OT: Iraqi Liberation: Flash presentation.
John Manning
Nik
>
> http://bushflash.com/liberation.html
I must object to misuse of Laibach music in this video. It doesn't
belong there!
Author of this video is an asshole, as is Haider who also (as I have
read once) used Laibach music on his extreme right party's meetings and
Kaertner Heimatdienst celebrations.
Although probably insulting to a lot of americans, authors should have
better used the american hymn; then the video would really be meaningfull!
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More about Laibach at:
and about all other art groups of the Neue Slowenische Kunst collective at:
REVIEWS AND ARTICLES:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_2_42/ai_109023337
http://www.nskstate.com/athens/laibach/reviews/tilburg1.asp
CHRONOLOGY:
http://www.ljudmila.org/embassy/3a/chron.htm
MUSIC (mp3):
http://www.nskstate.com/athens/laibach/music.asp
THE POSTER SCANDAL (1987):
http://www.nskstate.com/athens/nk/scandal.asp
WAR POSTERS (1991):
http://www.nskstate.com/athens/nk/warposters.asp
(for slovenian letters use ISO-LATIN-2 character encoding)
KRVAVA GRUDA - PLODNA ZEMLJA
Sočna je zemlja v večerni goreči luči,
strast blaznih očetov nas do zadnjega muči.
Dali so nam oči, da v njih se pijanost pretaka,
dali so nam roke, grešne plodove mraka.
Ljubimo zemljo bolestno, kakor so oni ljubili,
ljubimo njih sive glave, plodnost so nam podelili.
(BLOODY CLOD - FERTILE SOIL
Soft is the soil
In the burning evening light,
The passion of demented fathers
Tortures us to the last straw.
Thank you.
They gave us the eyes
For drunkenness to flow in,
They gave us the hands
The sinful fruits of darkness.
Thank you.
We love the soil achingly
As they loved it
We could fall from it - dead
We are kissing their gray heads,
They gave us fertility.
Bloody clod - fertile soil.
Bloody clod - fertile soil.)
APOLOGIJA LAIBACH
Od kdaj, sinovi resnice, ste bratje noči?
Kaj roke vaše s krvjo rdeči?
Eksplozija v noči je roža gorja,
opravičiti z njo se ničesar ne da.
Razbiti mogoče oltarja ni,
oltarja laži, ki oblike množi.
Brezmadežna slika, brezbolne luči,
edina zavetja srhljivih noči.
Otroci duha smo in bratje moči,
katere obljuba se ne izvrši.
Smo črni duhovi od tega sveta,
opevamo noro podobo gorja.
Razlaga je bič in ti krvaviš:
Po stotič razbijte zrcalo sveta, -
vaš trud je zaman. Presegli smo noč':
naš dolg je poplačan
in naša je luč.
(Since when, sons of truth, are you the brothers of night?
What colors your hands with the redness of blood?
The explosion in the night is the flower of woe,
nothing can be justified by it.
The altar cannot be destroyed,
the altar of lies, that multiplies shapes.
The spotless picture, the painless lights,
the only harbors of the terrible night.
We are the children of the spirit and the brothers of strength,
whose promises are not fulfilled.
We are the black ghosts of this world,
we sing the mad image of woe.
The explanation is the whip and you bleed:
Break the mirror of the world for the hundredth time, -
all your efforts are in vain. We have overcome the night:
our debt has been paid
and the light is ours.)
John Manning
Nik wrote:
> John Manning wrote:
>
>>
>> http://bushflash.com/liberation.html
>
>
> I must object to misuse of Laibach music in this video. It doesn't
> belong there!
>
> Author of this video is an asshole, as is Haider who also (as I have
> read once) used Laibach music on his extreme right party's meetings and
> Kaertner Heimatdienst celebrations.
Eric Blumrich is NOT extreme 'right' at all. He's not even REMOTELY in
the vicinity of the 'right'. Whatever Haider did [whoever he is or was],
has NOTHING to do with this presentation. Maybe because you apparently
live in a different country and mental frame, you don't have a fucking
clue what you are talking about as to the import of this presentation as
it is?
> Although probably insulting to a lot of americans,
I doubt that a single American was insulted by the choice the of music.
authors should have
> better used the american hymn; then the video would really be meaningfull!
Here's the URL where you can complain directly to the artist who
produced this presentation:
www.ericblumrich.com/
It seems that your reaction to the use of the music has taken priority
over the message presented. You seem to have totally missed the whole
point.
Human beings are needlessly being massacred in Iraq.
Nik
> the vicinity of the 'right'. Whatever Haider did [whoever he is or was],
> has NOTHING to do with this presentation. Maybe because you apparently
> live in a different country and mental frame, you don't have a fucking
> clue what you are talking about as to the import of this presentation as
> it is?
I have nothing against the video part of the presentation, and I
understood it all right. I also didn't say that he IS extreme right. I
am just saying that he misused their music, similarly than someone from
the extreme right (Haider: head of the Austrian FPO, a nationalist
nazi-sympathizing party that got a big chunk of votes in previous
elections and is part of the goverment from then on. I saw reports of
that even on CNN.)
But still he used completely wrong music for conveying his message (not
to mention the legal stuff). If you (or the author) knew anything about
Laibach you would know this. Why didn't he use Ravel's Bolero? Also nice
majestic piece. At least Ravel could not complain, but I believe many
French people would.
>> Although probably insulting to a lot of americans,
>> authors should have better used the american hymn; then the video would really be
>> meaningfull!
>
> I doubt that a single American was insulted by the choice the of music.
Please read the whole sentence! I didn't say that the present music is
insulting ot americans, I said that he should have used the
Star-spangled Banner (maybe hendrix version ;) ) and that such choice
would probably be insulting to many Americans (but it would better
convey his message, maybe giving even more sense to Americans how the
actions of their government is perceived around the world).
> Human beings are needlessly being massacred in Iraq.
People die (more or less needlessly) all the time. That is a fact and
the nature of this world, and nothing can change it.
But however wrong and hypocritical the motives for the war in Iraq are,
if things somehow miraculously come out better than under Sadam, I
really wouldn't mind.
John Manning
Music is music. It goes beyond political nonsense.
willytex
> Music is music. It goes beyond political nonsense.
>
Nik
A few nice articles about Laibach, NSK, Slovenia, Serbia, Yugoslavia,
art, politics ...
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LAIBACH:
"Politics is the highest and all-embracing art, and we who create
contemporary Slovene art consider ourselves politicians."
LAIBACH:
All art is subject to political manipulation, except for that which
speaks the language of the same manipulation.
QUESTION: It seems clear that Laibach believe in art and music as an
instrument of social change. Do you feel that this instrument has lost
any of its potency or relevance 20 years later?
LAIBACH: We believe that anything, including art and music, can be an
instrument of social change. Art and music so much more, because it can
provoke emotions and minds more directly.
QUESTION: Speaking of music, are you interested, for instance, in Bach's
and Mozart's counterpoint and harmony?
LAIBACH: We are. Music is a credible metaphor of reality. Mozart and
Bach both reflect the bourgeois dream of harmony more precisely than all
the political theories of the nineteenth century together. Harmony is
the true supreme form used by authority to demonstrate its power,
satisfaction and its political scenic arrangement. Primitive polyphony,
dodecaphony, electroacoustic music, etc., etc. any kind of music is an
attribute of authority, its tool and its bond with its people, whatever
it may be.
QUESTION: In addition to Slovene artists, you also quote in your works
leading twentieth century artists, such as Duchamp, Malevich, Fontana,
Yves Klein or Joseph Beuys. You combine these quotations with the
iconography of the victim, with christian, communist or
national-socialist emblems, as well as with ecclesiastical symbols,
blood, soil and the heroic exaltation of work.
What is the reason for this combination of sacrificial kitsch and
the avant-garde, and what is the role of the method of assemblage used?
NSK-IRWIN: The history of art has shown that different formal principles
brought about canonization and thus became objective identification
signs. We comprehend the signs which denote Suprematists, Nazi art, pop
art and socialist realism, in the way Cezanne treated his apples in his
still lifes.
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From the movie Predictions of Fire:
MILOSEVIC:
Comrades! There is no price, and there is no force, which could shake
the leadership of Serbia, and the citizens of Serbia, in the struggle
for just aims!
CROWD:
We want weapons! We want weapons!
MILOSEVIC:
I don't hear you well! I don't hear you well, but I want to give you the
answer that what you require -- soon all the names will be published!
And I want to tell you that those who used people in order to manipulate
with them in order to realize political aims against Yugoslavia, that
they will be punished and they will be arrested! This I guarentee you!
.....
OFF:
In March of 1989, the year in which Slovenia took it's first legislative
steps towards full separation, Laibach made the risky decision to play a
concert in the center of Serbian nationalism: Belgrade, the Yugoslav
capital. Part of the performance was a speech, delivered in a
politically explosive mixture of Serbian and German.
SPEECH:
Brother Serbs! You are here, from alpha to omega! You rule this land,
and we will not let you be raped. This I guarentee you! You believe in
God's penalties and rewards! Your holy towns will remain holy. Saint
Sava says that this land has to be Serbian! Profaned graves -- we've
thought about it as well. But He believes in attack and honor!
OFF:
Reality has a way of taking its revenge. The speech, which started by
appropriating two statement by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic,
would end by directly quoting British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain, the key architect of European pre-war appeasement of Adolf
Hitler. NSK's "retrogardism" had reached its closest encounter with the
very phenomenon it had anticipated. In both form and content, Laibach's
provocation in Belgrade that day was as precise as a chemical formula.
It seemed to crystallize the exact moment of transition between Yugoslav
socialist speech and Serbia's emerging ethnic nationalist rhetoric. The
first had always stressed brotherhood and unity among the Southern
Slavs. The cadences of the second had not been heard in Europe since the
dark days of the thirties.
SPEECH (CONTINUED):
Listen! The violence, the war, the love, and eternal holiness... Upon
these premises we guarantee you your borders, and that means peace in
our time.
...
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LAIBACH: The Instrumentality of the State Machine
by Winifred Griffin
http://www.artmargins.com/content/feature/griffin1.html
Twenty Years of Laibach, Twenty Years of... ?
by Alexei Monroe
http://www.ce-review.org/00/31/monroe31.html
MORE TOTAL THAN TOTALITARIANISM
by Peter Clarke
http://homepage.tinet.ie/~peterc/a/nsk.html
First TV appearance
The 23rd of June 1983, Laibach gave an interview on the weekly
political/informative TV-show "TV Tednik" (TV Weekly). The host and the
director of the show was Jure Pengov. After the interview, the infamous
political ban on live performances and use of the band name was issued.
Recently, 15 years later, this very interview was on display at the
exhibition in The Modern Gallery of Ljubljana as one of the perfect
examples of body art and performance culture.
http://www.nskstate.com/laibach/interviews/first-tv-app-83.php
Nik
I see cinema today as more interesting than any other form. Except that
its power has been usurped. There's been a usurper: television. That's
how I see it... with the acquiescence of accomplices - who are us,
ourselves. Or versions of ourselves. Television is the usurper. When I
watch French television today, I think I know exactly how the French
resistance felt about the German occupation, or about the collaborators.
- Jean-Luc Godard, Soft and Hard
OF TRANSMITTERS AND RECEIVERS
By Michael Benson
In the beginning, Gizmo created the heavens and the earth, and they did
circle each other with great precision at 24 frames per second. Only we
did not know it yet. And an epoch of 100-year intervals did pass before
the 20th century redefined fathomless stimuli, converting them to
moments sampled in time. And it was good. So good, in fact, that an
entire race stayed home on Friday night, watching visions of themselves
play in moving shadow across the glass cathode-ray tubes. Like true
children of the Garden, mesmerized again by the Moment - the absence of
Before and After - they lived in an eternal Present. And went
occasionally to the refrigerator for a beer.
This was a solace much sought after, for the century had been a bloody
one, and the surviving masses were in need of diversion. In view of the
seductions of the Medium, and so long after the original Fall, it was
too much to ask that these Moments be without bias or agenda. In the
palpable absence of Gizmo, that which is sampled has a sampler. What is
assembled has been so joined, and by the serpentine reflexes of human skill.
And so, Blakean visions were accessible to almost everyone, and for a
Song. And towards the end of that period of years (an era which had seen
humanity rise like Christ from the earth in airships, airplanes,
rockets, and in thousands of billions of bits of information) - a second
Fall took place. And innumerable new trees of knowledge did multiply
across the warming post-Cold War landscapes, their metallic branches
receiving and further dispersing visions beamed from the indifferent
Heavens.
And so it came to pass that the Balkans erupted once more in bloody war.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the evening of April 26th, 1983, at exactly 8:52 PM, tens of
thousands of Slovenian and Croatian television watchers were shocked by
a vision seemingly dredged from the blood and soil of historical memory.
It came to them across the state-controlled television of Yugoslavia's
Westernmost republic. Despite appearances, this event - which came in
the guise of an "interview" - was not simply an ideological provocation.
Nor was it merely an art action. It was, in fact, a synthesis of the two.
The vast majority of TV Slovenia's viewers, however - unfamiliar with
"avant-garde strategies of scandal" - simply concluded that a group of
neo-Nazis had appeared in their midst. And certainly the sarcastic
questions of the journalist left little room for doubt on the subject.
In fact, Slovenia was having a collective first encounter with an
ambiguous new phenomenon, something which would later grow into the art
movement Neue Slowenische Kunst.
What did they see? A group of five men in their early 20's, seated in a
row wearing greenish uniforms. Lit from below, as in a horror film,
staring straight forward, their faces expressionless under close-cropped
hair, members of the "rock" group Laibach had engineered an assembly of
generic "triggers" which, in combination, seemed to indicate some
unspecified totalitarianism. Each wore an armband with a calculatedly
ambiguous symbol: a symmetrical cross in an industrial cog wheel. Black
leather boots, gleaming buttons, crossed arms, and blank eyes completed
the effect. Behind them, two posters were visible.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The autumn of the 20th Century is the season of the channel changer.
Atrocity is replaced by entertainment, or simulated atrocity as
entertainment. Spring, 1991. Young men burn in the sunny fields. An
eerie disassociation is experienced by one Slovenian at the beginning of
the Yugoslav wars of secession. Watching JNA tanks advancing down
streets she knows to be only a few blocks away, she nevertheless still
has the option of switching to MTV - or CNN, where the magnitude of her
local crises will be reduced to the smallest of blips within a
synthesized world order.
Slovenian secession then deposits her in a "secret republic" - nobody
further than a few hundred kilometers away has ever heard of the place.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although at first glance they seemed very simple, the posters in fact
were quite interesting. One of them depicted a giant worker figure
raising a hammer in front of smoking factory stacks - classic socialist
realism, but visually interchangeable with Nazi iconography. In the
smaller poster, a mass political rally was depicted, in which a tiny
central figure delivered a speech. Above, where the state symbol should
be, the same cross-and-cog-wheel used in the armbands was visible. This
image, although clearly adapted from Nazi archival photographs, could
just as easily have been derived from photographs, for example, of
Stalin addressing the Supreme Soviet.
Both posters had evidently been made with the most primitive techniques;
the smaller one was in fact a photocopy, and the larger a two-color
silk-screen. But their primitivism belied the sophistication of their
ambiguity.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Summer, 1991. The hotels at Portoroz, on Slovenia's Adriatic coast, are
all closed. We watch the degraded signal relayed to the coast by bombed
transmitters. It shows the commander of the Yugoslav National Army,
Adzic, giving a speech in Belgrade. All JNA senior officers of Slovenian
or Croatian origin, he says, will henceforth be purged from the ranks.
The image buzzes as he speaks - a product of his own bombing. The very
wiring of Yugoslavia has been tampered with. The effect is that the
signals emanating from that state are getting weaker and weaker.
Yugoslavia is getting further and further away, in both time and space.
Adzic, who lost both parents in Croatian Ustase massacres during the
Second World War, is livid with rage. We watch with a certain
resignation. The implications of his statement are clear.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The entire assemblage - this synthesis of totalitarian tropes glinting
malevolently from multiple TV screens - appeared at what could only be
termed a problematic time. In 1983, only three years had elapsed since
the death of Josip Broz Tito, creator of the "second", Socialist
Yugoslavia. The demise of the architect was gradually bringing the
design of his structure into question. Laibach's visual style alone
represented the purest affront to a state founded on a romantic
mythology in which the Balkan St. George slays the fascist dragon,
defies Stalin, and then becomes the glue holding a multi-national state
together through sheer force of charisma. In the most disturbing manner
possible, and in both form and content, Laibach brought into focus an
inexorably increasing uncertainty over the future of the composite
country. They did this by explicitly presenting both the iconography and
the methodology of what would become the new Balkan mythos.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christmas, 1989. As in a miracle or dream, the revolutions in the East
have taken place without a shot being fired. Now the world watches the
charade of the Romanian "revolution." In this, the only Eastern country
other than Yugoslavia and Albania where Soviet influence was relatively
indirect, troops fire into darkened buildings. The Romanian flag, its
red star cut out, waves over the main squares of Bucharest and
Timosuara. It is compelling theater. Yet it becomes increasingly clear
that these fire-fights are a kind of televised window-dressing; what is
really happening is the type of palace coup which leaves state power
entirely in the hands of the same people (minus their executed
figure-head and his execrable wife). Most of the action, in fact,
appears to be taking place around the TV station itself. In a kind of
real-time October, defense of the revolution becomes defense of the
organ creating an ongoing image of revolution; that image in turn
consists of extended footage of the TV station, which is defending the
revolution; and the cycle starts again.
Although it supplanted historical reality with ease, Eisenstein's
magnificent storming of the Winter Palace was in reality a sleepy police
action; the noisy chaos of the Romanian revolution likewise masked a
quiet transfer of the levers of power within an established inner
circle. But the dramaturgy of this scene is only complete if one
considers a final detail. Live images from Romania are fed to the
western world through Belgrade - which is being exceedingly cooperative,
despite Serbian media and telecommunications being entirely in the hands
of "ex" Communist apparatchik Slobodan Milosevic...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
After the initial visual shock, "the interview" commenced in the most
artificial manner possible. An anonymous voice asked questions from
behind the camera. These in turn were answered by Laibach's singer - the
figure at the center of the whole arrangement. Surrounded by anonymous,
static colleagues, otherwise undifferentiated, carefully and without
inflection, he read answers from a prepared script. They were couched in
a turgid, leaden phraseology. Together with image, they constituted what
may be one of the most subversive uses of television recorded in
post-war Eastern Europe.
"Laibach uses means mostly to a manipulatory end and of a propagandistic
character, and repressively uses the power of information. In the first
place these are means fit for collective consumption most effective in
dissuading the masses from critical thinking - such as film, the most
powerful weapon for long-term and long-lasting influence on the spirit."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spring, 1992. On the first weekend of serious attacks, a signal expands
outwards from the last TV transmitter still under civilian control in
Sarajevo. It reveals long, almost lyrical shots of a city under
artillery bombardment. It's difficult to describe their effect; a city
completely silent, apart from the occasional echoing explosion, and
apparently empty, apart from the occasional stunned, wandering person.
There is a kind of depersonalization to the footage - a removed quality
- partially because some of the "takes" come from robot cameras on the
roof of a government building. The effect of this footage is completely
different from all the other televised reports from the wars in
ex-Yugoslavia. It is cut together almost at random - though it has a
kind of internal logic. The result is almost a "God's eye view" effect.
Meanwhile, the quality of the signal itself grows steadily more
degraded. Then, a very calm news announcer comes on. He says, quietly,
that the main TV Sarajevo transmitter is under Serbian attack and is
burning; the signal could die at any time. His face cuts to a shot of
the incongruously futuristic transmitter, on a hill above the city.
Shells are striking the base of this tower - even as the TV picture
continues to fray and degrade.
TV Sarajevo is literally broadcasting its own death.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The voice issuing from behind the camera - from outside the image, a
voice produced by the apparatus of state-controlled television itself -
turns self-referential. Up until now, it says, Laibach has been
spreading its "ideological provocations" through the written word. So
why now appear before a half million TV viewers?
Again, the central figure consults his text. "Television. Within the
industry of consciousness the television medium is, beside the school
system, the leading molder of uniform thinking. Television programs are
basically centralized, with one transmitter and many receivers. No
communication is possible between them. Laibach is acquainted with the
manipulative capacities of modern media and the system that links them.
That's why in its propaganda campaigns it uses the repressive power of
media information. In this case it is the TV screen."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dolly back, fade to black.
8/10/95
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Predictons of Fire: A film about art, politics and war
http://www.ljudmila.org/kinetikon/
Complete Dialogue List Predictions of Fire
What follows is an entirely accurate account of all discernible written,
spoken, sung or shouted words within the 95-minute running time of
Predictions of Fire. Although it is inevitably limiting to "read" a
motion picture, it can be a useful exercise for those interested in
absorbing some of the more complex associations built into the film's
narrative.
Nik
I will even manage to end ON TOPIC, which is also nice :)
If someone browsed through articles and sites, he or she could find
that Laibach is actually very political group, so to use its music in a
political presentation could be considered normal. But that would be
so, only if Laibach would be a "standard" type of a protest group, like
Bob Dylan (or more modern Rage Against the Machine). But Laibach isn't
such a group. They can not be pro-Bush or anti-Bush. They even believe
quite the oppsite, and that is the main reason of my objection:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.artmargins.com/content/feature/griffin1.html
They rejected the conventional belief in the revolutionary potential
and freedom of rock music and the subcultures associated with it as a
misrecognition of the continued dominance of the market economy and
sanctioned outlets for the expression of energy and rage. Rather than
changing much within the social structure, they hold that rock music
invariably serves as a safety valve of acceptable rebellion which
actually helps to preserve the dominant social structure.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Their motives are entirely different (see below). Various researchers
have identified different functions they played with their
retrogardistic play with signs of cultures, arts and ideologies (as
Cezanne played with apples):
- of a virus within a system,
- of a demasker of hidden codes,
- of an unifier of the opposites (they usually have very mixed public,
from the (extreme) political left to right, and all stages in between),
- a barometer (of a certain part) of the society.
or in general, as Aleksei Monroe says, they function as an
"Interrogation Machine", regarding to which each must form it's own
opinion and conclusions.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262633159/qid=1103748565/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/102-2827990-8176152?v=glance&n=507846
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>From 10 ITEMS OF THE COVENANT :
2. LAIBACH analyzes the relation between ideology and culture in a late
phase, presented through art. LAIBACH sublimates the tension between
them and the existing disharmonies (social unrest, individual
frustrations, ideological oppositions) and thus eliminates every direct
ideological and systematic discursiveness. ...
5. LAIBACH practices provocation on the revolted state of the alienated
consciousness (which must necessarily find itself an enemy) and unites
warriors and opponents into an expression of a static totalitarian
scream. ...
9. Besides LAIBACH, which concerns itself with the manner of industrial
production in totalitarianism, there also exists two other groups in
the concept of LAIBACH KUNST aesthetics:
GERMANIA studies the emotional side, which is outlined in relations to
the general ways of emotional, erotic and family life, lauding the
foundations of the state functioning of emotions on the old classicist
form of new social ideologies. ...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://members.tripod.com/NSKunst/misc/state.html
"The whole NSK creation functioned in Slovenian society as a kind of
virus. They came, they performed a totalitarian ritual, and the society
started to build a mechanism against this political and psychological
fact. " Vesna Kesic, Croatian journalist (previously unpublished
transcript of an interview not used in the final cut of PREDICTIONS OF
FIRE).
http://www.ce-review.org/00/31/monroe31.html
The effect of the spectacular and disturbing juxtapositions in their
work creates dense fields of meaning. In Laibach's terms, they "demask
and recapitulate" the political and stylistic regimes associated with
the original symbols. The basic procedure can be summarised as a
confrontation of regimes with their own normally suppressed codes (the
homeopathic principle of treating poison with poison). With each album
and project Laibach and NSK have interrogated a series of power
structures that fabricate life and politics in both the East and West
- totalitarianism, capitalism, Christian monotheism, nationalism and
paramilitarism. The politicised rendering of musical genres (and
vice-versa) provides a new framework to view and document contemporary
realities.
http://www.artmargins.com/content/feature/griffin1.html
In the film Predictions of Fire, (1995), Slavoj Zizek explains the more
effective potential of Laibach's performance. Rather than providing any
answer as to where they stand, Laibach function as a question mark,
forcing the individual concerned about Laibach's messages or the
potential danger of misunderstanding or misinterpreting them to answer
his or her own question: "What is at stake in their act is precisely to
return this question back to ourselves, to ask ourselves. We have there
a certain performance. How do we stand towards them? They are not the
answer, they are the question. They are a big question mark on stage.
We must answer it."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Of course various states reacted more or less violently to the virus,
that presented itself to them. They were banned in Slovenia from
1983-1985 (mostly due to their German name, which provoked burried
traumas; but they still managed to perform one anonymous concert and
published a record without a name on the sleeve), they created
state-wide scandal in Yugoslavia in 1987 (actually this scandal was
created with a poster made by their designer subgroup New Collectivism;
but the Slovene society was already kinda healed by then and there were
no charges, however violently demanded from Belgrade), they were denied
entry into Czechoslovakia (they thought they were Nazis) and almost at
same time denied entry in the USA (they thought they were Communists).
And later, the two videos, 'Geburt Einer Nation' (Birth of a Nation - a
remake of Queen's One Vision), and 'Life is Life' were banned in the
USA, thereby practically showing that the state-machines are in its
essence the same (they had no problems in Europe though, which also
shows that Europe is more tolerant as USA!)
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*Now* the ON TOPIC part: as a part of their retrogardistic remake of
the Beatles' Let It Be album, Laibach's subgroup Germania (actually the
same people, with some other external collaborators, this time the
female singer Anja Rupel), did the song 'Across the Universe',
dedicated to TM and Guru Dev, which might be of interest here...
Now as Germania deals with the emotional side, the songs made by this
group are completely different from standard Laibach style... I read
someone saying it is sugary...
Here is a link... (3MB)
http://www.geocities.com/niknovi/atu.mp3