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LAIBACH and the PERFORMANCE of HISTORICAL EUROPEAN TRAUMA Summary

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LAIBACH and the PERFORMANCE of HISTORICAL EUROPEAN TRAUMA Summary Art History & Criticism / Meno istorija ir kritika 16 ISSN 1822-4555 (Print), ISSN 1822-4547 (Online) https://doi.org/10.2478/mik-2020-0007 Simon BELL Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, United Kingdom LAIBACH AND THE PERFORMANCE OF HISTORICAL EUROPEAN 105 TRAUMA LAIBACH AND THE PERFORMANCE OF HISTORICAL EUROPEAN TRAUMA EUROPEAN HISTORICAL OF PERFORMANCE THE AND LAIBACH Summary. This paper reflects a study in how the Slovenian Performance Art collective the NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst), and more specifically its sub-group Laibach, functioned as a ‘Memory machine’ in re-enacting historical European trauma in an apparent re-staging of the totalitarian ritual. In this way, Laibach demonstrate history as a contemporary active political agency of Eastern and Central Europe. Shaped by the break-up of Yugoslavia, the NSK was a multi-disciplinary Gesamtkunstwerk primarily comprising three groups: IRWIN (visual arts), Noordung (theatre), and its most influential delivery system, Laibach (music). Championed by Slavoj Žižek, Laibach are Slovenia’s most famous cultural export, and are widely considered Europe’s most controversial music group. In 2017, Laibach caused further controversy for being the first ‘Western’ group to play North Korea. With the strategy of Retrogardism, an aesthetic system unique to Eastern European aesthetic praxis, Laibach and the NSK re-mythologised totalitarian iconography associated with Nazi Kunst and Socialist Realism, which contemporary capitalism can only relate to as offensive kitsch. Keywords: Laibach, Eastern Europe, Performance, NSK, totalitarian, Retrogardism. ‘There’s an ungodly chill in the air. Fists Slovenia, in 1980. In 1984, they collaborated with punch the air. Eyes come over glazed, extinct. other Yugoslav artists to found the NSK (Neue It’s bloody enormous. A thunderous cruelty.’1 Slowenische Kunst). The NSK were a collective consisting of three central groups: IRWIN were the These words are from a Melody Maker review of a visual artists, Sestre Scipion Nasice were the thea- performance by the Slovenian conceptual art col- tre wing, and Laibach, music.3 Although the NSK lective Laibach at the height of their notoriety in is no longer an active entity in its original format, the 1980s. Laibach’s controversial aesthetic strategy its offspring manifestation, the NSK State in Time, of ‘Retrogardism’ interrogates historical European is very much extant, and all three founding groups trauma in the re-enactment of the totalitarian ritual. continue to function, with Laibach being the most In this paper I will examine the manner in which famous.4 According to Alexei Monroe, cultural the- Laibach (and the associated group the NSK), re- orist and expert on Laibach and the NSK, ‘the aim mythologised (or in their words, ‘re-capitulated’), of the association was the constitution of a trans- the taboo energies of the Grand Utopian Narrative, national paradigmatic state, in which Laibach rep- with specific focus on their output between 1980 resented the ideological, the theatre the religious, and 1992. By returning to the rejected faecal mat- and IRWIN the cultural and historical impulse’.5 ter of European history, Laibach replicate Michael There were other groups within the NSK, such as Taussig’s notion of the sacred. To paraphrase Lai- the design department the NK (New Collectivism), bach collaborator Eda Čufer, only by returning to Graditelji (architects), and the Department of Pure the unresolved traumas of the past can the present and Applied Philosophy, of which Slavoj Žižek was be healed.2 a member. This multi-disciplinary collective func- Originally named Laibach Kunst, Laibach were tioned as a Gesamtkunstwerk, and images and sym- formed in the mining town of Trbovlje, Northern bols were cross-referenced and cross-pollinated by all groups within the NSK, with central motifs such uncomfortable truths concerning Slovenian Ger- as totalitarian iconography and Suprematism creat- manisation and the trauma of occupation.10 This ini- ing a unified whole. tial and defining act of controversy was reinforced by an onslaught of further aesthetic and ideological Since their founding in 1980, Laibach have released provocations. For example, in 1983 at the Zagreb 29 studio albums, most recently a re-coding of songs 106 from The Sound of Music, and at the time of writ- Biennale, a Laibach concert was interrupted by the ing are currently on a world tour.6 In August 2017, police and the group were thrown out for project- Laibach became the first ‘Western’ music group to ing images of Marshal Tito montaged with por- perform in North Korea. In the 1980s, Slavoj Žižek nography. Moreover, their music was aggressively brought Laibach to academic scrutiny in the West loud, raw, and discordant, these concerts being for their strategy of over-identification with the described by Alexei Monroe as: ‘nightmarish and totalitarian spectacle, and they remain Slovenia’s utterly extreme combinations of alienation, infer- 11 most famous cultural export, with a global follow- nal noise, and brutal visual imagery’. What added SIMON BELL SIMON ing and an history of controversy both domestic to the provocation was the wearing of austere non- and international. Despite their considerable influ- specific uniforms suggesting both Italian fascist and ence and fame within alternative popular music Nazi attire, yet with the fasces or swastika replaced (particularly the ‘Industrial’ genre), music is para- by Malevich’s Suprematist cross. In a country that doxically arguably incidental to Laibach. They were had endured occupation by both Italian and Ger- originally created as a visual arts group (Laibach man forces in living memory, this was guaranteed Kunst), choosing music as simply the most effec- to cause offence in popular opinion. It was however, tive and immediate channel of communication. the staged Slovenian TV interview in 1983 that Their output is marked by an eclectic approach, launched Laibach’s notoriety in Slovenia overnight, with each album varying stylistically from the last. resulting in a four-year ban on the use of their name. The oppressive martial-industrial of Nova Akropola An interesting parallel can be found with the out- (1986), and Opus Dei (1987), for example, varies rage in Britain over the Sex Pistols interview with enormously from the digital bricolage of Kapital Bill Grundy on British television in 1976. However, (1992), the ‘rock’ of Jesus Christ Superstars (1996), whilst the Sex Pistols’ transgression was swearing on and the synthesised interpretations of Bach fugues prime-time television, Laibach’s offence was a mani- in Laibachkunstderfuge (2008).7 Each of these texts festo of militant aesthetics. is an interrogation of subjectivity and genre, rather Laibach’s history is interwoven with its native coun- than a conventional linear development of musical try, running concurrent with tectonic shifts in Slo- form. Furthermore, in order to engage with Laibach venia’s development, including a European war and fully, their music, iconography, literature, mythol- Slovenia’s independence. In November 1995, during ogy, and the affect of their presence must be under- the siege of Sarajevo for example, the NSK Država stood as a performative whole, with each element of Sarajevo event took place. The national theatre in equal import. war-torn Sarajevo was declared NSK state terri- Slovenian cultural theorist, artist, and NSK col- tory for two days, with performances by Laibach, laborator Marina Gržinić described Laibach in the speeches, and an exhibition. In a characteristic con- eighties as: ‘the most radical avant-garde rock-and- flation of art and life, NSK state passports issued at roll exploration of the time’.8 From the outset their this event were used by several individuals to escape performances and texts were considered offensive the besieged city. In 1996, Slovenian foreign min- to mainstream Yugoslav culture and political bod- ister Zoran Thaler ceremoniously handed Laibach’s ies. The name itself was scandalous in early-1980s NATO album to N.A.T.O. Secretary-General Willy Slovenia, being termed the group’s ‘ideological Claes, and the Slovenian ambassador has been original sin’.9 Laibach was the Nazi occupation known to attend Laibach performances in Britain. name for the capital Ljubljana, and thus resurrected These examples demonstrate the way Laibach (and the NSK) are directly connected to their country’s beyond that of a playfully offensive kitsch. Thus it political history. constituted free-floating signifiers for Laibach to re-anchor, or in their words, ‘re-capitulate’. This re- RETROGARDISM mythologisation is key to Retrogardism, as the ideo- logical power of the original symbols and tropes of The central aesthetic system to Laibach’s praxis is the grand utopian narrative remain active agents, 107 Retrogardism.12 Also known as the Retro-avant- but are re-coded within the militant aesthetics of the garde, or the Retro-principle, Retrogardism re- Retro-avant-garde spectacle. It must be noted how- mythologises totalitarian iconography and tropes, TRAUMA EUROPEAN HISTORICAL OF PERFORMANCE THE AND LAIBACH ever, that although Laibach and the NSK emphati- in particular those associated with Nazi Kunst and cally re-activated the problematic dynamic con- Socialist Realism. Through this strategy, Laibach tained within Völkish signifiers, for example antlers, examine the legacy of historical European trauma in the stag, the worker cipher-figure and the Zahnrad the context of what has been termed the contempo- (cog), these signifiers are not quilted to any coherent rary ‘post-ideological’ age. In 1992, NSK artist Eda ideological field. Attempts to define an ideological Čufer wrote on Retrogardism as regards the NSK’s structure within the spectacle articulated by Lai- Moscow action Black Square in Red Square, explain- bach and the NSK is frustrated, as it is bereft of cer- ing that the ‘Retro-avant-garde is the basic artistic tain key components of the totalitarian ritual such procedure of Neue Slowenische Kunst, based on the as a personality cult, an enemy or ‘other’, or indeed premise that traumas from the past affecting the any teleological or utopian drive.
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