2019. 03. 24-25
2019. 03. 24-25
Sidestepped: a dance for selective amnesia
Sidestepped: a dance for selective amnesia
Masami Yurabe, Inagaki Miwako & Oliver Coates
Masami Yurabe, Inagaki Miwako & Oliver Coates
The Catalyst
a space to ( = )
AUSSTELLUNG! LAIBACH KUNST :
MONUMENTAL RETRO-AVANT-GARDE
2025年12月11日 至 2026年3月1日
開幕｜2025年12月11日, 1800
講座｜2025年12月13日, 1500
（嘉賓： Laibach元老Ivan Novak）
11 December 2025 to 01 March 2026
Opening | 11 December 2025, 1800
Talk | 13 December 2025, 1500
hosted by Ivan Novak (aka Ivo Saliger), founding and core member of the Slovenian cult band Laibach.
意識形態促銷清貨大平賣
行而不遠，荒兮，乏兮，禍兮。別為一個窮字所伏，今日就是你可擁有一份藝術無價的奶爸作品嘅千年難得黃金機遇。天時地利人和，無可推諉唔買你就笨，重唔快啲嚟見證吓藝術如何終於出頭拳打銅臭腳踢主義兜爸星原則，降臨上環Catalyst 揣摩並火速認購貼滿真金白銀的奶爸ㄑ藝術家境況〉裝置。面額最少一百人仔，當然越多越開心，重可以點名自己心水號碼。Ivo Saliger 更會執筆用拜登式自動書寫系統為您簽名，再用奶爸官方印章認證每筆完成交易作品。
*所有購買的作品需於2月25日至3月1日親臨The Catalyst自取。
**每張人仔售價將以外匯對港幣兑現市價賣出（例：一蚊人仔對一點一港元)。唔駛諗都知道今鋪有運行。
今日起可親臨畫廊揀，屆時工作人員會從旁協助！
*** 海外買家請電郵我們聯繫：info@xevarion.org ***
IDEOLOGY ON SALE, EVERYTHING MUST GO
Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched - You too can now own a rich piece of art history by Laibach, no matter how poor you are. An unrefusable offer this is, where art triumphs over money, ideologies and principles. Visit Catalyst today and check out Laibach’s Artists Condition installation, state the amount of RMB you wish to purchase (minimum 100 RMB, you can select your preferred serial numbers of the notes), Ivo Saliger will sign your purchase off with an autopen, each sale stamped and approved by Laibach.
* Your order will be available to collect from 25th Feb - 1st Mar at the Catalyst gallery.
** RMB notes will be sold at market exchange value to HKD (i.e. 1 CNY equals 1.1 HKD). It’s a really good deal.
Sale starts today! Please visit The Catalyst in person for selection and payment.
*** International Buyer: please contact us on email info@xevarion.org for further arrangement. ***
“All art is subject to political manipulation — except the one that speaks the language of that very manipulation.”
Laibach
Laibach’s artistic method operates through a precise and often unsettling strategy of over-identification. By appropriating and amplifying the rhetoric, aesthetics, and rituals of authority, the group transforms ideology into spectacle, compelling the viewer to confront their own complicity in the systems they believe they merely observe. This performative mirroring of power does not aim at parody or subversion in the conventional sense, but rather at revelation — a disclosure of the unconscious drives, fantasies, and desires that sustain collective belief.
1.
The deception enacted by Laibach in its performances - including those situated within gallery contexts - reveals more about the audience’s latent desires than about the group’s own intentions or convictions. For deception to succeed, the audience must first wish to be deceived. The unease this recognition provokes often manifests as anger, sometimes violently directed toward Laibach itself.
To properly address the question of desire - that is, the desire for belonging and community within collective, national, and ideological frameworks - one must understand desire not simply as a pursuit of pleasure, but as a pursuit of fantasy. It is fantasy that structures desire, providing meaning and coherence within the social body.
2.
The longing to belong to the collective implies a deeper wish for inclusion within the ideological structure of a governing system. Within the mass, the individual is able to dissolve, experiencing euphoria through the illusion of shared power. Laibach deliberately manipulates this dual affect of fascination and repulsion, drawing the spectator in while simultaneously unsettling them. By rigorously repeating ideological codes and carrying them to their logical extremes, Laibach both mirrors and exposes the operations of power.
3.
Rather than embodying a measured patriotism or conventional loyalty, Laibach takes these values with absolute seriousness, to the point of over-identification with the state - becoming its hyperbolic reflection, a totalitarian organism par excellence.
Laibach’s invocation of force, violence, and the aestheticization of power may thus be read as a strategy of reflection: by arousing emotions of fear and aggression that lack a tangible enemy, the group compels the audience to confront the inner mechanisms of ideology itself. This stands in sharp contrast to nationalist rhetoric, which invariably posits a scapegoat - an external enemy blamed for obstructing the nation’s unity, wholeness, and success.
4. ACHTUNG! RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. DAS SPIEL IST AUS! GOD IS GOD. THINK NEGATIVE. ALLE GEGEN ALLE! LIFE IS LIFE. WE ARE TIME. TANZ MIT LAIBACH.
