Nasice) and philosophy (the department of
Pure and Applied Philosophy).
The artists who form the collective Irwin are the visual biographers of
NSK: their work, framed within the tradition of totalitarian regimes, reappropriated
the supremacist symbols of the Eastern European Block to construct their
own identity as "state artists", faithful to a strict collective discipline.
They opened consulates, designed badges and distributed passports for the
NSK, a "state in time" that takes the paradoxes of state identity to an
extreme in order to ultimately reveal a glimpse of the hidden face of existing
ideological structures.
The same Friday 7 at 6 pm, projection of "Predictions of fire", a documentary movie by Michael Benton (Slovenia-USA, 1996) about the radical art movement NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst).
Links:
"NSK - A State in Time" (Eda Kufer e Irwin, 1993)
Chapter of "Manual de la Guerrilla de la Comunicación" (Luther Blissett - Sonja Brunzels). In Spanish.