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This article follows chronologically the changes in the public perception of Laibach in Slovenia, Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav countries, Laibach’s relation to the Slovenian state, and the group’s status of informal (and occasionally formal) cultural ambassadors of Slovenia in the post-Yugoslav context. Because the state (in abstract terms) and Slovenian cultural identity play such an important role in Laibach’s artistic output, their formal and informal representation of the Slovenian state and national identity are often misperceived by the media and cultural commentators. The aim of this article is to establish on which occasions and in which contexts Laibach have actually and formally represented Slovenia at international events.

This article follows chronologically the changes in the public perception of Laibach in Slovenia, Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav countries, Laibach's relation to the Slovenian state, and the group's status of informal (and occasionally formal) cultural ambassadors of Slovenia in the post-Yugoslav context. Because the state (in abstract terms) and Slovenian cultural identity play such an important role in Laibach's artistic output, their formal and informal representation of the Slovenian state and national identity are often misperceived by the media and cultural commentators. The aim of this article is to establish on which occasions and in which contexts Laibach have actually and formally represented Slovenia at international events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects a study in how the Slovenian Performance Art collective the NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst), and more specifically its sub-group Laibach, functioned as a ‘Memory machine’ in re-enacting historical European trauma in an apparent re-staging of the totalitarian ritual. In this way, Laibach demonstrate history as a contemporary active political agency of Eastern and Central Europe.

In the 1980s, the art group Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) employed postmodernist artistic techniques, eclecticism and pastiche, with which they evoked political and artistic memories through music, painting, design, theatre and statements and deconstructed these political memories. For Laibach in particular, the treatment of National Socialist iconography and totalitarian rhetoric was central, but not in service of politics. The totalitarianism they imitated was a simulacrum. In their manifesto the artists claimed to strive towards politically independent artistic activity. However, in the second half of the 1980s, the collective operated with the support of the Socialist Youth League of Slovenia, the youth sector of the Communist Party. In the article, the author examines the complex relationships between art and politics or how the performances of Laibach and NSK in the 1980s were related to the political situation in Slovenia. She is interested in the social integration of Laibach and also NSK, their rhetoric, appearances and artistic-political interventions in Slovenia in the 1980s, especially in relation to the development of events related to Slovene nationality. Laibach and NSK evoked a repressed but essentially present self-image of the Slovene nation's ever-present subordination to other nations, which co-created a collective political complex about Slovene subservience and inadequacy. The evocation of this political representation by the artistic collective, especially Laibach, in the way of reviving and dismantling iconography and rhetoric was not pleasant, but triggered a revision of collective remembering and an assessment of Slovenia's current position, as well as the Slovene nation's potential for national liberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In summer 2015 for the first time in its history the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea welcomed a western rock band, making an unexpected gesture of inviting the Slovene art group Laibach. Laibach’s credentials for this type of cultural diplomacy may be best observed in the sociopolitical context of the 1980s, when they operated within a broader alternative cultural scene of civil society movements in Slovenia (then socialist Yugoslavia). Laibach have since uniquely employed different media and approaches to inspect relations between art, politics, processes of nation-building and popular culture. In the Western media they are mainly presented as a highly controversial music group originating from the former communist East and disturbing the audiences with their totalitarian imagery and ambiguous political messages. Across the globe they were seen as going to North Korea to entertain a brainwashed and utterly unpredictable audience in the most totalitarian and isolated society in the world. This unusual and well documented journey to the far end of what has remained of the former communist East provides interesting material for analyzing the media interpretations of the East/West divide in the contemporary context. However, this paper focuses on the media debate in Slovenia informed by the local knowledge of Laibach’s significance and history which was largely lacking in the international coverage of this out-of-the-ordinary voyage.

Józef Robakowski is a prolific experimental Polish artist who has worked across multiple media including photography, film, video, experimental television, artistic documentation, and curating. This interview was conducted as research into his multifaceted career and informed the article in Apparatus Nr. 9 on his work that appears in this issue. The interview provides vital historical and political contexts to situate the emergence of Robakowski's various artistic practices, in relation to broader developments of Polish cinema, video and art history.

In summer 2015 for the first time in its history the Democratic People's Republic of Korea welcomed a western rock band, making an unexpected gesture of inviting the Slovene art group Laibach. Laibach's credentials for this type of cultural diplomacy may be best observed in the sociopolitical context of the 1980s, when they operated within a broader alternative cultural scene of civil society movements in Slovenia (then socialist Yugoslavia). Laibach have since uniquely employed different media and approaches to inspect relations between art, politics, processes of nation-building and popular culture. In the Western media they are mainly presented as a highly controversial music group originating from the former communist East and disturbing the audiences with their totalitarian imagery and ambiguous political messages. Across the globe they were seen as going to North Korea to entertain a brainwashed and utterly unpredictable audience in the most totalitarian and isolated society in the world. This unusual and well documented journey to the far end of what has remained of the former communist East provides interesting material for analyzing the media interpretations of the East/West divide in the contemporary context. However, this paper focuses on the media debate in Slovenia informed by the local knowledge of Laibach's significance and history which was largely lacking in the international coverage of this out-of-the-ordinary voyage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about changing cultural contexts for resistance and the way that cultural practices that are resistant to power at one moment become, at the next, implicated in power. The hegemony of certain forms of personal experience also constitutes certain kinds of margins and certain kinds of resistance. Contemporary practices of the self are underpinned by the assumption that there is a frailty of social relations in contemporary society that is homologous to a frailty of the self, a frailty that is addressed by and perpetuated by therapeutic modes of self-management and professional intervention. Qualitative researchers concerned with representations of subjectivity are often engaged in the elaboration of these therapeutic discourses as an alternative to positivist traditions of research in psychology. The interventions described are marked by what can be termed 'knowing emotional illiteracy' that disturbs what we know about the self and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The writings of Slavoj Zizek have a disorienting effect on readers, and attempts to understand and utilize his ideas in cultural theory have often come to grief. One way into an interpretation of what Zizek is up to is to trace the cultural-political interventions of some fellow travellers still active in the production and disturbance of our ideological enjoyment. This commentary follows some of the contours of the landscape of Slovenian theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]