LAIBACH
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LAIBACH
Interrogating the Everyday Frequently misunderstood as a purely musical group, Laibach have staged many conceptual-physical actions. Everyday contexts in Ljubljana have become sites of spectacular alienation and transgression. Reactions generated by Laibach index both repression and apathy. The actions XY-Unsolved and Einkauf im City Park were two of the most audacious, playing on the same fears in different but related contexts. Both featured Laibach in military uniform (in one case Yugoslav, in the second German) plus sinisterly ambiguous black-cross armbands. In 1983, some were so offended by Laibach’s German name and provocations they could only refer to it as “that group”. The sight of Laibach on TV, together with its extreme statements (partly based on Yugoslav ideology) provoked a media storm, driving the group underground 1 and provoking the Ljubljana council to impose a four-year ban on Laibach appearances in the city. By 2003, after several low-profile years, some must have hoped that Laibach had finally ceased to exist. Then Laibach reappeared unannounced, slipping into Ljubljana’s largest shopping centre in SS and Wehrmacht style uniforms, with members pushing an empty shopping cart, silently inspecting the temple of consumerism, refusing to enjoy or to consume, disturbing spectres haunting the public feast. Just when post-socialist normality appeared to be triumphant Laibach regenerated interference in the channels of public communication and consumption, generating a (non-) response purely by their presence. This brief, ghostly action was seen by chance onlookers, CCTV and the film crew. On this occasion there was no outcry, shoppers laughed nervously or disbelievingly stopped in their tracks, and Laibach left unchallenged. The “Laibachized” Slovene public is now able to tolerate all sorts of artistic excess but also betrays an inability to react or to articulate any strong response. In 1983 what Laibach called the “first TV generation” could still be shocked, but the second and third TV generations, systematically numbed by consumer-pop spectacle, daily accepts all manner of political and cultural outrages as long as the freedom to consume is unaffected. If formerly Laibach was the ultimate scapegoat it has now become the accuser, symbolically indicting passivity and the desire to forget the past, interrogating the evil of banality. Alexei Monroe 1) The presenter denounced Laibach as “enemies of the people”, appealing to citizens to “…act and repress these horrifying ideas and declarations here in the middle of Ljubljana.” |