Event: Neue Slowenische Kunst Dublin 2004

In May 2004, during Ireland's Presidency of the European Union, celebrations will take place in Dublin city to welcome the 10 countries who will join the European Union under the program of enlargement. During these celebrations, and through the initiative of Helena Drnovsek-Zorko (Slovenian Ambassador to Ireland), the Neue Slowenische Kunst will undertake a series of events around the capital city.

NSK was founded in the Slovenian Republic of the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia in 1984. According to a declaration written in 1982 by it's precursor Laibach Kunst, the group did not define itself as an alliance of individuals, but rather as a collective. The strategy of NSK has been one of over-identification with the implicit properties of state ideology.

In the 1980's, all the groups of the NSK were bound to the working method of retro avant garde or a retro-principle. It consisted of an 'emphatic eclecticism' which appropriated symbols, images, and forms of rhetoric from the socialist or totalitarian state apparatus. These include many historical signs that have been part of Slovenian culture e.g. Socialist Realism and Nazi art, Italian Futurism and Soviet Constructivism, as well as Laibach's Leitmotifs of the eagle, deer, sower, the small drummer, and Malevic's black cross. IRWIN reclaim an "asserted national culture" and develop the new national Slovene art as a platform for national authenticity.

The Events that will take place include:

International Conference: Art and Politics: The Imagination of Opposition in Europe
With the University of Ljubljana and University College Dublin
How does 'art' intersect 'politics' either when all art is politics or when politics forcibly subsumes art to its will?

Opening Event - NSK
State in Time, a temporary embassy installation with public talks, speeches by representatives of NSK, Dublin City Council, handing over of keys; NSK Library - phono & video, information/datasheets, cds, and passports (designed by New Collectivism).

IRWIN
Visual Arts Exhibition

Laibach
Music Performance - part of world tour for the promotion of new album "WAT"

Kozmokineticni Kabinet Noordung
Theatre performance of current work "SUPREMAT"


Department of Pure and Applied Philosophy
Video & Philosophical Lecture (commissioned specifically for Dublin) entitled "Building of the temple to the Unknown God".

Film Program
NSK: Predictions of Fire - Director Michael Benson (90 mins)

Further information can be found on our website at http://www.artprojectsnetwork.net