Peter Mlakar at the Areopagus in Athens

2004 was a remarkable year for the city of Athens. The modern degenerated version of our ancient Olympic Games found their way back home, offering a sense of bliss together with hopes and promises for the citizens of Greece. One year before this historic comeback of Olympic Games in their homeland, Peter Mlakar of the Department for Pure and Practical Philosophy at NSK visited Athens to present his idea for a symbolic comeback of the Unknown God to the place were this God was first mentioned and worshipped.

Peter Mlakar presented the idea for the construction of an Altar to the Unknown God in our city for the first time in 2003, on the occasion of the 10th Youth Biennale in Athens. On that June summer night, Peter said that the planet community should bring this Altar back to Athens as a gift of something what was once theirs, but that now belongs to all. But it is common to all in its world ethical orientation. One year later, just after the end of the 2004 Olympiad, Peter Mlakar came to Athens for a second time, invited by "The Slovenia of Athens", for a special ceremony on the rock of Acropolis. The Department of Pure and Practical Philosophy, chose the same place were St. Paul spoke to the People of Athens about Unknown God for the first time two thousand years ago to give a speech about the universal God, "the »corner stone« of the most radical directions in the philosophy of religion or in the theology itself."

"The Athens men! By all I see, you are very religious. I was walking through your capital town and visited the holy objects. By that I noticed also the altar with the inscription To the unknown God. What you honour, not to know, I am announcing to you…" said St. Paul. But, although the idea of an Unknown God is still alive (consciously or unconsciously) in the minds and souls of modern Greeks, this Altar that St. Paul describes does no exist physically any more,. "Here we have to do with the God of all gods" said Peter Mlakar, and this explains exactly why this idea is so relevant to the Greek philosophy and Greek way of thinking as a whole.

These words of Peter Mlakar may not remain engraved on a metal plaque placed on the rock of Acropolis like the words of St. Paul, but they will certainly live forever in the minds of the friends and guests who had the chance to meet him here in Athens and to be present at the special ceremony on Areopag, on the rock of Acropolis, that Sunday evening on the 27th November 2004.

The same night, just after the ceremony, Peter Mlakar was the honorable guest of the first NSK meeting in Athens, a meeting that took place at the studio of Thomas Katsaros near the Archeological Museum of Athens. That night the guests had the chance to talk with him about the Unknown God project and walk through the art of Laibach and NSK that was exhibited around the studio. This remarkable event was the first of a series scheduled to take place here in Athens within the framework of the "Hellenic NSK Ambassade" organized by "The Slovenia of Athens".