Iwo Maciak
LIVING AN ART STATE THE NSK STATE IN TIME – BETWEEN AN ART PROJECT AND A POLITICAL ORGANISM

Boris Groys, attempting to describe the political transformation which the NSK State fits in, said, ”But anarchy and institutional critique are good when there are art institutions. In Eastern European countries though, art institutions are not very strong – and the art market is not especially powerful. In this situation artists have to create art institutions themselves – together with the state that is theoretically responsible for maintaining these institutions”¹. Leaving aside the validity of this diagnosis of the Eastern European art field, I would like to use this quote to locate NSK in an unobvious spot on the spectrum of art references to institutions, or perhaps in their case rather of institutional over‑identification. However, art institutions are a secondary point of reference here, instead of them, the group operates directly on the organism of the state.

NSK is a creation with a long and rich history, marked by changes not only in style or subjects taken up by artists, but also by changes in the organisational formula. The original Neue Slowenische Kunst collective celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 2024, and the group itself is inscribed both in the history of Slovenian contemporary art and in the broader Eastern European canon. One of the widely problematised aspects of the work of NSK, and especially of IRWIN, a part of it, is the subject of defining the idiom of Eastern European art². In my analysis, however, I will focus on the later period of the group’s work, from the start of the project “NSK A State in Time” in 1992. This project attracted researchers operating on the line between art studies and alternative political forms. For me, a particularly interesting issue is the tension in this project between the status of an art work, whether in the categories of Joseph Beuys’s “social sculpture”, a participatory project or “relational art”, and the status of a political project: utopia, heterotopia or temporary autonomous zone³. I am inclined to accept this hybrid and flickering form of the project as an asset allowing it to escape simple categorisations and absolute control of its authors towards social guidance.

The project “NSK – A State in Time” was born in 1992 within the framework of a Slovenian group of alternative circles, active since the 1980s and taking the name Neue Slowenische Kunst⁴. In its early days, the group quickly developed sound and uncompromising aesthetics and practice, referring to the repressed history of Slovenia’s Germanness and the fascist aesthetics from the language of state propaganda, thus questioning the partisan and anti‑fascist founding myth of Yugoslavia. In doing so, they consciously apply over‑identification⁵ with a state organism, the abstracted idea of a total state. This served to highlight the superficiality of declarations and the shallowness of the regime’s propaganda at the time. The second point of reference was the “retro principle”⁶, that is, drawing from past movements and meanings, such as the visual strategies of totalitarian states or symbols of avant‑garde movements. Identifying with historical avant‑gardes, creating for grand projects of combining art and life, engaging in great political and social schemes, including the totalitarian state⁷.

The crucial point in the history of NSK was the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the subsequent birth of new nation states. It was a moment when the old strategies of referring to the total state, its aesthetics, practices and political obligations began to exhaust themselves, or rather started to gain the potential of a safe cynical distance, which may be a threat to effective criticism⁸. To quote Slavoj Žižek: “What if (…) the dominant attitude of the contemporary “post‑ideological” universe is precisely the cynical distance toward public values? What if this distance, far from posing any threat to the system, designates the supreme form of conformism, since the normal function of the system requires cynical distance?”⁹ The only logical consequence of the disintegration of the totalitarian state and the birth of new nation states was the establishment of own state. In 1992, the NSK – A State in Time project was born. In its founding statement,¹⁰ IRWIN group, operating in visual arts in the already historic NSK¹¹, and Eda Čufer, proclaim a transition in their historical identification with the avant‑garde into what is for them the most traumatic moment also giving vent to its founding desire – incorporation into the state apparatus. This is how the State in Time was created, transitioning from these experiences to a position not so much of collectivising individuality, but of individualising collectivi­­^­ty. The state of new art. Its public and spectacular proclamation took place in May 1992, together with the opening of the first temporary NSK embassy in Moscow¹². In the spirit of the Russian apt‑art, the IRWIN group and other guests were invited to a residency in Moscow in a private apartment, during which lectures, seminars and artistic events were held¹³. It is also a special moment because it marks the beginning of the history of the first NSK passports.

At first, the passports and diplomatic visas were issued for free in a limited number to mark subsequent events around the idea of an embassy or consulate. A new event in a new place was associated with a new stamp in the passport. In 1993¹⁴, the passports also became available by order, “Citizenship is open to all people, regardless of national, sexual, religious or other status or affiliation.”¹⁵, currently at the price of €32.00¹⁶. According to the IRWIN group, in the introduction to the book summing up the project “NSK A State in Time”, the passports were initially bought mainly by people from Europe and the United States and served as artifacts marking the participation of its holder in the world of contemporary art, they were more of a symbolic gadget to provide distinction¹⁷ than documents in the proper sense of the word¹⁸. However, we can also find references to the ways in which the passports are used as something more than a gadget. From the website containing information about the passports, we learn that they are “subversive documents of unique value”¹⁹. I would like to examine two ways, which seem dominant to me, in which this subversion manifested itself in the later years of the project. Not only as an artifact, but also as a marker of belonging to a civic community.

The first way, although predictable, was not foreseen on the scale on which it happened. Passports made to international specifications by the same securities printing works as official Slovenian passports²⁰, in the same elegant black polyurethane and leather cover, are items that, in addition to the mimesis of the official passport, can themselves become a functioning document. Fiction, or rather a suprematist artistic act, making the elusive existence of the State in Time real also in the minds of its citizens, acquires the potential to materialise in a new way, by gaining the recognition of a person needing to cross a border, and later of an official who stamps the passport. Apart from cases of people using NSK passports to cross borders during the Bosnian war, ²¹ they were not generally used for travel. It was not until around 2006–2009 that passport issuers noticed a large and constantly growing number of applications from Nigeria, and more specifically from the city of Ibedan²². It was assumed that applicants from there must have mistaken NSK passports for a passport of a European country. In 2010, 25% of the NSK citizens²³ came from Nigeria²⁴. Despite the completely unforeseen and potentially dangerous nature of how the passports came to be used, the group did not decide to limit their distribution in any way, although this option was considered²⁵. Wherever information about ordering a passport was posted it would be accompanied by a disclaimer saying that it was not a legal document and that possession of one did not guarantee residence in Slovenia. Advertising was purchased on Nigerian radio and television. A residency was also held, in cooperation with CCA Lagos. As part of a series of events accompanying the residency in the city, lectures and information sessions for passport holders were organised²⁶. According to Stevphen Shukaitis²⁷, this was a response that accepted the ambivalence of the moment when art connects with life in a fully aware and responsible manner. Both the project and those who wanted to participate in it in a way other than the one intended were taken seriously.

The second aspect I would like to focus on here, perhaps more obvious, refers to the progressive relationalisation and inclusion of the project’s “audience,” in this case passport holders, in its framework and the community that is emerging around it. The project by a long‑standing and well‑established art group with a strong conceptual background can easily be inscribed in the art tendencies of the 1990s described by Nicolas Burriaud in Relational Aesthetics²⁸. It seems to me that the initial phase of the project in particular fitted into this model with its embassy events in its emphasis on the experiences of the participants here and now. The queue to the passport office, the more or less formal locations of embassies that seem to take themselves deadly seriously, the scenography of a government office. This corresponds to the model of the work as “an interstice in the social system”²⁹, a venue for a non‑systemic meeting, exchange of ideas, a respite from the dominant model of interaction and building relationships. The service model of the passport office also coincides with the concept that realist art produces a cultural and ideological apparatus that accompanies the transition from a goods‑based economy to a service‑based economy³⁰. Artists produce experiences, impressions and relations, in this case wrapped in state‑building foil.

The project of the state in time, as its name suggests, starts to change over the years. Not at the initiative of the organisers (mainly members of the IRWIN group), but through successive waves of interest in the project from new citizens. The history of the activities of groups associated with the historical NSK begins to be codified³¹, subsequent embassies and exhibitions of the popular group are held as part of large events and art institutions and the number of passport holders gradually grows. In the 2000s, the project slowly, seemingly spontaneously begins, to emerge from under the control of the historical NSK group and becomes a platform for citizens. Both a state in which control is taken over by inertia and an artistic common good for like‑minded people, whether in aesthetic sensitivity or in reflections on speculative statehood and conceptual political art.

Until about 2006, the website www.retrogardereadingroom.com is actively operated, and shortly afterwards www.nskstate.com run by individuals who were not members of the IRWIN group or other members of the historical NSK, began to operate and remains active today. In 2007, the first event related to the State in Time organised completely from the bottom up was reported, namely the NSK embassy in Reykjavik³². At the same time, a phenomenon such as NSK Folk Art, i.e. art created using the State in Time idiom by people not associated with the historical NSK, was officially recognised. It usually refers to the visual and thematic keys of the original groups, sometimes taking on more conceptual forms³³.

The culmination of this stage seems to be the first NSK citizens’ congress held at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the Berlin House of World Cultures. As part of an open recruitment process, 30 delegates were selected from among the holders of the State in Time passports (as well as several observers of the proceedings) who were to make a decision on the future of the NSK State. Members of the historical NSK participated in the congress only as guests. The people selected in the recruitment process were divided into working groups and during three days of facilitation workshops they were to work on new solutions and arrangements within the state and ultimately take control over the state as its citizens, although in the end this did not happen. The group work resulted in two official final documents and one counter‑document, and the impressions and reports from the congress display a mixture of curiosity and disappointment³⁴. Nevertheless, it was an important step on the way to emancipating the project from its authors. After the congress, there was increased activity in terms of creating and exhibiting NSK Folk Art. In addition to including it in exhibitions of works by the historical NSK, the NSK Folk Art Biennale was established, which has had 3 editions so far³⁵, interrupted by the COVID‑19 pandemic. The individuals creating NSK Folk Art have been designated as NSK State Artists.

This coincides with what Ewa Majewska considers to be the determinant of an effective participatory art project. In the essay entitled Czy istnieje sztuka apolityczna³⁶ she points out, arguing with Claire Bishop³⁷, that the right criterion for assessing the effectiveness of participatory art is how it includes project participants, and assessing the quality and degree of participation may be a criterion for effective social or politi­cal action. As a positive example, she mentions the persons participating in Roman Dziatkiewicz’s Orgies, who “risk hurt and failure, but also shape new formulas of collectivity, inspiring both new artistic practices and other forms of action in culture”³⁸. The waiver of authorship present in the historical NSK for a long time seems to contribute to this model of participation, the creation of new collectivities and the hybridisation of the fields of institutional and political fiction and artistic reality.

I think that this development perfectly illustrates how, in its surprisingly long existence, this project may show changes in the idioms in which engaged art projects have operated in recent years. What began as a play on the independence of Slovenia and other former Yugoslav republics has turned into a vehicle for thinking about alternative models of statehood and a platform for political art. The ongoing stage of the project demonstrates separation of control over the project from the historical NSK, it is delegated as a supporting and mediating entity in the undertakings around the project. Perhaps the State in Time indicates not only the main dimension of the existence of this work, but also its long‑term and changing nature. It is neither frozen in time, nor does it aspire to eternity, it simply exists in time.