NSK: From Kapital to Capital

The book is the generously illustrated, lavishly documented, critically narrated story of NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst), the eastern European art collective present at the last revolution of the twentieth century.

In 1984, three groups of artists in post-Tito Yugoslavia—the music and multimedia group Laibach, the visual arts group Irwin, and the theater group Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater—came together to form the NSK art collective.

Adopting the symbols, codes, appearances, and discourses of fascism, nationalism, state power, socialist-realist, and avant-garde art, and pushing the strategies of overidentification and subversive affirmation to their limits, NSK exposed the common foundations of various regimes, systems, and ideologies, while affirming that “art and totalitarianism are not mutually exclusive.”

Combining primary documents, period artifacts, critical essays, and contextual notes, NSK from Kapital to Capital documents NSK's collective practice during the final decade of Yugoslavia. This illuminating chronicle of NSK's work and its reception is produced in conjunction with the first major museum exhibition devoted to NSK. Designed by Novi Kolektivizem (New Collectivism), the graphic design section of NSK, the cover of each individual copy of the book is printed with a custom detail; no two covers exactly are the same.

Contributions by Eda Čufer, Goran Đorđević, Slavoj Žižek, Marina Gržinić, Rastko Močnik, Marina Gržinić, Lev Kreft, Tomaž Mastnak, Mladen Dolar, Chrissie Iles, Boris Groys, Inke Arns, Alexei Monroe, Catherine Wood, Daniel Ricardo Quiles, Anthony Gardner, Barbara Borčič, Alexei Yurchak, Dejan Kršić, and others.

Published by MIT Press and Moderna Galerija / Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2015, softcover, 600 pages, 10.5 x 7.5 inches.