The RetroFuturistic Universe of NSK

The avant-garde, originality and the notion of the artist as a singular “artistic genius” are key terms of modern art history and contemporary art practice presently under scrutiny and reevaluation. Is the concept of the avant garde still valid? What are current notions of artistic authorship? What are the stakes involved in the diminished currency of the notion of “artistic genius”? What is the current investment in originality?

These questions are central to the artists’ collective Neue slowenische Kunst (New Slovene Art, NSK), based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. NSK has been operating continuously at the intersection of art, politics, and history since 1984. Most consistently visible on the international scene are the components Laibach, an industrial band, and Irwin, a group of painters. Other components of NSK include a theater collective, a graphic design arm and a philosophy department.

The history of Slovenia is a key part of understanding NSK’s method of artmaking. Slovenia has been both a “Western” and an “Eastern” nation, depending on its status as occupied or independent. Eastern under Charlemagne in the thirteenth century, then Western as part of the Hapsburg Empire for hundreds of years, it was again Eastern in the twentieth century as a republic of Yugoslavia. Today Slovenia is an independent state and again firmly part of the West, as one of the most recent additions to the European Union.

The tactic of NSK is to avoid expressing itself in open criticism or ironic distance of the state; rather, the group’s strategy is one of extreme identification with the state ideology, a game that uses the “readymades” of state structures and symbols. NSK uses the term “retro-avant-gardism” to describe its strategic appropriation and recycling of past images as a method of envisioning the future. One of Laibach’s earliest slogans remains most pertinent to this approach: “All art is subject to manipulation except that which speaks the language of the same manipulation.”

The RetroFuturistic Universe of NSK showcases the Rector Collection, the largest collection of NSK art and ephemera in the United States. It also features Laibach and Irwin performance footage, music videos and other NSK products. Attending the opening will be several of the artists, Slovene Ambassador to the U.S. Samuel Zbogar and collector Neil Rector.