Plural Machine

Laibach live in London 25.11.06 Following the Laibach Kunst performance at RoTr in Birmingham this September, the full new Laibach line up played in London on 25th November. This was the only second date of Laibach's Volk tour following the opening concert in Ghent the previous night. The general view of the shows so far seems to be that the album works much better live, and the enhanced versions seem able to impress even Volk-sceptics. Certainly, Slovanija and particularly Nippon generate new interest in the live setting. Although some people become restless, the lengthy Nippon is very atmospheric. This is also due to the subtle and intricate background video. There are videos for each song, and they vary in style widely, some using more archive footage, some being entirely digital. Other impressive videos include Germania, Turkije and NSK (seen in the first photo here) . Italia uses "found footage" to make a very black joke - watch the text on the screen carefully. I...

I will be giving a lecture NSK's use of the state as a material at Loughborough University on December 6th. All are welcome, you do not need to register. The lecture will include some new material and include videos and images. Full details can be found here .

Photo © Alexei Monroe. RoTr in Birmingham passed off well, despite a few local glitches. Personal thanks to everyone who attended and to Alex, Andy, Soren, Till and everyone else who gave invaluable help over the weekend. More photos will be appearing here, on the Unofficial Laibach site , ICRN and elsewhere soon. DVD footage is also being currently being edited.

Last week saw the London launches of the new Fad Gadget 2CD/2DVD box set issued by Mute . Watching the documentary and seeing the range of people present, FG's influence on electronic pop(ular) music was more obvious than ever. The rich selection of live performances from the early to mid eighties finally give a chance to see why these shows were so influential and talked about. The CD tracks are a fairly obvious selection of career highlights, but the demo tracks are worth listening to for an understanding of Tovey's earliest efforts. If well selected, what might be interesting now would be a remix album or some vinyl issues with contemporary artists taking on FG tracks. In any case, this collection is a useful document cementing FG's place in the history of electronic music (and of course of Mute).

Return of the Repressive (RoTr). The Custard Factory Birmingham,September 1st – 3rd. This is a weekend of industrialised culture presented by I.C.R.N. (Industrialised Culture Research Network) in collaboration with Capsule, Cold Spring and the Custard Factory. Over the first weekend of September, the Custard Factory will host a unique event exploring the past, present and future of industrial music and culture. Often ignored, industrial is a style that won’t go away, and keeps re-surfacing in new contexts. Return of the Repressive will trace the industrial undercurrents that lurk under the facade of our allegedly post-industrial society. The centrepiece will be the opening of the LAIBACH KUNST inhibition “Instrumentality of the State Machine”. This large-scale sound and visual installation recreates the industrial ambience of Trbovlje, the Slovene industrial city which gave birth to Laibach 26 years ago. The inhibition will open on September 1st, and members of Laibach plus guests wil...

Book of the Week, Readysteadybook.com "... the best and most thought-provoking art book of the year so far." Eye Weekly "... exhilarating and properly punitive" Chris Thompson in Radical Philosophy. See also The Phoenix: http://www.thephoenix.com/article_ektid13128.aspx Plus a feature on the Italian electronic culture site Neural

New material is now available on the I.C.R.N. blog - alive review of the Die Krupps 25th Annivesary Tour and Heinrich Deisl's German language paper on the politics of the British industrial scene. http://icrn.blogspot.com

Go to http://www.gla.ac.uk/~dc4w/zivkovic/reflection.html To see an online version of Slovene photographer Antonio Zivkovic's catalogue based on photographs of Trbovlje (birthplace of Laibach). Also online at the unofficial Laibach site are a selection of his historic Laibach concert photos: http://www.gla.ac.uk/~dc4w/laibach/antoniophotos8792part1.html Both give valuable insights into Laibach's history and context.

On February 6th 1986 the NSK production Krst pod Triglavom (Baptism under Triglav) premiered at Cankarjev Dom, Ljubljana. The production was the ultimate expression of NSK as Gesamtkunstwerk and signalled the partial embrace of NSK (if not yet Laibach) by the Slovene cultural establishment. As it was only ever performed in Ljubljana and in Belgrade (at the BITEF festival that autumn) it is one of the most obscure and legendary NSK works, known of by many but seen by only a lucky few. Those who were not there at the time have to reconstruct it from photos in the Neue Slowenische Kunst monograph (1992) and from Laibach's lavishly illustrated soundtrack album. With a range of obscure references to Slovene cultural and historical material plus a ritualistic atmosphere, Krst remains mysterious, even with a knowledge of its contradictory sources (from Slovene paganism to the international avant-garde). Tomorrow there will be a rare chance to watch a 15 min video excerpt of the production...

The new issue of the Belgian journal Andere Sinema is now available. It publishes material from the 2005 Jan Vay Eyck seminar "Spectres of the Avant-Garde" including the new text Full Spectrum Provocation The Retrogarde Strategies of Neue Slowenische Kunst which discusses Laibach's notorious 1997 Slovene Philharmonic concert. Further details here: http://www.muhka.be/denkt_as.php?la=nl&jaargang=2006

The Over-Identification symposium and book launch/screening at the Stedelijk Amsterdam this Thursday 19th is now fully booked.

This paper dealing with senso-brutalist aesthetics in industrial, minimal techno and gabba is now online in the English section of the Vienna music magazine SKUG's website. It was originally presented at a panel organised given by the Industrialised Culture Research Network (see previous posts and www.icrn.blogspot.com ) at a conference on 20th Century Music. See www.skug.at

On January 19th the symposium Cultural activism today: Strategies of over-identification will take place at the Stedelijk Museum CS, Amsterdam. Besides a series of expert presentations on over-identification, the event will include a talk by Alexei Monroe on NSK’s use of traditional symbolism, a presentation of the book Interrogation Machine and a pre-release screening of the Laibach American tour documentary Divided States of America . Programme 12:30 Registration 13:00 Welcoming note: Jelle Bouwhuis (Stedelijk Museum) 13:10 Introduction: BAVO 13:40 Lecture Alexei Monroe 14:10 Lecture Dieter Lesage 14:40 Film screening Pulverous (2003) by Aernout Mik 15:10 Break 15:40 Presentation Jens Haaning 16:10 Lecture Boris Groys 16:40 Presentation by Atelier van Lieshout 17:10 Closing discussion, presentation of AS#176 The spectre of the avant-garde, presentation of Alexei Monroe’s Interrogation machine 18:00 Reception and pre-release screening of the film Divided States of America (2005) by...