Prerokbe Ognja Page #2

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The success of Marxist ideology in the East

inevitably impacts on the

Slovenian mining town of Trbovlje.

Hunger, dismal working conditions,

and blatant exploitation of labor

are the norm in the industrial

heartlands of Royal Yugoslavia.

But the revolution brings

a message of hope.

Strikes and street battles between fascist

and socialist miners groups soon erupt.

Contemporary Trbovlje's huge coal-fired power

plant has the largest smoke-stack in Europe.

Laibach emerged from this

machinery in 1980,

producing a specifically industrial

form of rock music.

Thirteen years later Irwin,

NSK's collective of five painters,

return to the source of the movement's

original motivating aesthetic.

Like Laibach, members of Irwin came from the

factory and mining towns of socialist Yugoslavia.

The earliest Irwin works consciously

reflect their proletarian origins,

using materials like coal, tar and blood.

Although their role would later

evolve, in the early 80's Irwin

took on a specific mission

within the NSK movement.

They would be the

chroniclers, or mythologizers

artists willfully serving the interests

of the state they themselves had helped design.

It's the cement factory!

Maybe these are old

paintings, from the times

when Laibach started and

they painted from here in Trbovlje.

Or they are connected with

the miner's life here.

I don't like their style. They have a

lot of... I don't like their boots.

What do we think of the paintings? F*** 'em.

We don't know what this is all about.

The painting as a painting?

It's unusual, because normally

a simple person would expect

a painting to represent something nice,

a landscape or something.

But these are... The painter who painted

this wanted to say something.

He is practically the only one who could

explain it. I can't get to the bottom of it.

Laibach as Laibach?

Laibach as a music group is very

popular abroad, in Europe.

I saw on TV that they had a concert in

Vienna, and in Prague they were sold out.

But here, in our town,

they are not so well known.

We don't know they are only a

music group or are they something more.

We think the paintings are beautiful,

but look what the mine looks like.

Let's go!

Wait, we're having an interview!

Let's go! Good luck!

It's difficult to explain.

I think Laibach have a very special style,

a way of expressing

themselves through music,

it's a kind of protest

against society.

A kind of... reaction against society and

the system, the whole European system.

All art is subject to political manipulation

except that which speaks the language

of the same manipulation.

- NSK Statement

By the middle of the century, the machinery

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