IRWINIRWIN, founded 1983 IRWIN is a group of five painters (Dusan Mandic, Miran Mohar, Andrej Savski, Roman Uranjek and Borut Vogelnik), who have been developing their art as retro-principle since 1983. In the process of contextualisation of their art production they actively and concretely intervene in social and historical activities in the decade of the redefinition of the art status in the Eastern Europe. Selected SOLO Exhibitions
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Real Time Projects – An Interview with IRWIN [1] by Inke Arns Would you agree that German reunification in 1990 can be seen as a symbol of some more general developments within Europe? IRWIN: After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a feeling of insurmountable distance transformed into a general wish and hope that the two halves of Europe would join together in the shortest possible time. This was most evident in Germany, which was the only country capable of promising an almost instantaneous reunification that would remove all traces of different living and working conditions. The fact is that Germany was a place where conditions for rapid reunification – and the related desire to forget – were optimal. But despite the fact that East Germany was one of the most developed socialist countries and that the quantity of capital invested in it after 1990 can’t be compared with investments in any other country in transition, it is now clear that the reunification didn’t take place in a moment. This is even more true of all the other countries that don’t have the possibility of identifying themselves with part of the EU. Although the strategy of oblivion is potentially effective, it is at the same time problematic. Black-box theories do have certain legitimate functions in science: they are economic, and they make it possible to advance by circumventing terrains of ignorance that are difficult to penetrate. But to turn such a makeshift solution into practice, some 130 years after it was first proposed, seems to merit the harsh designation of a celebration of obscurantism, as Goran Therborn would put it. I’m interested in what IRWIN’s relation to NSK as a whole was in the 1990s, in the last decade. IRWIN: In the 1980s we organised ourselves internally as an art collective, NSK, but at the same time we were also shaped from the outside, by the political situation in former Yugoslavia. Reactions to Laibach and the poster scandal [2] left a strong mark on us. In the 1990s or towards the end of the 1980s, when the ideological bloc collapsed, not only in Yugoslavia but in the whole of Eastern Europe, we started to construct ourselves. The Kapital project (an exhibition and book) launched the topic of “Eastern Modernism” for the first time to stress the difference between the East and the West and start the process of mapping the East. One big change was that in the 1990s IRWIN and NSK began to move. The first big move was a one-month stay in Moscow within the framework of the NSK Embassy Moscow project in 1992. The majority of NSK’s constituent groups participated in this project, which was initiated by IRWIN. Through its intertwining of public and private spaces, the NSK Embassy Moscow project also brought new possibilities of communication and eventually led to the formation of the NSK State in Time. Our relationship to NSK has not changed but evolved. In view of the fact that in the 1990s NSK already had a decade-long history of its own behind it, we couldn’t have avoided this even if we’d wanted to. We didn’t want to evade our own history, we began to use it – not only as a fact but also as a means. Our key projects in the 1990s were aimed at articulating or constructing the context of IRWIN. Given the specific practice of interpreting and inscribing (or excluding) things in the narration of art history characteristic of ex-socialist spaces, as well as the fact that the desired oblivion is – perhaps not explicitly, but no doubt at least implicitly – breaking the lines of possible historical narration, we set ourselves as a point of support. Like Baron Münchausen, we got hold of our hair and lifted ourselves. What about your 1999 installation “The Retroavantgarde”? You are saying that you are basically doing now what the East was denied the possibility of doing. You are retrospectively constructing a movement of the Retroavantgarde, which was never a movement. There were just artists from all over Yugoslavia – Mladen Stilinović from Zagreb, Malevich from Belgrade, Braco Dimitrijević in Sarajevo and Laibach Kunst /NSK in Ljubljana – who worked in similar ways. And finally, does the concept of the Retroavantgarde change IRWIN’s relation to NSK? IRWIN: The scheme of the Retroavantgarde from 1999 is only one phase in a series of manifestations dating back to the beginning of the 1990s, it has its prehistory in the 1980s and is by no means the last manifestation of that scheme. If we agree that a movement is defined as the joint actions and efforts of a group of people with the aim of achieving a specific goal, then the Retroavantgarde can’t be regarded as a movement simply because some of the artists included in this scheme have already been dead for some time. And even though we’ve been friends with the others for many years, and frequently exhibited together, we’ve never maintained that the Retroavantgarde was a movement, but rather an avant-garde constructed retrospectively. Which is why we consider the Retroavantgarde a ready-made avant-garde. That’s nothing unusual in art history. Everything from Vasari and the construction of the Northern Renaissance to Minimalism, which was constructed with the help of the media, is a rule rather than an exception. The fact that there was no coherent and internationally comparable art history narration within the former Yugoslavia, and that the mentioned artists used similar procedures (the crucial point in common is precisely their reflection upon the non-existent system of inscription in the history of art), enables us to construct the avant-garde line retrospectively. In our environment the most guarded terrain is that of interpretation and inscription in art history. Oblivion being the most effective weapon, interpretation takes place with a delay of at least 10, but more often 20 years. Parallels with the retro mapping of the avant-garde are no coincidence. The view that artists only have a right to their own time is particularly characteristic of Slovenia and other ex-socialist countries. That they should be part of a certain period and nothing apart from that. In the 1960s and 1970s this usually took place via artists simply imitating some well-known Western artist and making similar things. After a few years their careers were over. These are very short stories. In sum, you’re absolutely right in establishing that the Retroavantgarde was not a movement; it’s a possible, sensible and arbitrary inscription – as much as any looking back is arbitrary by definition – of a particular line in the history of art. Because of the comparatively poor knowledge of the works of the artists involved, and the chosen manner of their presentation, the Retroavantgarde functions as if it were a work of art. And it is precisely this double inscription – as an act of mapping and an artefact – and the sliding of perception it produces, in this particular case, that is the object of our interest. Boris Groys made some interesting remarks about the logic of art collections. He gives an appropriate description of the Western perception of the East when he says that from the viewpoint of Western collections there are two alternatives for the East. The first possibility is that it is perceived as a copy of Western art because it is so similar to Western art, and the second possibility is that it is so different that in Western perception it can only be perceived as folk art.
IRWIN: To make such an assertion, the following two assumptions are needed: first, that art actually happens in a linear progression with all significant steps made in the West, and second, that Eastern countries de facto function as ethnicities. Not a few Westerners regard such assertions as problematic. But we must agree with Boris Groys. In most cases the perception actually is such, and with some rare exceptions, as far as we know, there are no collections in the East, for the time being, that would refute such a view. But while there are still no collections, artists have certainly been here for quite some time, although we’re afraid this view could mostly apply to them as well. In the East, there are incomparably fewer art collectors and collections and less planned work with the latter than in the West. Since we believe that collections are extremely important tools, it’s not by chance that we’ve participated in the creation of three art collections since the late 1980s. The first is FRA-YU-KULT, a collection of works by artists from the territory of ex-Yugoslavia referring to the art of the 1980s. The project was conceived by IRWIN in collaboration with Jadran Adamović and realized independently of art institutions. The second collection is Sarajevo 2000, in which we participated at all developmental stages. And the third one is 2000+, which is managed by the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana. Collections are intersections of different chains of signification, where monetary capital coincides with symbolic capital. They’re prolongations of art historical schemes and an effective means for the breakthrough of the logic of the status quo, and therefore a privileged place of creation based on selection, on the setting and shifting of boundaries between the included and the excluded. They are a kind of art work made of selected works of art. The word “art”, etymologically speaking, means to make, simply to make. Making something is choosing, choice is the main thing, even in normal painting, if we quote Marcel Duchamp. You are not the only ones who discovered communication spaces in the 1990s. When I read Misiano’s text “The Institutionalisation of Friendship”, where he talks about ‘confidential projects’, I immediately had to think about networks like the Syndicate. The Syndicate was a group of people working in the media cultural field in Europe and beyond, connected via a mailing list, with regular meetings in different cities (ranging from Rotterdam to Tirana). The spirit is approximately the same as that described in Misiano’s text. Can you explain its relation to your ‘confidential project’? Confidential projects seem to be something that only became possible in the 1990s, right?
IRWIN: Misiano himself mentions projects from Moscow from the late 1970s and early 1980s, which he compares to similar practices in 1990s. In Slovenia, the OHO group can certainly be understood in this way. Besides, all modernism is based on groupings organised as types of confidential projects. An example of this is Bloomsbury, and groups in Paris in the second half of the 19th century, on the basis of which Pierre Bourdieu develops his thesis about the field of cultural production. Among other things, he also mentions some poet from that time who proposed that artists establish a state. The critical mass enabling the constitution of a relatively autonomous field of cultural production is reached at different moments in different spaces, whereas in certain spaces it has never been achieved at all. So it seems reasonable to treat confidential projects – at least as far as ex-socialist countries are concerned – in relation to the constitution of such a field. Of course, despite many points common to the projects mentioned and those from the 1990s, it is possible to speak about a difference which apparently became possible only in the 1990s. We would like to emphasise that these projects became their own object only in the 1990s. The construction itself of the system could be understood as creation, so that the function these systems perform, or don’t perform, is often neglected. What’s interesting is the sort of ready-made quality of such projects. NSK itself was such a confidential project, initiated in the beginning of the 1980s. But in the late 1980s and throughout the next decade we developed new networks based on the concept of the NSK State in Time. The first was a network of artists from ex-Yugoslavia who participated in the creation of the FRA-YU-KULT collection. Then came the NSK Embassy Moscow, Transnacionala and connections with Moscow artists, and lastly the Retroavantgarde project. How many citizens does the NSK State in Time have today, in the year 2000? IRWIN: More than the Vatican. Much more. Three times more than the Vatican. How do you imagine the future of the NSK State in Time? What should it become in the future? How should it evolve? How should it develop as a state? IRWIN: The NSK State in Time is defined as an abstract organism, a suprematist body, installed in a real social and political space as a sculpture comprising the concrete body warmth, spirit and work of its members. NSK confers the status of a state not upon territory but upon the mind, whose borders are in a state of constant flux, in accordance with the movements and changes of its symbolical and physical collective body. The NSK State is not a project about which we could speak in the third person. We are the state. Perhaps the NSK State in Time should better be viewed as formalisation, reification, not as a formation that is to propagate and develop a certain type of activity. If in the beginning of the 1990s it was sensible to use terms such as embassies, consulates, etc. because they enabled easier and faster understanding and identification with the NSK State as a notion, later on, when the state was established, this was no longer so vital. In brief, the NSK State interests us as a point of distance, of symbolisation. However, this is not to say that in the future we have no intention of dealing with projects that are usually characteristic of state institutions. Right now we are preparing another such project. Take, for example, the NSK Moscow Embassy: the circumstances in which we carried out this project were merely a tool for creating or enabling very specific conditions to generate very specific communication. For us, it was extremely important to document the event in a book. What was in question was not an embassy as a work of art; for us, the embassy was really a tool by means of which we got to things that interested us. The same is true of Transnacionala. The two books documenting these projects are in fact a result of the very specific situations that we created to induce communication. And we are convinced that the content presented in these two books could not have been possible in different circumstances. But we are not interested in producing embassies or consulates as such, as empty gestures. You’ve been working in collectives for two decades. How do you experience the relation between the individual and the group? IRWIN: The group can be much more effective because of faster information feedback, but at the same time there’s the ever-present danger of inertia. One of the key questions in the functioning of a group is how to establish its dynamics, how to establish a common interest and direct efforts to a common focus. We deal with this a lot. This often requires certain manoeuvres and specific rituals. The content and effect of such joint actions then influence every one of us as individuals. This is the principle of permanent “self-deception”; putting oneself in the position of a viewer, amazed by the activity he has just triggered. In principle, that’s also what it was about in larger projects, such as embassies or journeys. When you work in a group you have a certain understanding, a certain rule that you don’t touch, and this may also lead to conservative decisions. At the same time, however, group dynamics also open up a possibility based on heresy; certain ideas which, when presented for the first time, may seem totally unacceptable, grow in significance and even come to form a key basis in time. You are Slovenian artists. What does this label represent to you? What kind of images and reactions does it evoke in you? What are the benefits and disadvantages of determination with a nationality, or national state? IRWIN: The perception of artists, and consequently of art, still depends on information about their nationality or citizenship. Of course, the significance and effect of this data differs considerably with respect to the country you represent, whether you like it or not. (One of the functions of the NSK State in Time is to avoid or lessen the automatism of such identification). On the other hand, it has to be admitted that different spaces – due to differences in the structure and hierarchy of information and preferences – affect production itself. In short, the interest of a Slovenian artist and that of a German artist, both of whom would like to be merely artists, inevitably differ. As for IRWIN, we have to say that the Slovenian art system always interested us. We see a great advantage in the fact that Slovenia – as well as the entire former socialist East – still hasn’t become an integral part of the symbolic field of the international art system and that it is primarily this symbolisation that is taking place today. In one of your manifestos from the 1980s you claimed to be the founder of a new national art. Which was of course ironic: your art consisted of everything except “originally” Slovenian stuff. This reflected your view of what Slovenian identity might be: a patchwork of all kinds of different cultural influence, but certainly not a genuine or authentic 'national culture'. Would you say that this is still like that? IRWIN: There was no irony in this at all; on the contrary, we seriously suggested that eclecticism should become the basis of national authenticity. Different cultural influences and an authentic culture -- these two things do not exclude each other at all. From the point of view of style, Slovenian art was always a mixture. From the point of view of interpretation, however, it was always mythologized. In Slovenia we still have mythologies instead of consistent art theories and art history. And this hinders comparisons between Slovenian artists and art and the international space, which results in self-sufficiency. But at the same time, we ourselves are proof that the assertion that Slovenian artists are not interested in the international context doesn’t hold true. We are interested in it, and we are not the only ones. At least part of Slovenian art has lately been oriented towards, and has successfully penetrated, the international arena, to the extent that has never been seen in Slovenia so far. At the same time Slovenia is being recognised as one of the centres of European modern art.
IRWIN von Pavel Liska, aus: IRWIN, Katalog Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg 2002 Die Künstlergruppe IRWIN entstand Anfang der 80er Jahre in Ljubljana, der Hauptstadt der Slowenischen Teilrepublik der damaligen Jugoslawischen Föderation. Sie nannte sich Rrose Irwin Selavy, wodurch ihr Bezug zum Werk des radikalsten Vertreters und schließlich auch Überwinder der Moderne, Marcel Duchamp, zum Ausdruck gebracht werden sollte. Rrose Selavy ("Rose - c'est la vie") war eines von Duchamps Pseudonymen, mit denen er seine Werke signierte. Die beabsichtigte Ambivalenz - nicht nur seiner Pseudonyme - verstand Duchamp sowohl als einen Brückenschlag zwischen verschiedenen Bedeutungsebenen ein und derselben Äußerung als auch als eine künstlerische Methode zur Überwindung der Grenzen zwischen verschiedenen (Kunst- ) Kommunikationssphären. Obwohl die slowenische Gruppe ihren Namen bald auf R Irwin S verkürzte und 1984 auf Irwin reduzierte, blieb ihre enge Verbindung zum wichtigsten bildnerischen Experiment von Marcel Duchamp - dem ready made - erhalten. Mit dem ready made - dem bereits Gemachten -, stellte Duchamp eine Konstruktion vor, nach der der Künstler einen gewöhnlichen und beliebigen Gegenstand durch seine einfache Erklärung - d.h. durch eine ideelle Tätigkeit - zum Kunstwerk deklarieren kann. Duchamp ging damit noch einen Schritt weiter als zuvor Pablo Picasso und George Braque, die in ihren Collagen seit 1912 ein Stück der realen Wirklichkeit (Zeitungsschnipsel) zum Bestandteil eines Kunstwerkes machten. Da sich Duchamp jedoch nicht für das traditionell gemalte oder gezeichnete Bild interessiert, bleibt ihm nur der Gegenstand als Kunstwerk. Dieser radikale Schritt vom "Gegenstand im Kunstwerk" (Picasso/Braque) zum "Gegenstand als Kunstwerk" (Duchamp) stellt eine der folgenreichsten Taten in der Ära der modernen Kunst dar, denn dadurch wurde der Weg zur Überwindung der Moderne - zur Postmoderne gewiesen. Die Gruppe Irwin arbeitet mit ausgewählten und bereits existierenden Bildern - Symbolen, Figuren und Kompositionen - auf eine prinzipiell ähnliche Weise, wie Duchamp mit dem Flaschentrockner, dem Pissoir-Becken oder dem Vorderrad eines Fahrrads umgegangen ist. Noch näher steht Irwin jedoch den Pop Artisten Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg oder Jasper Johns, die seit den späten 50er Jahren auch "bereits gemachte" Vorbilder - Comics, Vignetten, Farbdrucke aus Zeitungen und Illustrierten, Reklamen oder Bilder anderer Künstler - verwenden. Aber auch die spätere Methode der Konzeptkunst weist ähnliche Charakteristika auf: Der Konzeptkünstler schaut über die Grenze der traditionellen Kunst in andere bereits fertige Bereiche hinein - so z.B. Joseph Kosuth in Philosopie und Semiotik, Hans Haacke in Physik, Biologie, Soziologie -, und wählt daher bereits existierende (Teil- )Systeme aus, um sie - ausgewertet und modifiziert - in Kunstwerke zu "verwandeln", d.h. sie in einer neuen ambivalenten Kontext- und damit auch Deutungsebene anzusiedeln. Es ist festzuhalten, dass diese aus dem Prinzip des ready mades entwickelte "Appropriationsmethode" eine sehr verbreitete bildnerische Position der Postmoderne ist. Während sich jedoch die Appropriationen der Pop Art und der Concept Art meistens im allgemein Formalen bewegen (The medium is the message) tragen die Arbeiten von Irwin - wie auch immer sie sich prinzipiell mit den angesprochenen postmodernen Varianten des Ready-made-Prinzips decken, zusätzlich eine Dimension, die für den westlichen Betrachter oft Schwierigkeiten bereitet: Man wird mit überdeutlichen politi- schen Anspielungen auf totalitäre Regime konfrontiert. Die Penetranz und Radikalität, mit der Irwin Symbole verschiedener, scheinbar miteinander nicht zusammenhängender machtideologischer Systeme zusammenbringt, wirken auf den ersten Blick künstlich oder gar abstoßend. Ikonen verschiedener undemokratischer Epochen werden von Irwin zu einem Bild zusammenmontiert: Das Kreuz erscheint einmal als das christliche Symbol, tritt jedoch auch als eine suprematistische Ikone auf oder könnte auch aus Beuys' Arbeiten stammen, das Jesu-Herz, das kitschige Hirschgeweih, der faschistoide Sämann und der real-sozialistische oder auch faschistische Arbeiter, alle diese symbolträchtigen Gestalten werden zu gemalten Collagen zusammengestellt und mit mächtigen Rahmen der die Bodenständigkeit und Grundsätzlichkeit der zusammengestellten Mischung betonen soll eingefasst. Diese Montagen strahlen eine pseudoreligiöse und pseudopolitische Kraft aus, die dem Betrachter nicht erlaubt, dahinter bloß Ironie zu sehen. Der Betrachter wird auch nicht - wie in Werken von Hans Haacke - aufgeklärt, um dann eine kritische Position zu den dargestellten Inhalten entwickeln zu können. Die Bilder, zumaloft in einer barocken Sammlerwut angehäuft, vermitteln bittere Ernsthaftigkeit und Engagement. Irwin nennt seine Arbeitsmethode "Retrogarde", bzw. "Retro-Prinzip". Charakteristisch für diese Arbeitsmethode ist ein Irwin-Gruppenporträt: Die fünf Mitglieder der Gruppe sind "locker" zu einer Interessengemeinschaft zusammengestellt, jeder Einzelne in seiner eigenen Pose: Eine Gruppe von fünf selbstbewussten Individuen, die möglicherweise ein Ensemble klassischer Musik oder ein wissenschaftliches Team bilden. Was die fünf mit dunklen Anzügen, weißen Hemden und Krawatte bekleideten Menschen auffälligerweise verbindet, sind kleine gleichgroße schwarze Quadrate an jedermanns Oberlippe. Die berühmte Ikone des Suprematismus, das Schwarze Quadrat von Kazimir Malewitsch (1913), bekommt durch ihre neue Ortsbestimmung einen neuen Kontext und damit eine neue Bedeutung - sie wird zu Hitlers Oberlippenbärtchen. Das "harmlose" suprematistische Quadrat, das in Malewitschs Verständnis für die reine immaterielle Geistigkeit steht, mutiert in diesem Kontext zu einem faschistischen Zeichen. Es handelt sich hier um eine typisch postmoderne Bedeutungsverschiebung, die durch eine neue kontextuelle Einordnung entsteht. Aber auch in diesem Fall bleibt Irwin nicht bei der Feststellung der formalen Ähnlichkeit zwischen dem kleinen Oberlippenbart eines Adolf Hitler und einem schwarzen Quadrätchen stehen, sondern will diese Anspielung auch inhaltlich verstanden wissen: Die moderne Dogmatik, die in Malewitschs suprematistischen System formuliert und durch seine Ikonen (Quadrat, Kreuz, Kreis) visualisiert wurde, ist eben nicht formal, sondern inhaltlich mit dem faschistischen (und nicht nur faschistischen) Totalitarismus vergleichbar, weil sie beide auf einem Meinungsmonopol basieren. Somit ist die Arbeitsmethode von Irwin nicht als eine formal-ästhetische zu verstehen, sondern als eine, die engagiert tief in politische Inhalte eindringt Derartige gesellschaftlich orientierte inhaltliche Bezogenheit ist der Kunst spätestens mit dem Impressionismus verlorengegangen. Die historischen Positionen, sei es die pantheistische Renaissancekunst, die populistische, gegen die Reformation gerichtete barocke Schaukunst oder die säkularisierte "revolutionäre" klassizistische Staatskunst, waren stets ideologisch festgebunden und auf kollektive Wirkung ausgerichtet. Seit der Romantik setzt sich die individuelle Sichtweise der bÜrgerlichen Kunst immer mehr durch, um schließlich im Impressionismus zu der weitgehend entideologisierten Individualposition der L 'art pour ['art zu gelangen. Erst die klassische Moderne entdeckte die kollektive Vision der Dogmatik der absoluten Wahrheit wieder, allerdings ohne sie direkt im Bild zu thematisieren. Die offene und "schamlose" Art und Weise, mit der Irwin mit politisch-inhaltlichen Aussagen arbeitet, geht weit über die postmoderne Kritik an der Dogmatik der Moderne hinaus und bedarf einer Erklärung: In den Gesellschaften des ehemals realen Sozialismus liefen die Dinge auch in der Kunst anders. Im System des realen Sozialismus übernahm die Kunst teilweise die Rolle der Politik: Wie auch immer sich das System bemühte "jede Hausfrau zur Politikerin werden zu lassen" (sinngemäß: Lenin), war jede politische Betätigung nur unter der totalen Kontrolle der Partei möglich. Die einzigen Bereiche, die einen gewissen Freiraum für nichtkonformes Denken boten, war die Wissenschaft, vor allem jedoch die Kunst. Neben der offiziellen Kunst bildete sich - vor allem in den Tauwetterphasen - eine halboffizielle künstlerische Grauzone, die noch nicht verboten aber dennoch weitgehend offen war. Auf der Bühne, in Filmen, Konzerten oder Ausstellungen konnten gewisse Kommunikationen entwickelt werden, die einen latent politischen Charakter hatten. Es ist daher auch kein Zufall, dass es in den meisten post-real-sozialistischen Gesellschaften eine Reihe von Künstlern gibt, die sich an den neuen Machtstrukturen aktiv beteiligen, denn sie bekamen ein gewisses Training in der Politik. Die 80er Jahre in Jugoslawien waren noch widersprüchlicher als in den anderen real-sozialistischen Gesellschaften. Das Tito-Regime galt jahrzehntelang als liberaler Sozialismus und war als Musterknabe weltweit bewundert. In der Tat gab es in allen Bereichen größere Freiheiten als anderswo. Nach Titos Tod kamen die verschütteten Widersprüche um so stärker zum Vorschein, gleichzeitig aber waren auch die Künstler und die intellektuelle Schicht stärker gewohnt, sich zu engagieren. Als 1984 die Gruppe Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), deren Mitglied auch Irwin war, gegründet wurde, galt die ironische, kritische und wahrheitssuchende Auseinandersetzung mit dem Regime bereits als obsolet. Man glaubte weder an die Reformierbarkeit des Systems noch an die Möglichkeit der Fehlerbeseitigung der real-sozialistischen Deformationen. Die Strategie, die die NSK entwickelte, hieß "Überidentifizierung", man wollte in den Konzerten, Theatervorstellungen, Performances, Installationen und Bildern die tatsächliche Welt der Regimes noch deutlicher und perfekter nachbauen als es das Regime selbst in der Wirklichkeit tat. Damit sollten nicht nur Enthüllungsmechanismen freigesetzt, sondern auch die Standhaftigkeit des Regimes selbst getestet werden. Die NSK und damit auch Irwin verfolgte diese Strategie mit großem Erfolg - sie trug wesentlich zur Beschleunigung des Demokratisierungsprozesses in Slowenien bei. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist die künstlerische Praxis der Gruppe Irwin zu verstehen. Nachdem die politische Zensur und damit auch der Zwang, gegen diese zu kämpfen, in den 90er Jahren verschwunden war, suchte die Gruppe nach einer neuen Position. Gefunden wurde sie in der Thematisierung des Staates als einer Organisationsform, die weltweit mit Gewaltmonopol und Ideologiemanipulation jongliert. Die NSK hat 1991 einen konzeptuellen Staat gegründet (NSK Driava v casu NSK Staat in der Zeit), den man nur in temporären Erscheinungen wahrnehmen kann - in Ausstellungen, Aktionen oder Aufführungen. Der NSK Staat in der Zeit gleicht einer Geheimorganisation, die überall und nirgendwo zu finden ist und somit den idealen Machtstaat aller Zeiten verkörpert. [1] Conducted by Inke Arns on 19 March 2000 in Dušan Mandić’s studio in Ljubljana, Slovenia. [2] Miran Mohar is referring to the NK poster scandal of 1986/1987. |
 NSK Garda |