Exhibition "Power, Provocation, Deconstruction — LAIBACH 1980-1995."
at the Red History Museum in Dubrovnik (March 22 – June 15, 2025)
Following the model of industrial production and totalitarianism, Laibach operates as a collective. “Our work is industrial, and our language is political,” as stated in the manifesto Laibach: 10 Points of the Convention (1982). This means that “The individual does not speak, the organization speaks.” Their structure is organized according to the "square principle" (Eber – Saliger – Keller – Dachauer), behind which stands—or hides—an arbitrary and variable number of anonymous members.
The exhibition explores the work of the multimedia collective Laibach through three sequences:
The first sequence, Laibach Kunst from its founding in 1980 to 1984, marked by the infamous scandal surrounding their performance at the Music Biennale in Zagreb (1983).
The second sequence covers Laibach's activities within the Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) project (1984-1991), an artistic collective that included, alongside Laibach, the theater group Gledališče sester Scipiona Nasice (founded in 1983, which, after its self-dissolution in 1987, transformed first into Kozmokinetično gledališče Rdeči pilot and later, in 1990, into Kozmokinetični kabinet Noordung), the visual arts group Irwin (1983), as well as the design collective Novi kolektivizem, the Department for Pure and Practical Philosophy, and other occasional groups that emerged and dissolved dynamically as needed (Retrovizija, Film, Graditelji, etc.).
A key moment and product of NSK's collaboration was the realization of the monumental retro-avant-garde theater event Krst pod Triglavom (Baptism under Triglav, based on motifs from Prešeren’s epic The Baptism at the Savica), performed by GSSN with music by Laibach (also released on the album Krst pod Triglavom – Baptism, 1987).
The exhibition coincides with Laibach’s major tour promoting the reissue of their groundbreaking album Opus Dei (1987), in which Laibach transposed their established working principles and mechanisms into the “Western democracies” through a critique of market totalitarianism, exposing pop culture as an industrial and ideological mechanism (Opus Dei, Sympathy for the Devil, Let It Be...).
The third sequence highlights the transformation of the NSK collective into NSK State in Time, a state without permanent territory, with temporary "liberated zones." One such zone was established in besieged Sarajevo in 1995, when Laibach held two concerts as part of their N.A.T.O. tour, coinciding with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement.
By combining original artifacts, documentary materials, and reproductions, the exhibition in a way covers the "Yugoslav" period of Laibach's work, from their founding in Trbovlje on June 1, 1980—shortly after Tito’s death—to the symbolic demise of his revolutionary project of modernist, self-managed, and non-aligned Socialist Yugoslavia, the independence of national states, the bloody war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and NATO’s military intervention.
Dejan Kršić
Exhibition supported by:
City of Dubrovnik
Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia
Dubrovnik Tourist Board
Croatian National Tourist Board