Plural Machine

Five years have already passed since the fateful NSK exhibition From Kapital to Capital  in Moderna Galerija. During the weekend of the exhibition symposium there was a Laibach Kunst gramophone performance on the steps of the gallery. To commemorate, here are my recently unearthed photos of the occasion.

Join us for the London launch of the English/German book Gesamtkunstwerk Laibach , a collection of new perspectives on the work of the group. Co-editor Uwe Schütte will present the book and this will be followed by a panel discussing their own selections of Laibach videos: Alexei Monroe will analyse  Mi kujemo bodočnost 1983 Simon Bell  will analyse  Opus Dei (Life is Life) Michael Goddard  will analyse  Wirtschaft ist Tot Uwe Schütte  will analyse  Germania Codex Europa will play a selection of rare and lesser-known Laibach pieces, alongside a few classics. Tickets are available on the door or f rom the venue website .

I have a major new text, in this excellent collection edited by Marc James Léger. ' Sponsored by Self-Management? Re-Constructing the Context and Consequences of Laibach’s Monumental Retro- Avant-Garde ' looks at the subject through the prism of pre- and post-war Yugoslav architecture and features rare Laibach illustrations. Full details on the book can be found on the Manchester University Press website .

Pluralni Monolit/WAT launch event, Vila Bled, 07.09.2003 The first edition of my book on Laibach and NSK was launched exactly 10 years ago to the day at Vila Bled, Slovenia, in a hall used by Tito for diplomatic receptions. This is an edited version of my presentation at the launch events in Bled and Ljubljana... This all began twenty-three years ago in Trbovlje when posters briefly appeared with a black cross and the word “Laibach”. No-one then could have imagined we would be here today, presenting this , but in the end time always catches up with itself. What would the former resident of this place have made of this gathering and his place on the cover of the book? Perhaps the situation seems even stranger because this book is not by a Slovene author. What right does a foreign author have to come here and present your history? The same right that Laibach and NSK had to respond to the cultures and symbols that intruded on their space. These artists took for themselves a rig...

The revised and expanded German translation of  Interrogation Machine will be published by Ventil Verlag this Spring. It contains much new material on the activities of NSK groups and citizens in the last decade as well as exclusive new photos. Further information on the release date and special events in March and May will follow, to keep up to date following the book's German language tumblr page .

On November 14th I'll take part in an NSK seminar/Folk Art exhibition and club night taking place in Manchester. I'll be analysing NSK Folk Art and presenting key examples of the form. Speakers: Alexei Monroe – author of Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK Stevphen Shukaitis (University of Essex) – author of Imaginal Machines Ian Parker (MMU) – author of Slavoj Zizek, a critical introduction Michael Goddard (University of Salford) editor of Mark E Smith and the Fall: Art, Music and Politics Chair: John Robb (Membranes/Goldblade/Louderthanwar) Seminar in Lecture Theatre 5. Folk Art Exhibition in Geoffrey Manton atrium. Please arrive early to view the exhibition and receive passport authentication or temporary papers. This event is free, open to all and does not require pre-registration. For further information email Mike Tyldesley: M.Tyldesley[at]mmu.ac.uk The event will be followed by an evening club night 'Vade Retro' featuring a s...

You can now hear my recent appearance on the Resonance FM programme A Colder Consciousness via the show's mixcloud page . The show began with Nico's controversial version of Das Lied der Deutsche as played by Igor Vidmar on Radio Student in 1983. We discuss the Slovene and Yugoslav underground scenes and the associated political questions.

I feature on today's episode of A Colder on Resonance 104.4 FM in London and online elsewhere at resonancefm.com . This is a special editin of the show dedicated to Slovenia and ex-Yugoslavia. The show features Nico, 300 000 V.K., Abbildungen Variete, Electric Fish, Autopsia, Borghesia and Laibach and I discuss with ACC host Flora Pitrolo the musical and cultural history of the period between 1983 and 1987.

The NSK Symposium and Laibach concert at Tate Modern are over and the Chelsea Space exhibition finishes on April 21st at 4pm but there is still a great deal of activity going on until late June. On May 14th I will give a talk at Marcus Campbell art books on the 20th anniversary of the London show of Laibach's Kapital  tour. See the flyer here . On June 7th at 7pm I will give a gallery tour of the Irwin/NSK Folk Art show at Calvert 22, discussing NSK aesthetics from Was ist Kunst? To NSK Folk Art.

This spring sees the largest concentration of NSK-related activity in London since July 1987 - symposia, two exhibitions, a Laibach concert in Tate Modern and more. For more information on these events and news on how I'll be participating check the new Retrogarde London blog .

A year ago the Red Districs, Black Cross event ended memorably in Trbovlje. One of the highlights was the visit to Termoelektrarna Trbovlje, iconic site of the tallest chimney in Europe. Here are a few souvenir shots taken on my mobile phone when the camera battery died...

This deluxe box of rare archive audio and video is available now from Vinyl on Demand . Besides the five LPs, DVD and deluxe artwork there is an extensive booklet which I edited. Besides my own text there are exclusive texts from Donald Campbell, Igor Vidmar, Michael Goddard and  Aleš Leko Gulič.

Laibach and NSK: “Industrial Diagnoses of Post-Socialism”, M’ARS Ljubljana VIII/3-4, 1996. “ Činiti nepopularno vidljivim: nominalizacija v popularnoj muzici” (Making Visible the Unpopular: Nominalization in Popular Music) in Dimitrejević, B. (Ed.), “Pop Vision”, Vršac/Belgrade 1996. “ Art & Strategy: Laibach versus Turbo”, New Moment No. 9/10, 1998. “ Thinking About Mutation: Genres in 1990s Electronica” in Blake, A. (Ed.) “Living Through Pop”, Routledge 1999. “ Balkan Hardcore: Paramilitarism and Pop Culture”, Central Europe Review (http://www.ce-review.org), June 2000. “ 20 Years of Laibach, 20 Years of?…”, Central Europe Review, September 2000. “ Deleuzoguattarian Praxis and Electronic Music”, British Postgraduate Musicology (www.bpmonline.org.uk) Vol. 4, 2001. “ Critical Frequency”, (review of “This is Serbia Calling”, by Mathew Collin) Central Europe Review, May 2001. “ Office Politics”, (interview with Slovene NGO) C...

Over the summer I had a long and interesting discussion with Thomas Bey William Bailey about Tech-Nostalgia, covering issues such as the fetishisation of analogue technology, the romance of Cold War Poetics and the current fashionability of EBM and other 1980s electronic and industrial variants. These exchanges can now be read on Vague Terrain .

Congress month opens with my lecture on NSK and the Congress at the workshop Andere Europas (Other Europes). The event is free and will take place in both English and German. Workshop zum Start des Studienprojekts Andere Europas: Soziale Imagination in transnationalen Bewegungen und urbanen Öffentlichkeiten Das Projekt stellt die Frage nach Anderen Europas in doppelter Hinsicht: einmal als Frage danach, ob, wo und durch wen andere als die herrschenden Visionen Europas vorstellbar und öffentlich kommunizierbar werden; zum anderen die Frage danach, ob und wie in solchen alternativen Imaginationen die Anderen Europas - im Sinne der in den herrschenden Visionen Ausgeschlossenen oder jedenfalls Marginalisierten (Migrant/innen, soziale/kulturelle Minoritäten, Kritiker/innen des Neuen Europas) - eine besondere Rolle als Adressat/innen, als Produzent/innen spielen. Damit wird zugleich die Frage neu aufgeworfen, inwieweit Europa als Raum sozialer, politischer Utopien und für die Mobilis...

View from the Red Districts, September 2010 I'm in Trbovlje on the eve of the Red Districts, Black Cross events to mark Laibach's 30th anniversary. Tomorrow evening at 20.00 former Slovene President Milan Kučan will open the Laibach exhibition and this will be followed by a short performance. On the morning of the 24th my work begins, moderating the three-day symposium with a unique combination of speakers, panellists, guests and friends. In the evenings there are Laibach concerts and DJ sessions plus the inevitable parties, this is going to be interesting... All the information you need is here

On the 2nd of September at 19.00 there will be a special event to accompany Laibach's MONUMENTAL RETRO-AVANT-GARDE installation at Wonderloch-Kellerland. I will read from Interrogation Machine , discuss Laibach and take questions. This will be followed by a rare screening of the Laibach documentary film Bravo (a.k.a. Laibach - A Film From Slovenia). Copies of the book will be available. Wonderloch-Kellerland Biesentaler Str. 6 D-13359 Berlin contact@wonderloch-kellerl and.org ENTRY: 5 EURO.

I will give a short talk at this event taking place in the courtyard of Absintherie Sixtina, Leipzig from 11.00. If you're attending Wave Gotik Treffen or in the area then come along. I will discuss the notion of a "dark scene", which is explored in this publication: www.ploettner-verlag.de/shop/Buecher/-Shop/Sachbuch/Schillerndes-Dunkel::126.html I have two texts in this major collection, one on Gerechtigkeits Liga and one on Laibach, both appearing in German for the first time.

An archive lecture text given at the Musical constellations in the digital age event hosted at mama as part of the Zagreb Music Biennale in March 2003. Secret Militant History “Disco rhythm as a regu lar repet ition is the purest/most radical form of the militantly organised rhythmicity of technicist production, and as such the most appropriate means of media manipulation. As an archetypal structural basis of the collective unconscious in a worker, mass, it stimulates automatic mechanisms and shapes industrialisation of consciousness, which is necessary in the logic of massive-totalitarian industrial production… Disco rhythm stimulates automatist mechanisms and co-forms the industrialization of consciousness according to the model of totalitarianism and industrial production” [1] LAIBACH This statement was made by the Slovene group Laibach, which made notorious appearances at the Zagreb Biennales of 1983 and 1985. Its radical ambivalence illustrates one of the two p...