Post Ideological
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!"!#$% http://exeuntmagazine.com/features/laibach-ludic-paradigm-of-the-post-ideological-age/2/ 23 May 2012 Laibach: Post-Ideological Tricksters by Simon Bell On the 14 th April Laibach delivered the Monumen tal Retro-ava nt-garde performance at the Tate Modern, London, celebrating over thirty years of Laibach Kunst machine. The Turbine Hall was split in two; on one side the Laibach stage, on the other a large black box. At the forefront of the stage was a stag’s head with antlers, inside th e box was a diamond-encrusted skull. The antlers are a familiar Völkish motif occurring throughout the Laibach spectacle; the skull is Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God (2007). The price of the mounted stag head is unknown, the price of the Hirst skull £50 million. It was possible to touch the antlers, to photograph it, and it would have been possible to remove it from its mount. The Hirst skull on the other hand was subject to the tightest security, only a few were allowed into the black box to view it at a time, it glittered under a glass case, and photographs were forbidden. Thematically however, the conditions of accessibility are reversed. Whilst the title, cost, and vulgarity of the Hirst skull is an arguably straightforward observation on the art world, consumerism, mortality, and their interrelations, Laibach’s antlers remain obscure. The antlers might be a familiar Völkish trope, but re-encoded in the Laibach spectacle they simultaneously denounce and re-affirm the association with the grand utopian narrative and a traumatic European historical. The Hirst skull is a novelty of its time; a coy playful pastiche arising from and in collaboration with late- capitalism. The antlers are antiquated Weltanschauung, whose only currency in late-capitalism is as playfully offensive kitsch. It is in this discourse that Laibach’s interventions are so vital, and why, after thirty years of provocations and controversy, the Laibach enigma remains as salient as ever. Laibach at Tate Modern. Photo: BrothertonLock Laibach are the prime delivery system of the performance-art collective the NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst) and Slovenia’s most famous and influential cultural export. They are popularly conceived as a
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8/10/2019 Post Ideological
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!"!#$%
http://exeuntmagazine.com/features/laibach-ludic-paradigm-of-the-post-ideological-age/2/
23 May 2012
Laibach: Post-Ideological Tricksters
by Simon Bell
On the 14 th April Laibach delivered the Monumental Retro-avant-garde performance at the TateModern, London, celebrating over thirty years of Laibach Kunst machine. The Turbine Hall was splitin two; on one side the Laibach stage, on the other a large black box. At the forefront of the stage wasa stag’s head with antlers, inside the box was a diamond-encrusted skull. The antlers are a familiarVölkish motif occurring throughout the Laibach spectacle; the skull is Damien Hirst’s For the Love ofGod (2007). The price of the mounted stag head is unknown, the price of the Hirst skull £50million. It was possible to touch the antlers, to photograph it, and it would have been possible toremove it from its mount. The Hirst skull on the other hand was subject to the tightest security, only afew were allowed into the black box to view it at a time, it glittered under a glass case, and photographswere forbidden. Thematically however, the conditions of accessibility are reversed. Whilst the title,cost, and vulgarity of the Hirst skull is an arguably straightforward observation on the art world,consumerism, mortality, and their interrelations, Laibach’s antlers remain obscure. The antlers mightbe a familiar Völkish trope, but re-encoded in the Laibach spectacle they simultaneously denounce andre-affirm the association with the grand utopian narrative and a traumatic European historical. TheHirst skull is a novelty of its time; a coy playful pastiche arising from and in collaboration with late-capitalism. The antlers are antiquated Weltanschauung, whose only currency in late-capitalism is asplayfully offensive kitsch. It is in this discourse that Laibach’s interventions are so vital, and why,after thirty years of provocations and controversy, the Laibach enigma remains as salient as ever.
Laibach at Tate Modern. Photo: BrothertonLock
Laibach are the prime delivery system of the performance-art collective the NSK (Neue SlowenischeKunst) and Slovenia’s most famous and influential cultural export. They are popularly conceived as a
8/10/2019 Post Ideological
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8/10/2019 Post Ideological
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In contrast, a vocabulary for comprehending Laibach’s disruptive tactics of ambiguity, over-identification, and a Retrogardism alien to Western aesthetics, does not exist. Laibach disrupt hive-mind media-orientated late-capitalism by not existing in a commodifiable fantasy space. In posing thequestion of the position of our subjectivity they stand beside us and are not projected into a fantasyspace which would make them comfortably ensconced in this flow-of-meaning. As " i#ek points out;in Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) when Grace Kelly proposes to James Stewart she is disruptive, it
is only when she is in the fantastical space seen through the window she becomes comprehensible tohim. [x] Similarly with Laibach, but in positing no ideological field, in floating signifiers that areemphatic nodes in a Lacanian quilting that cannot be fixed, they cannot function in an assimilatoryfantasy space.In the words of Laibach: ‘In art, morality is nonsense; in practice it is immoral; in people it is asickness’ [xi]
[i] Horvath, A., 2008. Mythology and the Trickster: Interpreting Communism. In: Wöll, A. and Wydra,H., eds., 2008. Democracy and Myth in Russia and Eastern Europe. Abingdon: Routledge. P.27[ii] Fisher, J., 2004. Embodied Subversion. In: Heathfield, A., 2004. Live: Art andPerformance. London: Tate Publishing. P.61[iii] Laibach and the NSK refer to this process of re-mythologizing as “re-capitulation”[iv] For example, the British public and media often recounts the bombing of Coventry on the 14 th
November 1940 as a cataclysmic wartime event, yet the death toll of 568 pales in comparison with thefire-storming of Hamburg, Leipzig and Cologne, for example. In Dresden over the two nights of the13 th and 14 th of February 1944, allied bombing and the subsequent firestorm phenomenon killed anestimated 25,000, many of whom were refugees.[v] See: Epstein, M., 1995. The Origins and Meaning of Russian Postmodernism. [online]:<http://www.emory.edu/INTELNET/af.rus.postmodernism.html> and: Erjavec, A., 2003.Postmodernism and the Post-Socialist Condition . Berkeley: University of California Press[vi] Cited in: Hutcheon, L., 1989. The Politics of Postmodernism. London: Routledge. P.113[vii] See: " i#ek, S., 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso. P.28, and: BAVO 2007.
Always Choose the Worst Option – Artistic Resistance and the Strategy of Over-identification . [online]:<http://bavo.biz/texts/view/45>[viii] Sloterdijk, P., 1988. Critique of Cynical Reason . Translated from the German by M. Eldred.London: Verso[ix] Gómez-Peña, G., 2002. Performing Against the Cultural Backdrop of the Mainstream Bizarre.[online]: <http://www.pochanostra.com/antes/jazz_pocha2/mainpages/bizarre.htm>[x] See: " i#ek, S., 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso. P.119[xi] N.S.K.,2010. Excerpts From Interviews Given Between 1980-1985. [online]:<http://www.laibach.nsk.si/l31.htm>
