Exhibition Information
In the winter of 1999, Mirna Heruc, the Director of the Nexus Centre in Adelaide, Australia, saw the Catalogue of the Contemporary Slovenian Graphic Design the Mladina Magazine covers, which were designed by Zdravko Papic. They aroused her interest and that was the beginning of the project known as 'Shoot at the Artist'.
Introduction
Magazine Mladina (meaning Youth) combined with the media undertakings of the organisation NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst, later also New Slovenian Collectivism) initiated a cultural revolution that needed only a few years to prepare the ground- in velvet boxing gloves - for the downfall of totalitarian regime in Slovenia.
Group Laibach, the music branch of the initiation capsule of the organisation NSK, explored in its performances the totalitarian iconography in which the then government could recognise the German Nazism but failed to notice its own totalitarianism. Even through everyone knew what was going on, the government could not admit this publicly for it would thus reveal its own totalitarian image. Their imagery was just as powerful as their music through which eventually caused the government to reveal itself.
The Poster Affair
Touch carrying in anticipation of the Youth Day (Marshall Tito's Birthday) was one of the most recognisable icons of former Yugoslavia, similar in its form and content to corresponding performances in North Korea. After Tito's death, the cult of Tito's Torch continued. In the last years before the break up, the task to organise Tito's Torch was assigned to the Slovenian Youth Organisation - ZSMS - Socialist Slovenian Youth Union - in fact, junior Communist Party which had become quite independent and turned upside down the old Bolshevik claim that 'revolution devours its young'. In this case, the young devoured the revolution and ZSMS became the platform for the later Liberal - Democrat Party, currently the strongest party in Slovenia. As the government would not hear about replacing the Torch by some other more contemporary symbol, artists organised an event in the city centre where a five-meter long log was sculptured into a touch that nobody could carry around.
When the anonymous competition for the best poster was held, with the top Party official sitting on the panel, the Slovenian group NSK was pronounced the winner. It looked like the bad boys finally turned good. However, a few days later a scandal broke out for it turned out the group, quite in line with its proclaimed retrograde doctrine, had only marginally retouched a well known Nazi poster from the times when Nazism was on the rise. The disgrace was total: the government recognised the Nazi iconography as its own true face.
Undermining the Communist Party and other authorities with humour.
In this, Mladina magazine played the major role. Its covers, week by week, supplied a comment on the political misjudgements of the time. (It is no coincidence that the best artists creating the front cover studied in Poland, e.g. Zdravko Papic). Mladina also published a cartoon, consisting of just three small pictures but making a stronger impact than most thrusting commentaries. A special graphic feature if not a full-fledged invention was a page full of fake schemes (authors Ervin Hladnik Milharcic and Ivan Standeker), tables and photomontages, totally untrue abut 'more real than the reality itself'. A journalistic surrealism in graphic design. Occasionally, the artists' foresight became frighteningly real, one example being the prediction of the slaughter in Bosnia.
This is only a brief summation on the artists subversions of that time which prepared the ground for the politicians who came later. By pointing out how self-inflated the Party was with all its generals and secret police, they let out the air and what remained was an empty bag full of nothing. All these powerful people came across as only funny. Once you can laugh at somebody who is trying to control you with force, the fear is gone.
The end of fear is the beginning of freedom.
Marko Zorko

Special Thank you for assistance with this project:

Marko Zorko
Zdravko Papic
Mladina Magazine
Organisation NSK, Group Laibach
Supported by the Ministry for Culture of the Republic of Slovenia
Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery

For further information on Laibach and their origins, visit:
www.laibach.nsk.si/