ALEXANDERNYM (NSKSTATEINTIME) Hi Alexander. You have just released the book ‘Weapons Of Mass Instruction. Speeches, Reports & Documents From NSK State In Time’. What was your motivation for releasing this book? Starting with the Citizens’ Congress in Berlin in 2010, NSK State has taken on a life of its own, even more so than before. Numerous citizen activities have taken place since, starting with the NSK Rendez-vous in France, to various exhibitions and other gatherings in the UK, the US and elsewhere, culminating in the series of impressive NSK Folk Art Biennales in Leipzig, Ireland and Trbovlje in Slovenia, where it all began in 1981 (the town where Laibach originated from, xk). Since due to the spatial distances involved, attendance was not possible for all interested citizens around the world, I figured that a collection of the speeches given and the documents involved in these activities, would provide interested citizens with the opportunity to read up on these events and developments. Thus, I began expanding my archive and started collecting those bits and pieces to present them in an appealing and informative fashion, not only for citizens of NSK State but also as a documentation of the State as such. able gain a reputation outside of Yugoslavia, while they were struggling for recognition at the home front. The mere structure and appearance of the NSK movement or school suggested a state-like penchant for organization, which effectively superseded that of the slowly fading mothership Yugoslavia. In a period when Tito’s multinational state was disintegrating, NSK presented Slovenian culture as both an amalgamation of centuries of cultural and political interpellation, as well as a (future) independent country. By juxtaposing Slovene national symbols with totalitarian imagery,NSK effectively coopted iconography which might otherwise have been adopted by the Slovene nationalist far right. In retrospect, this may have effected a far less aggressive nationalism in Slovenia than in other Yugoslav federal states, preventing Slovenia from joining in the slaughter that was to follow. If you’re marching towards annihilation, you should at least do it with a happy song. To understand the NSK State In Time, we should go back in time.Neue Slowenische Kunst–abbreviated to NSK – was founded as a multidisciplinary art movement in 1984, as a consequence of the banning of the industrial band Laibach in Slovenia, then a part of Yugoslavia. What was the context and the resonance of the founding of this artistic movement? A complex question! For anyone interested in the painstaking details of NSK’s history, I recommend Alexei Monroe’s book ‘Interrogation Machine’. In short, when NSK started out, it functioned as a beacon for subversive artists in Slovenia and overall Yugoslavia at the time, effectively providing a platform that would soon provide international exposure. It thus produced the bizarre effect that Laibach, Irwin etc, were www.peek-a-boo-magazine.be - 28 - NSK State In Time discusses several important issues. Migration, perhaps the most sensitive political topic nowadays, was often debated since the founding of the state, and was even the main subject of the NSK State Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2017, which is extensively quoted in your book. What can the NSK state teach us about migration? What can a state that knows no territorial borders teach about migration? A state that issues passports to anyone, regardless of their geographical location or place of birth, thus welcoming immigration as a means to grow and expand? Having prefigured the emergence of the digital domain and the global connectivity it provided, which is basically a means for corporate capital to create new markets, NSK State may as well have prefigured the way we’ll have to think about migration in the future. Humanity is all living in the same house, planet Earth. You cannot have one part of the family live on the sun terrace upstairs, having barbeques and partying away, while another part is locked in the basement, drowning from floods and rising sea levels. That’s not only immoral, it is also unwise and impractical, as those floods will destroy the entire house eventually. Only in collaboration lies the key to human survival in the face of our own demise.
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