A university course, most likely
the first in Europe, dedicated to the iconic Slovenian band
Laibach and its contribution to Slovenian, Balkan, European, and
global culture will open in mid-April at the University of
Salerno at the Department of Cultural Heritage Sciences, as part
of the Master's Degree in Performing Arts and Multimedia
Production.
The course, titled "See You in Hell—The Laibachs between
three Dissolutions: Yugoslavia, Europe, the World," with
professor Gabriele Frasca, will enable students to dissect the
artistic history of Laibach and the so-called 'Neue Slowenische
Kunst,' born in the early 1980s in a Yugoslavia heading toward
disintegration. This still-alive cultural phenomenon remains
inescapably linked to what historian Hobsbawm called the "short
century."
And this century, you can read in the course presentation, is
- again paraphrasing Hobsbawm - also synonymous with "landslide,
or landslides," all of which Laibach observed with a keen eye
and then set to music or video.
Landslides and crises such as the violent dissolution of
Yugoslavia, the crisis of 'former Europe,' the ever-increasing
totalitarian thrusts sweeping through the West and the rest of
the planet, all with the return of the fear of nuclear war in
the background, themes that Laibach have never neglected.
Formed in 1980 in the mining town of Trbovlje, in what was
then Yugoslavia, Laibach has become one of the vanguard bands on
the world music scene. In recent years, in addition to their
music, they have sparked a row for a concert in inaccessible
North Korea and for a scheduled performance in Ukraine that was
later canceled amid controversy after the band called the
ongoing war "a geopolitical conflict between Russia and the
United States on Ukrainian territory."
Gabriele Frasca is also a writer and an expert in
English-to-Italian translation. He recently edited the Mondadori
Meridian on Samuel Beckett.
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