- NSK STATE

Citizen Valnoir in the land of absolute freedom and total control

Since his first contribution to nskstate.com back in 2002, Valnoir was present in almost every NSK State event, designing posters and collaborating with NSK State artists. He has also worked for Laibach, designing all the North Korea Liberation Day visuals, the “Sound of Music”, “Party Songs” and “Kind of Laibach” albums and most recently the music video for “Smrt za Smrt” among other.

Ian Parker responds to the central document of the NSK State Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale

The NSK State Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale takes an unexpected and brave step, locating the NSK State in Time project in cultural-political context, taking responsibility for the resources IRWIN and other components of NSK have mobilised over the past years and giving response to some of the problematic aspects of the project.

Slavoj Žižek: The Courage of Hopelessness

Lecture delivered at the NSK State Pavilion on May 20th 2017.

Charles Lewis - Apology for Modernity, A Measured Dissent

Charles Lewis responds to the central document of the NSK State Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale

In what might be their first state-wide call-up since the Congress in 2010, Irwin is now soliciting a straight up or down vote on Apology for Modernity, the central document to their NSK State Pavilion in Venice this year.

Avi Pitchon responds to the central document of the NSK State Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale

NSK Diplomat, Congressman and Timekeeper Avi Pitchon responds in IRWIN’s referendum regarding “An Apology for Modernity”, presented at the NSK State’s Venice Pavilion.

Letter to NSK citizens

With this letter we are contacting a wider body of NSK citizens, as we would like to address as many NSK citizens as possible. We are asking for your help in order to construct a majority view upon the position on refugees in relation to the state as it is taken in the text "Apology for Modernity".

Escaping the Past of a State in Time

This speech was given as part of the inauguration event for Print Studio, an interactive space at MoMA to explore the evolution of artistic practices relating to the medium of print. The event featured an NSK Passport Office, and additional presentations from Miran Mohar, Conor McGrady, and Gediminas Gasparavicius.

delegates-of-the-first-nsk-citizens-congress_5107063821_o.jpg

What have you done for your state today?

Steve Schultz: The “Findings” were adequate if a bit obvious for my tastes, and without much “real” derivation from the original vision of Neue Slowenische Kunst and its later incarnation NSK. So how do we make our mark while keeping the internal book of the Laws and convent?

Basking in the Light of a Black and White Sun

Avi Pitchon: It is no wonder that us delegates of the First NSK Citizen’s Congress do not haste in submitting our reports, for we are destined to serve as poets, and not clerks...

Art is diplomacy that demands fanaticism

Bertrand Thibert: The cultural earthquake is over, but instead of recovering from it, we have to provoke more of them and move with them

The Other Congress Declaration

The Atomic Declaration of Dependence was an expected surprise for all of us. This pirate manifesto is the manifestation, the focus, the epicentre and the crystallization of the despair of each delegate. A despair that each delegate was unable or unwilling to verbalise. Moreover, it is the statement of the “self-detestation/self-de-state-tation” that we were all carrying within our minds.

Declaration of Findings

The final declaration of the First NSK Citizens’ Congress agreed to by a majority of delegates

Review of LAIBACHKUNSTDERFUGE in Werk II (Leipzig)

Celebrating 321 years of Johann Sebastian Bach and (precisely to the day) 26 years of their own existence, LAIBACH staged their adaptation of Bach's "Die Kunst der Fuge" in Leipzig's "Werk II" on the background of Bach´s native town's annual "Bachfest" on 01.06.2006.

Laibach: Made in Yugoslavia?

Laibach's use of Slovene cultural imagery is well-known, yet this was always balanced and contradicted by a simultaneous and extensive use of Yugoslav references. Even as it asserted Slovene culture in the most spectacular form yet seen it retained an ambivalent relationship with its Yugoslav context.

Every Minute of the Future is a Memory of the East

Exhibition EAST.ART.MUSEUM in Karl-Ernst-Osthaus-Museum in Hagen, Germany

Icons Relocated

Review of IRWIN's exhibition in Saint Gereon's Church in Cologne

XY Unsolved: NSK and Encrypted Culture

Churchill once famously described Russia as "a riddle wrapped inside a mystery wrapped inside an enigma". In the Western political and cultural imagination (or fantasy space), this attitude to "Russia" stands in for "the East" generally, and for all that from a Western perspective is archaic, obscure, or perverse. Churchill's description could equally be applied to NSK, and particularly to Laibach, as an equally fascinating and frustrating presence within the Western popular imagination.

Theoretical Basis for the Construction of The Temple to Unknown God

Speech by Peter Mlakar of the NSK Department of Pure and Applied Philosophy at the holy rock of Areopagus under the Acropolis of Athens.

Interrogation Machine: Laibach and The NSK State

What is the best approach to exploring what Laibach, Irwin and the NSK State represent? Fundamentally the work of all NSK groups represents an artistic and also cultural response to the imposed violence of ideology, culture and theory. This perception of violence is present most acutely in Laibach's initial reprocessing of language and ideology and to see how the machine operates it's necessary to return to these traumatic roots.

From the “Red Districts” to the “Golden Smile”

Review of the exhibition "IRWIN-RETROPRINCIP 1983-2003" at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin