Laibach – 40 years of eternity

A photo-monograph on LAIBACH’s breaching the iron Curtain and deconstructing Western consumerism is a road movie story of the historic OCCUPIED EUROPE TOUR 1983, illustrated by previously unpublished photographs from Austria, Hungary, East and West Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, England, which was unveiled after nearly 40 years by the author and tour participant Teodor Lorencic. His documentary testimony and photographs that are read more than seen clearly show the bold artistic concept that emerged from the dehumanized world, of which LAIBACH is an unstoppable and conscientious commentator. 

LAIBACH’s name, symbols and performances have always been a provocation, because provocation is their artistic credo. Through a designed performance with engaged music, they expressed their attitude towards the modern world. Their art is not innocent, and they always use weighted iconography to point out the apocalyptic nature of history. Their appearance was (and is) a negation of everything – the music of the new wave to which they belonged by age but not by sound; communism in which they lived recognizing totalitarianism; fraternities and unity behind which brutal nationalism lurked. They marched on the stage, hitting the military left and right with equal force. Instead of a sickle and a hammer, their flags have a cross and a hammer. Their concert is a performance. In front of them is a crowd that they line up with a megaphone. Their song is a command. They show us the horns we’re going to be gored by. In the early 1980s, LAIBACH was banned because of its name and militant performance, then as early as the 1990s, everyone in Yugoslavia wore uniforms and marched. Political maps of the East and the West were obtained illegally, predicting the fall of the Berlin Wall. Dissecting reality to the bone, they exposed the image of the East, but also of the liberal capitalism, to which they are gutting, so in the West they were described as „the most dangerous group in the world“, which „abolishes states and creates new ones“. For forty years, the LAIBACH invasion has not stopped, triggering avalanches wherever and whenever their prophetic voice echoes.

Gordana Milosavljević Stojanović, editor