FIAT
All Money Is Ours
– NSK State Reserve
NSK STATE RESERVE :: FIAT. ALL MONEY IS OURS :: PAPERBACK FIRST EDITION:: PC-PRESS :: 2023 :: PG. 178 :: ENGLISH LANGUAGE :: DISTRIBUTED IN EUROPE BY RIZOSFERA
****** The new shipments of the NSK STATE RESERVE’s book will commence on February 03, 2025. If orders include additional items from Rizoshop, the complete shipment with all selected products will also be dispatched from February 03, 2025, onwards.
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When citizens of virtual state, which is a part of the NSK and Laibach projects, took it upon themselves to create a new currency, they chose a radically different direction than the blockchain coins currently in vogue.
By appropriating not only the physical materials, but functional aspects of the exis-ting financial apparatus, the principals of the NSK State Reserve extended the retro-avantgarde toolkit of the NSK State to bring the financial industry and its history into frame.
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What is money, how do we think of it in the current period. Crypto currency was supposed to be putting control in the hands of people and away from banks but that reality has not entirely emerged. What is the benefit of a FIAT currency over a digital currency? State surveillance, control of finance and the right to control what is valuable seems continually in the hands of wealthy elites.
This book reprints the notes and bonds created by the Reserve, recounts key events from the history of this institution, and offers direct insight into their process and principles. Can we subvert that control through the development of a global citizens paper currency, overprinted notes from past regimes. FIAT explores these conundrums!
FIRST VIDEO :: LAIBACH / THE GREAT SEAL / NSK NATIONAL ANTHEM :: “The Great Seal” is the national anthem of the NSK State, the lyrics taken from Churchill’s “We shall fight on the beaches” speech. A new arrangement of the song appears on Laibach’s album Volk, with the title “NSK”. On Volk, the song is credited to Laibach and Slavko Avsenik, Jr.
SECOND VIDEO :: CHARLES LEWIS is an active citizen and diplomat of the NSK State, and has participated in many NSK State events including the Citizens’ Congress, the three Folk Art Biennales, and the NSK State Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. He has lectured on NSK-related topics at various institutions and events including Stony Brook University New York, The Morbid Anatomy Museum, the Hauser & Wirth gallery in New York, and MoMA, and is a principal of the NSK State Reserve. In addition to his work with the Reserve, Charles is a technologist in the financial industry, and has recently written a horror novel he describes as “Cormac McCarthy meets Love and Rockets.”
THIRD VIDEO :: NSK STATE PAVILION :: Lecture delivered by Slavoj Žižek – The Courage of Hopelessness (May 2017) at the NSK State Pavilion on May 20th 2017.
FOURTH VIDEO :: Slavoj Žižek :: Slavoj Žižek’s 1996 lecture on Laibach and NSK entitled: What the Hell is Laibach All About?
The founding groups of the NSK were Laibach, IRWIN, and Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater. NSK stands for Neue Slowenische Kunst.
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.
CLICK HERE TO READ “Interrogation Machine: Laibach and The NSK State” by Alexei Monroe
Alexei Monroe :: “What is the best approach to exploring what Laibach, Irwin and the NSK State represent? Fundamentally the work of all NSK groups represents an artistic and also cultural response to the imposed violence of ideology, culture and theory. This perception of violence is present most acutely in Laibach’s initial reprocessing of language and ideology and to see how the machine operates it’s necessary to return to these traumatic roots.
When someone is confronted by Laibach what they are actually confronted with is Laibach’s confrontation with the series of political and cultural regimes and systems that structure our environment and which Laibach confront. Whilst Laibach might seem like the ultimate mechanism for imposing ideology it is actually one for exposing it.” (…)
