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Advertise your product or brand here
contact www.OpenSubtitles.org today

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00:00:35,478 --> 00:00:36,886
To make a fire, we need

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00:00:38,094 --> 00:00:38,766
a flammable substance,

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air, that is, oxygen,

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and a source of heat.

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Making a fire goes like this.

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Heat the flammable substance until the
temperature reaches the level where a certain
chemical reaction takes place.

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00:00:49,260 --> 00:00:51,800
The mixing of these gasses with oxygen

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results in the burning of that substance.

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Death, lust is dead,

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death is dead, sorrow, dead,

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God is dead...

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In the dark times,
will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.
- Bertolt Brecht

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Towards the end of the period of totalitarian
control of East and Central Europe,

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an art movement appeared in a
country then still called Yugoslavia.

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It was named "NSK".

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Using the materials of music,
theater, and the visual arts,

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the NSK collective took on the role of catalyst,

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revisiting the repressed
traumas of European history

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and exposing hidden mechanisms
of ideological domination.

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Tribes of Europe!

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Democracy has destroyed order.

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The ground is ready.

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Now we can say:

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no history has been decided,

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no nation has ever won thanks to justice.

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It won thanks to pure physical strength.

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All civilizations are based on it,

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all the powers of law will dance
to the sound of arms.

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Historiographers are gradually coming to
the realization that history itself

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is in fact a series of consensual myths.

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It's not necessarily a nation's past
that shapes its mythology,

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but its mythology which shapes its past.

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Taken apart, analyzed and then re-assembled,
history's fragments reveal a cyclical structure.

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Within this recurring pattern,
the history of an entire people

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is actually no more than a collective
projection - an illusion shared by millions.

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MariborchanX:
I am sorry for the inconvenience.

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As you may have noticed, there
is a gap, an error in this video.

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Fortunately I have a transcript of
what is said during this missing period.

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If you want it, click on this picture,
that will take you to that video.

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But what was the real motivation
behind Laibach's early performances?

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Was this a politicized art,
or aestheticised politics?

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Or were they simply a warning that if you
repress history, it will eventually boil over?

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According to homeopathic theory, you can
only cure through the symptoms of an illness.

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The immune system must be provoked.

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How better, then, to trigger the defense
mechanisms of the state than to
hold a mirror up to that state?

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You step forward as
provocateurs, as, one could say,

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the number one enemy of the state.
Do you have many followers?

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Art is a noble calling
which requires fanaticism.

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Laibach is an organism whose aims, life and
means of activity of the group are higher

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in strength and duration

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than the aims, life and means of the
individuals which compose it.

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Aren't you afraid that someone might
one day spank you because of all this?

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Art is a noble calling
which as such requires fanaticism.

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The new art is a new era.
It is a movement independent
of other ideologies.
- Kazimir Malevich.

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By 1984, Laibach and several other
Slovenian groups took one step further

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in the fanaticism required of art.

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They linked together in a
larger collective body.

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NSK, or Neue Slowenische Kunst,
would encompass music,

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theater, design, architecture,
and the visual arts.

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They said they were presenting
art "in the image of the state."

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But, like Laibach, they didn't seem
to have any specific political agenda.

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Manifestos issued by the new art movement
said that their intention was to

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"revive the trauma of early 20th
century avant-garde movements

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by identifying with them in the stage

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of their assimilation into the
systems of totalitarian states."

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In 1927, Russian avant-gardist Kazimir
Malevich was traveling from East to West.

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He passed through central Europe, arriving
finally in Berlin for a series of lectures.

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Unfolding diagrams translated into German,

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the founder of the school of
abstract art known as Suprematism

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explained some basic principles.

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Art, he said, had always functioned merely
as a "toiletry article" within society.

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But the new art would have its own,
independent ideology.

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Although in the West Malevich is credited
with being a godfather of abstraction,

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from an Eastern viewpoint it seems clear
that his main intention was

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to be the author of a new mythology.

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Two generations after the
Soviet Utopian avant-garde

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was destroyed by the revolution
it had helped create,

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many of its ideas came to life again

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in the Westernmost city
of socialist Yugoslavia.

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It appeared, that the collectives,
the members of the NSK movement

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welded together into a
simulation of a state bureaucracy,

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and created an abstract Suprematist form.

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Although for NSK,
history and politics were

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as the bricks and cement
of their state structure,

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NSK seemed to float free
of any specific doctrine.

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If the artists of NSK could be said
to have a political goal,

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it would be "the destruction
of historical naivete."

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Trbovlje. This town has built us,
and we continue its
revolutionary tradition.
- Laibach

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Nineteen seventeen.

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Shock-waves of revolution spread
outwards across Europe.

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The best-known images
of the upheaval in Russia

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are already the
product of a myth-making art

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serving the direct interests of
the new Soviet state.

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In the beginning, the Utopian rhetoric
of the revolutionaries and

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the revolutionary ideas of the
utopian artists marched together.

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The success of Marxist ideology in the East

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inevitably impacts on the
Slovenian mining town of Trbovlje.

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Hunger, dismal working conditions,
and blatant exploitation of labor

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are the norm in the industrial
heartlands of Royal Yugoslavia.

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But the revolution brings
a message of hope.

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Strikes and street battles between fascist
and socialist miners groups soon erupt.

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Contemporary Trbovlje's huge coal-fired power
plant has the largest smoke-stack in Europe.

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Laibach emerged from this
machinery in 1980,

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producing a specifically industrial
form of rock music.

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Thirteen years later Irwin,
NSK's collective of five painters,

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return to the source of the movement's
original motivating aesthetic.

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Like Laibach, members of Irwin came from the
factory and mining towns of socialist Yugoslavia.

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The earliest Irwin works consciously
reflect their proletarian origins,

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using materials like coal, tar and blood.

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Although their role would later
evolve, in the early 80's Irwin

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took on a specific mission
within the NSK movement.

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They would be the
chroniclers, or mythologizers

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artists willfully serving the interests
of the state they themselves had helped design.

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It's the cement factory!

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Maybe these are old
paintings, from the times

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when Laibach started and
they painted from here in Trbovlje.

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Or they are connected with
the miner's life here.

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I don't like their style. They have a
lot of... I don't like their boots.

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What do we think of the paintings? Fuck 'em.
We don't know what this is all about.

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The painting as a painting?

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It's unusual, because normally
a simple person would expect

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a painting to represent something nice,
a landscape or something.

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But these are... The painter who painted
this wanted to say something.

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He is practically the only one who could
explain it. I can't get to the bottom of it.

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Laibach as Laibach?

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Laibach as a music group is very
popular abroad, in Europe.

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I saw on TV that they had a concert in
Vienna, and in Prague they were sold out.

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But here, in our town,
they are not so well known.

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We don't know they are only a
music group or are they something more.

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We think the paintings are beautiful,
but look what the mine looks like.

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Let's go!

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Wait, we're having an interview!

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Let's go! Good luck!

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It's difficult to explain.

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I think Laibach have a very special style,

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a way of expressing
themselves through music,

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it's a kind of protest
against society.

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A kind of... reaction against society and
the system, the whole European system.

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All art is subject to political manipulation
except that which speaks the language
of the same manipulation.
-  NSK Statement

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By the middle of the century, the machinery
producing power from coal and steam

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and the machinery producing
mythology from images of power

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are manufacturing each other.

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The mass reproduction of images
on strips of moving celluloid

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prefigures the mass media which will follow -

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the beginning of new, increasingly
global, cycles of manipulation.

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ARCHIVAL FILM TITLE:
Visit of Marshal Tito to Trbovlje.

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Cleanse / klenz/ /vt/
(formal or archaic)
make thoroughly clean; make pure:
~/ of/from sin/.
~ /n/ [C,U] substance that ~ses
(eg a synthetic detergent).

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STOP THE PARAHUMAN!

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Our mission is to make
evil lose its nerves.
- Laibach

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00:23:14,930 --> 00:23:21,430
Conditions of Burning and
Methods of Extinguishing.
(Films Zora, 1950)

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I'm not going to translate this,
it's basically a fire drill.

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And double subtitles are annoying...

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God's Kindergarten

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The brutal civil war that has been
raging across the Yugoslav republics

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since the Axis invasion is finally extinguished in
1945, with the victory of the partisan armies.

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00:26:09,500 --> 00:26:14,000
For the next 50 years, European
stability will be enforced by

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00:26:14,500 --> 00:26:17,468
an unprecedented dismemberment
of Central Europe

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00:26:18,530 --> 00:26:22,401
and the rest of the continent between
the two great Cold War blocs.

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The immense world of violence has fallen!

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00:26:29,086 --> 00:26:36,007
Ljubljana has proved that it
is the live heart, the live,

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00:26:36,422 --> 00:26:44,358
beating heart of an alive, proud, heroic
Slovenian national organism!

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00:26:45,684 --> 00:26:51,147
A one-time Austro-Hungarian soldier from
Belgrade speaks in Congress Square.

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Although the Yugoslav state has
risen intact from its own ashes,

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its Western borders are disputed by the
leader of the new Communist regime.

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00:27:02,145 --> 00:27:04,459
Ladies and Gentlemen! Comrades!

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00:27:05,278 --> 00:27:09,077
We want the entire world to know that
Yugoslavia, which was fighting,

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00:27:09,287 --> 00:27:13,955
doesn't want anything but that one
nation, of one blood,

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00:27:14,473 --> 00:27:16,635
shall live within the framework of one state!

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00:27:22,332 --> 00:27:25,491
Although Tito's demands are
not backed by force,

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the old Habsburg port of Trieste and
part of Austria are claimed by Yugoslavia.

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00:27:32,475 --> 00:27:36,991
Trieste becomes the site of clashes between
military police and Slovenian protesters.

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00:27:37,887 --> 00:27:41,898
But it soon becomes clear that the substantial
Slovenian populations here and in the

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Austrian province of Koroska, will remain west
of what is now known as the Iron Curtain.

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00:27:50,756 --> 00:27:54,005
Who gave their lives for
the freedom of Koroska?

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00:27:55,325 --> 00:27:58,981
The Partisans of Koroska gave
their lives for the freedom of Koroska!

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00:27:59,012 --> 00:28:01,991
Where, then, is our northern frontier?

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00:28:03,261 --> 00:28:06,387
Our northern border is there
where our victims fell!

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00:28:07,172 --> 00:28:09,615
Let's sing a partisan song!

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00:28:09,616 --> 00:28:15,931
Brothers, to the sun of freedom!
Brothers, come up to the light,

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00:28:16,866 --> 00:28:22,728
the painful night is behind us,
ahead lies a day of freedom!

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00:28:23,570 --> 00:28:29,251
The painful night is behind us,
ahead lies a day of freedom!

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00:28:48,831 --> 00:28:50,656
People love parades.

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00:28:51,457 --> 00:28:56,045
The concept of politics as entertainment was
one of the great inventions of mass propaganda.

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00:28:56,863 --> 00:28:59,034
Although the fascist
states had been defeated,

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the aestheticization of politics lived
on in communist rituals.

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00:29:05,390 --> 00:29:08,378
As for the parades, they were an assembly
line manufacturing the new history.

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Traditions had to be invented
and well documented.

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00:29:13,797 --> 00:29:16,435
In its own way, the ideology that had
been planted in Europe's Eastern half

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00:29:16,767 --> 00:29:20,582
believed itself to be at the beginning
of a thousand year Reich.

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00:29:20,583 --> 00:29:35,691
Europa
Leben / Tot

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00:30:21,621 --> 00:30:24,081
There's a Balkan quality
to European history.

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00:30:24,912 --> 00:30:26,554
Long before the
springtime of nations

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00:30:26,555 --> 00:30:29,137
and the contemporary idea
of the nation-state,

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00:30:29,748 --> 00:30:33,569
ethnic groups and rival religions
and ideologies of Europa

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00:30:33,835 --> 00:30:36,405
fought for domination over
populations and scraps of land.

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00:30:37,394 --> 00:30:40,840
If Slovenia was, as the Quisling
propaganda minister proclaimed,

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00:30:41,316 --> 00:30:43,151
God's Kindergarten

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00:30:43,317 --> 00:30:45,408
then all of Europe was his
playground,

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00:30:45,409 --> 00:30:48,804
dedicated to refining strategies of
domination and manipulation

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00:30:49,333 --> 00:30:51,669
that was destined
to rule the world.

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00:31:07,597 --> 00:31:16,597
Every new order pre-supposes
the existence of disorder
and is already infected with an
inherent virus of future disorder.
- Laibach

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00:31:17,552 --> 00:31:23,459
Although Tito had broken Yugoslavia free
from Stalin's East Bloc in 1948,

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00:31:23,840 --> 00:31:25,963
creating the world's first
non-aligned Communist state,

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00:31:26,342 --> 00:31:28,556
in the end his
"soft totalitarianism"

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00:31:28,910 --> 00:31:32,757
was no more resilient than that of
the other regimes of Eastern Europe.

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00:31:33,610 --> 00:31:35,968
The crash of a unifying ideology,

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00:31:36,340 --> 00:31:39,426
45 years after its greatest victory,

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00:31:39,426 --> 00:31:42,418
initially spilled more blood in the
Balkans than anywhere else.

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00:31:42,752 --> 00:31:45,199
Less than a year after
the implosion of the USSR,

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00:31:45,200 --> 00:31:46,965
and the disintegration
of Yugoslavia,

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00:31:46,966 --> 00:31:50,998
the Irwin group flew to Moscow with
the idea of facilitating communication

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00:31:50,999 --> 00:31:52,729
between the
post-Communist states.

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00:31:55,890 --> 00:32:01,447
Group action: Irwin &
Kinetikon Pictures, 7. June 1992

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00:32:01,718 --> 00:32:05,658
The evaporation of Soviet power had been
characterized by what Robert Hughes called

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00:32:05,658 --> 00:32:07,790
"A migration of images into oblivion."

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00:32:08,306 --> 00:32:11,781
Previously, though, Communism had erased
its own large share of history.

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00:32:12,544 --> 00:32:17,064
So it seemed appropriate to treat the
vast stage of Red Square for what it is:

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00:32:17,065 --> 00:32:20,841
a symbolic zone, in which various
competing myths are presented -

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00:32:20,842 --> 00:32:25,265
and sometimes
"re-presented."

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00:32:53,789 --> 00:32:55,423
This is a Black Square
on the Red Square.

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00:34:29,753 --> 00:34:34,611
NSK as a system was
established in Slovenia in the 80's,

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00:34:35,208 --> 00:34:40,714
and this action is the first
in which this system has begun to move,

224
00:34:40,770 --> 00:34:45,960
where this body has
moved to Moscow...

225
00:34:47,314 --> 00:34:49,390
I would like to make a link.

226
00:34:49,560 --> 00:34:56,227
In the 80's, NSK contemplated
ideology in totalitarian states,

227
00:34:56,603 --> 00:35:01,706
and that was a kind of answer to the
position of Eastern Europe within art.

228
00:35:01,874 --> 00:35:06,766
In the 90's, where totalitarian
states are disappearing,

229
00:35:07,294 --> 00:35:13,014
and national states emerging, NSK
starts to think about its own state

230
00:35:13,184 --> 00:35:20,127
in time, and not in space. That's why the
embassy was our ideal space, our ideal form.

231
00:36:23,718 --> 00:36:25,824
There's a new embassy in Moscow.

232
00:36:25,825 --> 00:36:30,592
True, it was not announced in the newspapers,
or mentioned on TV, or anywhere else.

233
00:36:31,598 --> 00:36:35,619
The NSK Embassy is in a normal
domestic apartment on Leninsky Prospect.

234
00:36:35,620 --> 00:36:42,466
Still, it has attracted large crowds
of people, including artists, intellectuals,

235
00:36:42,767 --> 00:36:50,379
and punks. NSK Ambassador Miran
Mohar says that NSK came to Moscow....

236
00:39:01,073 --> 00:39:05,808
After they'd removed all our
famous and majestic monuments,

237
00:39:05,983 --> 00:39:09,695
such as this one of Dzerzinsky,
the chief and organizer of the KGB,

238
00:39:10,053 --> 00:39:16,688
and Kalinin, our first and most
beloved president, who ruled in Stalin's time,

239
00:39:17,043 --> 00:39:23,463
and Yakov Sverdlov, who played an
unimportant role in Russian history,

240
00:39:24,654 --> 00:39:27,102
after they'd removed
all of these monuments,

241
00:39:27,254 --> 00:39:29,810
they spent a long time
contemplating what to do with them.

242
00:39:29,810 --> 00:39:33,921
On the one hand, this was,
of course, a vandalistic act,

243
00:39:33,921 --> 00:39:40,014
it was quite obviously vandalism,
since history may not be forgotten,

244
00:39:40,014 --> 00:39:42,356
no matter what it may have
been like, and on the other hand,

245
00:39:42,356 --> 00:39:45,723
it was almost necessary to
remove them, in this moment,

246
00:39:45,723 --> 00:39:48,690
it meant an enormous
emotional unburdening.

247
00:39:50,084 --> 00:39:54,526
I think that if Irwin had
been in Moscow at the time

248
00:39:54,527 --> 00:39:58,107
it would have been an interesting
and unusual experience for them,

249
00:39:58,900 --> 00:40:03,757
since they experiment
with the same principles:

250
00:40:03,951 --> 00:40:07,984
to break down, to build,
to break down, to build again,

251
00:40:07,984 --> 00:40:09,711
and in such a way
build their own system.

252
00:40:10,374 --> 00:40:14,776
The experience of NSK in relation
to the darkest and most tragic

253
00:40:14,776 --> 00:40:17,769
and for this reason
also the most interesting

254
00:40:17,769 --> 00:40:21,374
moments in history is very important
for us at this particular time,

255
00:40:21,375 --> 00:40:27,758
as the dilemma of what to do with the past is
what intellectuals are currently dealing with.

256
00:40:27,759 --> 00:40:31,462
But NSK was the first to
formulate precisely

257
00:40:31,463 --> 00:40:34,969
what we can do with our experiences,
that we need no fear them,

258
00:40:34,969 --> 00:40:38,616
that we can harmonize them
into an artistic system.

259
00:40:54,728 --> 00:41:03,963
Fascism will not win!

260
00:41:05,850 --> 00:41:11,828
Americans! Listen to the
voice of working Russia!

261
00:41:11,828 --> 00:41:14,975
Take your dirty hands
off Yugoslavia!

262
00:42:07,847 --> 00:42:12,847
Art and totalitarianism do
not exclude each other.
-NSK Statement

263
00:42:20,776 --> 00:42:25,559
According to theory, the past itself is no
more than an archive of collective memory.

264
00:42:26,481 --> 00:42:30,052
By the 90's, the songs of
the Great October Revolution

265
00:42:30,215 --> 00:42:33,085
have become the property
of an aging rear-guard.

266
00:42:36,215 --> 00:42:39,232
But if history is in fact a sum
total of re-writings through time,

267
00:42:39,233 --> 00:42:43,017
what then to do with this
cargo of conflicting myths?

268
00:42:44,061 --> 00:42:46,434
Like the ideologies
which inspired them,

269
00:42:46,957 --> 00:42:52,801
the early 20th century Utopian avant-garde
were largely organized as collectives

270
00:42:53,242 --> 00:42:55,366
experimental social structures.

271
00:42:56,408 --> 00:43:01,229
The Eastern Modernists believed that the
world could be completely transformed

272
00:43:01,229 --> 00:43:03,618
according to principles of
a new and unified aesthetic.

273
00:43:03,618 --> 00:43:05,983
If the state was to wither
away, as Marx predicted,

274
00:43:06,301 --> 00:43:08,680
then the Soviet avant-garde
would take on the job

275
00:43:08,680 --> 00:43:11,254
of replacing it with
a total art-form

276
00:43:12,008 --> 00:43:15,569
something the Germans
call a 'Gesampt-kunstwerk'.

277
00:43:16,528 --> 00:43:20,082
At the close of the Modern era, with
the wreckage of these utopian dreams

278
00:43:20,082 --> 00:43:23,585
strewn across the landscape
like pieces of a crashed airplane,

279
00:43:23,924 --> 00:43:26,512
it made a certain sense to
reassemble the mechanism

280
00:43:26,513 --> 00:43:29,069
to try to determine what
had happened.

281
00:44:04,984 --> 00:44:10,015
Historical avant garde is a style, written
at the beginning of the century

282
00:44:10,399 --> 00:44:16,299
as a response to the mimetic art which
dominated the world for 2000 years.

283
00:44:16,856 --> 00:44:24,182
Retrogardism, of course, is like the
avant garde a style formation in art.

284
00:44:24,787 --> 00:44:27,929
Its method is the retro-method.

285
00:44:42,901 --> 00:44:46,524
German Nazism, Italian Fascism
and Soviet Communism

286
00:44:46,724 --> 00:44:50,986
all first repressed,
then took direct control of,

287
00:44:50,986 --> 00:44:54,164
the ideas and energies of the early 20th
century modernists.

288
00:44:54,963 --> 00:44:58,666
Each in their own way
transformed the Utopian premise

289
00:44:58,666 --> 00:45:03,305
of the state as a work of art into
an art at the direct service of the state.

290
00:45:04,141 --> 00:45:10,040
Adolf Hitler, the art school reject,
and Josef Stalin, engineer of human souls,

291
00:45:10,275 --> 00:45:14,678
transformed their societies
into vast ritualistic 'dystopias'.

292
00:45:15,405 --> 00:45:18,609
If the state was an
art-work, they were its artist;

293
00:45:23,086 --> 00:45:26,937
If the state was a church,
then their role was clear.

294
00:45:28,209 --> 00:45:30,148
They were God.

295
00:46:26,198 --> 00:46:27,628
The works of NSK's Irwin collective

296
00:46:28,016 --> 00:46:32,594
revealed fascism and communism as
two sides of the same totalitarian canvas.

297
00:46:33,097 --> 00:46:34,020
But they went beyond that.

298
00:46:34,020 --> 00:46:39,370
By deploying a variety world
mythologies together within the same work,

299
00:46:39,370 --> 00:46:43,568
the Irwin artists exposed a
broad spectrum of domination codes.

300
00:46:44,593 --> 00:46:48,585
Placing quotations from Western modernist
art and consumer culture side by side

301
00:46:48,987 --> 00:46:52,493
with symbols of both
totalitarian and religious art,

302
00:46:53,391 --> 00:46:58,997
they revealed their essential similarity
within the world ideological constellation.

303
00:46:59,782 --> 00:47:03,787
The works of Irwin, wrote
Russian theorist Boris Groys,

304
00:47:03,787 --> 00:47:07,360
"had already appeared, long before the
end of the Cold War in political life,

305
00:47:07,361 --> 00:47:10,567
as an artistic rendition of its end."

306
00:47:33,391 --> 00:47:35,944
The people around here are either

307
00:47:35,944 --> 00:47:42,521
scientists or ideologists or religious
representatives or artists or philosophers.

308
00:47:42,522 --> 00:47:47,001
They cover the global
experience of the planet Earth.

309
00:47:47,002 --> 00:47:49,754
Each has its own rituals:

310
00:47:50,706 --> 00:47:52,152
religion
has numerical rituals,

311
00:47:52,153 --> 00:47:54,825
ideology fascinating ones,

312
00:47:54,826 --> 00:47:58,060
science magical ones.

313
00:47:58,998 --> 00:48:03,869
Art, of course, has to act through
the ritual of obsessive neurosis.

314
00:48:04,888 --> 00:48:10,396
Obsessive neurosis is the field where
the sacred paradox becomes evident.

315
00:48:11,321 --> 00:48:20,185
At this point, assuming numerical
or fascinating rituals means

316
00:48:20,185 --> 00:48:27,569
assuming the fields that either
ideology or religion express...

317
00:48:27,570 --> 00:48:32,846
Of course, for the artist, it is
essential, that it speaks with its rituals.

318
00:49:41,430 --> 00:49:49,430
The only truly aesthetic vision of
the State is the vision of the
impossible State.
- Scipion Nasice Theater.

319
00:49:53,650 --> 00:49:56,834
Within the cosmology of
NSK's virtual state,

320
00:49:56,834 --> 00:49:59,951
Laibach plays the role of
the politicians or ideologists,

321
00:50:00,150 --> 00:50:02,590
Irwin are the state artists,

322
00:50:03,402 --> 00:50:07,044
and the theater group, now called the
Cosmokinetic Theater Noordung,

323
00:50:07,044 --> 00:50:08,923
functions
as a kind of church -

324
00:50:08,923 --> 00:50:13,722
a place where obsessive neurosis is
transformed into ritual ceremony.

325
00:50:38,707 --> 00:50:40,005
The ballet we are preparing

326
00:50:41,238 --> 00:50:46,664
will first be shown on December 11, 1992.

327
00:50:48,096 --> 00:50:52,628
It is dedicated to Herman
Potocnik Noordung.

328
00:50:52,629 --> 00:50:57,178
two, hop.. three, hop..

329
00:51:00,785 --> 00:51:03,785
Prayer Machine Noordung

330
00:51:07,070 --> 00:51:09,110
Capital of pain.

331
00:51:12,570 --> 00:51:15,214
Capital of pain.

332
00:51:27,135 --> 00:51:28,396
You are free.

333
00:51:29,641 --> 00:51:30,669
No charge.

334
00:51:31,202 --> 00:51:32,740
No sense.

335
00:51:37,752 --> 00:51:40,087
You are totally alone.

336
00:51:42,851 --> 00:51:45,835
One plus one, plus one....

337
00:51:47,681 --> 00:51:50,218
Throughout history,
art has served power -

338
00:51:50,218 --> 00:51:53,485
be it political,
religious, or economic.

339
00:51:54,085 --> 00:51:56,263
Viewed in the light of
Kazimir Malevich's observation,

340
00:51:56,264 --> 00:51:58,403
the entire NSK project
can be interpreted

341
00:51:58,403 --> 00:52:01,874
as an attempt to 'reclaim' an
aesthetic legacy.

342
00:52:02,787 --> 00:52:05,678
If the ideas and artistic methods
of the early avant gardes

343
00:52:05,678 --> 00:52:07,890
were exploited by political forces,

344
00:52:07,891 --> 00:52:11,021
creating a kind of ceremonial
theater in the service of politics,

345
00:52:11,149 --> 00:52:14,547
then NSK was reasserting aesthetic
control over this work -

346
00:52:14,547 --> 00:52:17,880
while accomplishing an
even more subversive reversal.

347
00:52:19,045 --> 00:52:22,015
Politics and religion would
not only remain within the work.

348
00:52:22,015 --> 00:52:25,437
It would now be they
which would serve art.

349
00:52:25,437 --> 00:52:30,819
This is the "hidden transgression" at the core
of the Neue Slowenische Kunst art movement.

350
00:52:30,819 --> 00:52:34,479
Call it politics in the service of theater.

351
00:53:59,365 --> 00:54:05,365
And what is art?
Art is the goal
and the end of progress.
- Irwin

352
00:54:21,818 --> 00:54:24,013
Suspended as they are
between East and West,

353
00:54:24,013 --> 00:54:26,783
NSK seemingly made a
determination:

354
00:54:26,783 --> 00:54:29,627
no one side would
ever be adequate.

355
00:54:30,605 --> 00:54:33,873
A comprehensive world-view required
that neither hemisphere be denied,

356
00:54:33,873 --> 00:54:35,982
just as neither
be wholly accepted.

357
00:54:36,873 --> 00:54:39,237
No matter how intense
the ideological pressure,

358
00:54:39,237 --> 00:54:43,972
the truth of their specific historical condition
could only include both sides of the story.

359
00:54:43,972 --> 00:54:48,049
And suspicion of history must be
matched by a profound ambivalence

360
00:54:48,049 --> 00:54:51,963
about any single mythology,
iconography or state system.

361
00:54:51,963 --> 00:54:54,273
Only in this way could
an artistic project

362
00:54:54,273 --> 00:54:57,684
defined as a "state in time"
chart an autonomous course.

363
00:55:16,780 --> 00:55:19,635
The famous Slovenian
architect Joze Plecnik,

364
00:55:19,635 --> 00:55:23,472
active at the end of the
Habsburg era, once said the following:

365
00:55:23,472 --> 00:55:25,513
"Of course we have our own culture,

366
00:55:25,513 --> 00:55:28,438
its just that we have to look
for it in Germany, France and Italy."

367
00:55:29,162 --> 00:55:31,381
At the end of a century
in which the border

368
00:55:31,381 --> 00:55:33,770
between East and West
crossed Slovenia five times,

369
00:55:33,770 --> 00:55:36,250
that list of influences
has expanded considerably.

370
00:55:37,082 --> 00:55:41,322
Maybe this is why post-modernism,
with its endless appropriations,

371
00:55:41,322 --> 00:55:45,656
came along as something the
Slovenes were already at home with.

372
00:55:45,656 --> 00:55:48,616
More importantly, in a culture marked by

373
00:55:48,616 --> 00:55:52,019
successive periods of denial
of one or another side of history,

374
00:55:52,019 --> 00:55:56,336
Irwin's work represents a voluntary
endorsement of "outside" influences.

375
00:55:57,390 --> 00:56:01,155
In New York, these influences
are once again visible

376
00:56:01,155 --> 00:56:05,746
as building blocks of the
recombinant Slovene identity.

377
00:58:00,320 --> 00:58:03,761
Not surprisingly, NSK's
authorless sublimations

378
00:58:03,761 --> 00:58:07,197
of an East-West
cultural schizophrenia

379
00:58:06,196 --> 00:58:09,277
have not always been well
understood or liked at home.

380
00:58:10,141 --> 00:58:13,726
And the prevailing political climate
has inevitably played a role in this.

381
00:58:14,665 --> 00:58:17,566
Before Slovenia's first
democratic elections,

382
00:58:17,566 --> 00:58:23,194
a perception existed that NSK was
producing a fascistic, or right-wing art.

383
00:58:23,194 --> 00:58:27,495
Later, their use of Eastern modernist
images resulted in their being

384
00:58:27,495 --> 00:58:29,871
directly accused of working for
the discredited Communists.

385
00:59:49,423 --> 00:59:57,923
Fascism under the guise of democracy
is the rule of financial capital itself.
- Laibach

386
01:00:57,154 --> 01:01:00,154
The End of History.

387
01:01:10,194 --> 01:01:13,557
Slovenia entered the age
of the electronic camera

388
01:01:13,557 --> 01:01:18,848
at around the same time Josip Broz Tito
died in a Ljubljana hospital in 1980.

389
01:02:12,889 --> 01:02:19,422
Adopting a Yugocentric view,
the global decline of Communism began

390
01:02:19,422 --> 01:02:21,381
not with the rise of Mikhail
Gorbachev to the East,

391
01:02:21,948 --> 01:02:24,950
but with the fall of the
founder of Socialist Yugoslavia

392
01:02:24,950 --> 01:02:27,322
in the Westernmost
republic of his domain.

393
01:02:28,287 --> 01:02:35,230
Everything else was just details -
including Gorby's visit to Ljubljana in 1988.

394
01:02:44,140 --> 01:02:46,599
Another type of
communist was on the way.

395
01:02:47,542 --> 01:02:49,864
The decline of the
ideology of 1917

396
01:02:49,864 --> 01:02:53,066
paved the way for a
one-time Belgrade banker

397
01:02:53,066 --> 01:02:56,460
preaching nationalist
fundamentalism.

398
01:02:57,444 --> 01:03:02,317
Miloševic: Comrades! There is
no price, and there is no force,

399
01:03:02,317 --> 01:03:08,182
 which could shake the leadership
of Serbia, and the citizens of Serbia,

400
01:03:08,182 --> 01:03:10,535
 in the struggle
for just aims!

401
01:03:17,575 --> 01:03:21,196
We want weapons!
We want weapons!

402
01:03:21,689 --> 01:03:23,347
I can't hear you!

403
01:03:24,015 --> 01:03:24,912
I can't hear you,

404
01:03:24,912 --> 01:03:29,292
but I want to give you the
answer that what you require

405
01:03:28,809 --> 01:03:32,185
soon all the names
will be published!

406
01:03:37,478 --> 01:03:43,227
And I want to tell you that
those who used people

407
01:03:43,520 --> 01:03:47,515
in order to manipulate them, to
realize the aims against Yugoslavia,

408
01:03:47,515 --> 01:03:49,915
that they will be punished
and they will be arrested!

409
01:03:51,611 --> 01:03:53,168
 This I guarentee you!

410
01:03:54,229 --> 01:03:57,205
Elias Canetti has said that
each war starts with pictures.

411
01:03:58,055 --> 01:04:01,190
Ex-Yugoslavia's contemporary
horror was started consciously,

412
01:04:01,190 --> 01:04:03,409
on Serbian
state-controlled TV.

413
01:04:04,623 --> 01:04:06,724
Years before fighting erupted,

414
01:04:06,724 --> 01:04:11,036
a relentless tape-loop
of fifty-year-old war crimes

415
01:04:11,036 --> 01:04:14,557
flickered in millions of
Serbian living rooms every night.

416
01:04:14,557 --> 01:04:16,937
Among them the forced
baptism of Orthodox Serbs

417
01:04:17,203 --> 01:04:20,529
by a Catholic priest in Croatia's
notorious Jesenovac death camp.

418
01:04:21,441 --> 01:04:23,756
It was in Serbia that
Communism made its first

419
01:04:23,757 --> 01:04:24,913
but not last

420
01:04:24,914 --> 01:04:27,237
post-modern transition
to a televisual fascism.

421
01:04:28,259 --> 01:04:30,493
It began as a return of
the repressed.

422
01:04:30,494 --> 01:04:34,906
The century had vanished into the archives,
but the archives came to life again,

423
01:04:35,068 --> 01:04:39,460
releasing stored demons that
started appearing in prime time.

424
01:04:41,329 --> 01:04:47,510
Slovenia reacted to events in the South with
a kind of pragmatic rebirth of national feeling.

425
01:04:48,183 --> 01:04:51,420
Slovenian secessionists were given a massive
boost by the Yugoslav National Army's

426
01:04:51,420 --> 01:04:58,337
clumsy political trial of four
Ljubljana journalists in 1988.

427
01:04:58,337 --> 01:05:03,242
A rally in Congress Square pounded some final
nails into the coffin of Yugoslav unity.

428
01:05:05,809 --> 01:05:10,680
The proceedings bore an eerie
resemblance to those of 70 years before,

429
01:05:10,680 --> 01:05:15,376
in which the first Yugoslav state was
announced, in a shower of hope and goodwill.

430
01:05:28,521 --> 01:05:29,918
Mr. President!

431
01:05:30,033 --> 01:05:34,275
The troop of the Territorial
Defense is lined up in honor

432
01:05:34,420 --> 01:05:37,312
of the Republic of Slovenia
as an independent state,

433
01:05:37,533 --> 01:05:39,542
and it is prepared
for your review.

434
01:05:46,915 --> 01:05:49,682
Our history is honorable and clean.

435
01:05:51,355 --> 01:05:53,675
Until now, history didn't
give us anything for free;

436
01:05:54,512 --> 01:05:58,753
we had to work hard for everything.
That is why we still exist.

437
01:06:03,851 --> 01:06:06,922
Slovenia's secession from the
bankrupt Yugoslav federation

438
01:06:06,923 --> 01:06:10,568
 recycled a time-worn dramaturgy,

439
01:06:10,867 --> 01:06:14,303
bringing a familiar cast of characters and
costumes back into the limelight of history.

440
01:06:14,960 --> 01:06:16,742
But there was a difference.

441
01:06:17,230 --> 01:06:20,628
This time, for the first time, the rituals
of the state endorsed autonomy from,

442
01:06:20,629 --> 01:06:23,029
rather than subservience
to, an external capital power.

443
01:06:23,030 --> 01:06:28,003
If art can declare independence,
why not the state itself?

444
01:06:45,137 --> 01:06:53,137
Ideology relies on rhetoric
because it constructs subjects
who subscribe to their own freedom.
- Bill Nichols

445
01:06:53,874 --> 01:06:57,457
In March of 1989,
the year in which Slovenia took

446
01:06:57,457 --> 01:07:00,274
it's first legislative steps
towards full separation, 

447
01:07:00,464 --> 01:07:02,555
Laibach made a risky decision:

448
01:07:03,195 --> 01:07:07,356
to play a concert in the
center of Serbian nationalism:

449
01:07:06,356 --> 01:07:07,356
Belgrade,
the Yugoslav capital.

450
01:07:07,357 --> 01:07:09,480
part of the performance
was a speech,

451
01:07:09,480 --> 01:07:13,850
delivered in a politically explosive
mixture of Serbian and German.

452
01:07:15,056 --> 01:07:16,795
Brothers Serbs!

453
01:07:18,498 --> 01:07:22,735
You are here
the alpha and omega!

454
01:07:23,673 --> 01:07:28,387
You rule this land,
and we will not let you be raped.

455
01:07:29,007 --> 01:07:30,759
This I guarentee you!

456
01:07:32,074 --> 01:07:38,621
You believe in
God's penalties and rewards!

457
01:07:41,293 --> 01:07:45,695
Your holy towns
will remain holy.

458
01:07:47,373 --> 01:07:55,346
Saint Sava says that
this land has to be Serbian!

459
01:07:58,546 --> 01:08:00,639
Profaned graves

460
01:08:02,395 --> 01:08:05,309
 we've thought
about it as well.

461
01:08:06,673 --> 01:08:12,409
But He believes
in attack and honor!

462
01:08:12,984 --> 01:08:15,919
Reality has a way of
taking its revenge.

463
01:08:15,919 --> 01:08:19,231
The speech, which started by
appropriating two statements by

464
01:08:19,231 --> 01:08:21,961
Serbian President
Slobodan Milosevic,

465
01:08:21,961 --> 01:08:27,312
would end by directly quoting British
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain,

466
01:08:27,312 --> 01:08:31,533
the key architect of European
pre-war appeasement of Adolf Hitler.

467
01:08:31,533 --> 01:08:35,775
NSK's "retrogardism" had
reached its closest encounter

468
01:08:35,775 --> 01:08:37,896
with the very phenomenon
it had anticipated.

469
01:08:37,896 --> 01:08:43,265
In both form and content, Laibach's
provocation in Belgrade that day

470
01:08:43,265 --> 01:08:45,679
was as precise as
a chemical formula.

471
01:08:46,542 --> 01:08:50,120
It seemed to crystallize the
exact moment of transition

472
01:08:50,120 --> 01:08:56,053
between Yugoslav socialist speech and
Serbia's emerging ethnic nationalist rhetoric.

473
01:08:57,451 --> 01:09:01,679
The first had always stressed brotherhood
and unity among the Southern Slavs.

474
01:09:02,252 --> 01:09:05,227
The cadences of the second
had not been heard in Europe

475
01:09:05,492 --> 01:09:07,766
 since the dark day
 of the thirties.

476
01:09:09,360 --> 01:09:12,075
Listen!

477
01:09:12,636 --> 01:09:22,360
The violence, the war, the love,
and eternal holiness...

478
01:09:23,261 --> 01:09:29,992
Upon these premises we
guarantee you your borders,

479
01:09:29,993 --> 01:09:35,382
and that means
peace in our time.

480
01:09:40,797 --> 01:09:48,797
Language is a system of orders,
not a medium of information.
- Gilles Deleuze

481
01:10:38,757 --> 01:10:42,877
Details of the past, transposed
as metaphors to the present,

482
01:10:42,878 --> 01:10:45,265
are sometimes capable
of anticipating the future.

483
01:10:46,579 --> 01:10:50,645
For the remainder of European history,
Chamberlain's voice will be synonymous

484
01:10:50,795 --> 01:10:54,029
with the weakness of democracy
when confronted with fascism.

485
01:12:10,258 --> 01:12:15,076
The carnage in the East came
via the Kum and Krvavec TV towers,

486
01:12:15,244 --> 01:12:17,816
cross the ridges of mountains that
had protected Central Europe

487
01:12:17,936 --> 01:12:20,150
from the Ottoman
Empire for 500 years.

488
01:12:20,898 --> 01:12:23,493
These images of horror were
relayed across the new Slovenian state

489
01:12:23,768 --> 01:12:25,730
to the great
democracies of the West,

490
01:12:26,006 --> 01:12:30,411
where they were surrounded by late-night
pornography and ultra-violent movies.

491
01:12:31,017 --> 01:12:34,092
The autumn of the century had
become the season of the channel changer.

492
01:12:34,734 --> 01:12:39,097
Atrocity was replaced by entertainment,
or simulated atrocity as entertainment.

493
01:12:40,724 --> 01:12:44,067
The Heaven Over Trbovlje

494
01:13:01,738 --> 01:13:05,222
The Heaven Over Ljubljana

495
01:13:05,835 --> 01:13:09,437
When Slovenia became the first
target of the Yugoslav Army in 1991,

496
01:13:09,764 --> 01:13:12,456
its network of TV tower
were a top priority.

497
01:13:13,049 --> 01:13:14,808
If history increasingly
consists of images,

498
01:13:14,809 --> 01:13:17,792
those who control the
images control history.

499
01:13:18,490 --> 01:13:22,420
By the end of the century, the mass
rallies of the 30's were largely unnecessary.

500
01:13:22,904 --> 01:13:25,938
With the precision of a
guillotine, film sliced history

501
01:13:25,939 --> 01:13:29,755
into 24 frames per second,
transporting it into the future.

502
01:13:40,698 --> 01:13:46,446
In 1983, the so-called "interview" of
Laibach by TV Slovenia defined an early landmark

503
01:13:46,447 --> 01:13:50,966
in what critics of mass media
have termed "culture jamming."

504
01:13:51,590 --> 01:13:54,536
Conducted more by the group
than by unwitting journalist Jure Pengov,

505
01:13:54,537 --> 01:13:58,396
Laibach revealed the way
state-controlled media work

506
01:13:58,751 --> 01:14:01,693
by externalizing both its
methods and its codes.

507
01:14:02,517 --> 01:14:06,071
Although interpretable now
as a kind of failed inoculation,

508
01:14:06,072 --> 01:14:11,278
Laibach's action anticipated both the
visual appearance and the televisual method

509
01:14:11,279 --> 01:14:15,595
that would later be used to trigger
dormant nationalism within the Balkans.

510
01:14:16,332 --> 01:14:21,944
Television. Within the industry of
consciousness the television medium is,

511
01:14:21,945 --> 01:14:25,912
besides the school system, the
leading molder of uniform thinking.

512
01:14:26,664 --> 01:14:29,758
Television programs are
basically centralized,

513
01:14:29,925 --> 01:14:32,258
 with one transmitter
and many receivers.

514
01:14:32,547 --> 01:14:34,922
No communication
is possible between them.

515
01:15:15,076 --> 01:15:20,328
We use mainly tools with
a manipulative possibility

516
01:15:20,329 --> 01:15:25,076
and repressively use
the power of information.

517
01:15:25,725 --> 01:15:29,960
These tools are used for
collective consumption,

518
01:15:30,401 --> 01:15:33,965
and are the best for deterring
the masses from critical thinking.

519
01:15:33,966 --> 01:15:36,957
for instance film as the most powerful
weapon with the longest strength

520
01:15:37,173 --> 01:15:39,305
and the most powerful
influence on the human spirit.

521
01:15:40,114 --> 01:15:43,332
If I got it right, you use
television to challenge us.

522
01:15:44,358 --> 01:15:46,074
Fine, so do we.

523
01:15:46,075 --> 01:15:50,254
Maybe, maybe now somebody
will act and repress

524
01:15:50,255 --> 01:15:55,547
these horrifying ideas and declarations
here in the middle of Ljubljana.

525
01:15:58,200 --> 01:16:02,033
We are the children of
the spirit, brothers of might,

526
01:16:03,918 --> 01:16:06,201
whose promises are
still nowhere in sight,

527
01:16:06,780 --> 01:16:09,139
we are the black specters
of this world below,

528
01:16:09,879 --> 01:16:12,192
we are singing of this
mad picture of woe,

529
01:16:13,479 --> 01:16:16,791
we are the
first TV generation.

530
01:16:19,039 --> 01:16:24,539
Yugoslavia / Force

531
01:16:28,789 --> 01:16:31,772
There's a European
quality to Balkan history.

532
01:16:32,484 --> 01:16:37,187
When Europe falls out of balance,
it is visible here before anywhere else.

533
01:16:38,416 --> 01:16:41,178
At the end of the
bloodiest century in history,

534
01:16:41,179 --> 01:16:45,718
and with the finest armies
and weapons in the world,

535
01:16:45,719 --> 01:16:49,282
a complacent Europe grows accustomed
to watching its own primitive past

536
01:16:49,283 --> 01:16:55,230
play like a violent film safely on the other
side of the old East-West boundary.

537
01:16:56,458 --> 01:17:00,753
The warning of a group of artist
from one of Central Europe's

538
01:17:00,754 --> 01:17:04,377
 forgotten cities still resounds, more
than a decade after its founding.

539
01:17:05,591 --> 01:17:09,789
Look at the past, NSK said,
and you will see the future.

540
01:17:10,844 --> 01:17:14,758
Look at the Balkans, Europe.
You are looking into a mirror.

541
01:17:23,330 --> 01:17:26,827
Epilogue

542
01:17:27,281 --> 01:17:28,804
In the middle of the nineties,

543
01:17:28,805 --> 01:17:32,159
the most successful pop-cultural
export from the old East

544
01:17:32,160 --> 01:17:34,744
performs for the first time
in the cradle of democracy.

545
01:17:35,300 --> 01:17:39,379
As usual in Athens, reminders of
history don't have to announce themselves.

546
01:17:39,380 --> 01:17:41,144
They are visible everywhere

547
01:17:41,145 --> 01:17:44,229
like the signs reflecting
an irrational Greek fury

548
01:17:44,230 --> 01:17:49,201
at the tiny ex-Yugoslav republic of
Macedonia, just to the north.

549
01:19:32,103 --> 01:19:45,519
At the close of the millennium,
Slovenia remains an independent
and democratic nation.
It is visible on the map, within a
Central Europe uneasily balanced
between the East and West.

550
01:19:46,085 --> 01:20:08,505
As for NSK, the art movement organized "as
a state without territory, a state in time"
recently started issuing its own passports.
They have been used successfully to cross
international frontiers - including by a number
of citizens of the besieged Republic of Bosnia
Herzegovina, who otherwise have great
difficulty crossing state borders.

551
01:20:09,670 --> 01:20:23,198
Remember, this movie was made
12 years ago. How much of it does
still hold? Could it be said, that some
parts even are more true than they were then?
I apologise for any problems with
the subtitles. I made them from
the transcript myself.
- Mariborchan

552
01:20:24,305 --> 01:20:30,941
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