NSK stands for NEUE SLOWENISCHE KUNST.
The founding groups of the NSK were Laibach, IRWIN, and Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater.
NSK State :: Since 1991, the NSK has claimed to be a sovereign state of sorts. As such, displays of its members’ work are performed under the guise of an embassy, or a territory of the supposed state. Since 1994, the NSK has maintained consulates in several cities. It has also issued passports and postage stamps. NSK passports are considered an art project. As such, they are not valid for travel. Laibach’s 2006 album Volk, which consisted of songs based on national albums, included a national anthem of NSK, an arrangement of the Laibach song “The Great Seal”. In 2010, the first NSK Citizens Congress was held in Berlin. It was followed by a “NSK Rendez-Vous” in Lyon, France, where Alexei Monroe revealed NSK’s aim : to make people “aware that totalitarianism isn’t a discrete historical phenomenon which went on from 1933 to 1989 and then it’s over so let’s have a nice triumph of liberal democracy”. On 26 February 2011, another “NSK Rendez-Vous” took place in London. In 2012, yet another “NSK Rendez-Vous” was set to take place in New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. 2017 saw NSK set up a pavilion at the Venice Biennale where Slavoj Žižek stated that “the uniqueness of NSK is this idea of the ‘stateless state‘. (Wkpd source)
NSK State Reserve :: Established in 2015, the NSK State Reserve manages the currency supply for the virtual state established by art collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK). While the individual notes are intriguing artifacts of the state, the broader purpose of the agency is to create a circulating medium which connects citizens of this state. To date, The NSK State Reserve has created and distributed thousands of these notes. In the tradition of occupying powers, these notes are created through a process of overprinting and hand stamping on a substrate of already existing currency, creating a parasitic relationship with the original issuer. Often the currency’s host is a “dead” currency, either retired from circulation or issued by a state which no longer exists. Hence the motto of the NSK State Reserve: New Life for Old Money.
