The musical group influenced social change in former Yugoslavia

What is it about?

It all started in the town of Trbovlje, which, with its contrasts between the urban and the natural and with its mining population, was itself as a town already a representative site of Slovene industrial society – a fact that is true for both of the two eras in the twentieth century separated by World War II. We must add the Yugoslav state’s mythology about the “red districts” as the birthplace of Slovenia’s revolutionary proletariat. We can say that this specific site in Slovenia also represented a link to a more universal time-space already in existence regardless of the Iron Curtain. In its very origin, then, Laibach transcended the limitations of the global division into capitalism and socialism and situated itself on a front that had begun developing in the 1960s.

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Photo by Alexander Tsang on Unsplash

Photo by Alexander Tsang on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The entire broader context helps to explain why Laibach, starting in some obscure Slovene locality, became a global phenomenon. This also supports the hypothesis on the group’s association with the end of communism and also, in their later development, with post-communism. Laibach is not a phenomenon that can be explained primarily in reference to these terms. The work of Laibach and the NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst) network, given the absence of any event at the end of communism, presents itself as an intervening force also now in the "neoliberal world, the force of artistic adaptations.

Perspectives