Alexei Monroe
Alexei Monroe is a Research Fellow at Burren College of Art, Éire. He is a cultural theorist holding a PhD in Communication and Image Studies from The University of Kent. He is the author of Pluralni monolit (MASKA 2003) and Interrogation Machine (MIT Press 2005) on Laibach and the Slovene arts movement NSK. In March 2014 updated French and German translations were published by Ventil Verlag and Le Camion Noir. In October 2016 his second book, Autopsia: Thanatopolis (Divus) was published.
Research interests include electronic and industrial music, Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe, and the cultural history of the Stag. In October 2007 he co-presented the research exhibition Jelenometry in Ljubljana, which explored Stag symbolism.
In 2010 he co-organised and moderated an international symposium on the work of Laibach and NSK as part of Laibach's 30th anniversary event and was programme director of the First NSK Citizens' Congress in Berlin, He is the editor of the Congress book State of Emergence (Ploettner Verlag/Poison Cabinet Press 2011) and co-editor of the book Test Dept: Total State Machine (PC Press, 2015).
His work has appeared in Contemporary Music Review, Central Europe Review, Kinoeye, Maska, The Wire, New Moment, AS and many other publications. He has spoken at institutions including Tate Modern, LSE, Goldsmiths, Stedelijk Museum, Humboldt University, Slovene Academy of Arts and Sciences, Jan Van Eyck Academy, and Trinity College Dublin. He is also active as a music reviewer and DJ.
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Research interests include electronic and industrial music, Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe, and the cultural history of the Stag. In October 2007 he co-presented the research exhibition Jelenometry in Ljubljana, which explored Stag symbolism.
In 2010 he co-organised and moderated an international symposium on the work of Laibach and NSK as part of Laibach's 30th anniversary event and was programme director of the First NSK Citizens' Congress in Berlin, He is the editor of the Congress book State of Emergence (Ploettner Verlag/Poison Cabinet Press 2011) and co-editor of the book Test Dept: Total State Machine (PC Press, 2015).
His work has appeared in Contemporary Music Review, Central Europe Review, Kinoeye, Maska, The Wire, New Moment, AS and many other publications. He has spoken at institutions including Tate Modern, LSE, Goldsmiths, Stedelijk Museum, Humboldt University, Slovene Academy of Arts and Sciences, Jan Van Eyck Academy, and Trinity College Dublin. He is also active as a music reviewer and DJ.
http://pluralmachine.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/AlexeiMonroe
http://cerftrouve.wordpress.com/
http://independent.academia.edu/AlexeiMonroe
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Papers and Articles by Alexei Monroe
Published in Gesamtkunstwerk Laibach, Drava Verlag, 2018.
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The Stag is one of the most profound and powerful cultural archetypes, retaining its power despite intensive use and abuse within mass culture and, to a surprisingly large extent, within popular and alternative music. Why should this be and how does it materialise in these contexts?
26/09/2016
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Published in Gesamtkunstwerk Laibach, Drava Verlag, 2018.
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The Stag is one of the most profound and powerful cultural archetypes, retaining its power despite intensive use and abuse within mass culture and, to a surprisingly large extent, within popular and alternative music. Why should this be and how does it materialise in these contexts?
26/09/2016
PLEASE VIEW THIS TEXT AT THIS URL:
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IT WILL NOT BE MADE AVAILABLE HERE AS A DOWNLOAD. THANK YOU.
Published to mark the first London exhibition of the mysterious group AutopsiA, this monograph is the first extended work in English on its complex and mystifying body of work. AutopsiA was established in provincial Yugoslavia in 1979, following its members’ exposure to the Punk and Industrial culture of late 1970s London. Based in Prague since 1991, it is an obscure part of the wider industrial culture, which has been the subject of an increasing number of books and documentaries over the last decade. It is a highly cryptic and esoteric project that has so far not featured in the histories of this period. AutopsiA is marked by the use of an extremely diverse and idiosyncratic use of musical, philosophical, theological, poetic, literary, ideological and artistic sources, from biblical quotations to dubstep. The central theme around which its shadowy and shifting identity is organized is that of death. Working not just in music, but also in graphics, installations and film, AutopsiA intensively examines death as a cultural force that is increasingly repressed in our virtualizing 21st Century societies. It links the repression of death to the existential political, social and cultural crises that it has observed and cryptically commented on since 1979.
A ‘biography’ of such a strictly anonymous project would be a contradiction in terms and this book instead examines some of the key processes and implications of AutopsiA’s work and the ways in which its work has often come to act as an uncanny commentary on future events. Thanatopolis (the city of death), is named to evoke the chilling, poetic atmosphere of AutopsiA exhibitions, and in reference to London, which hosts AutopsiA for the first time. As well as exploring a selection of AutopsiA’s most significant works and processes in detail, Thanatopolis explores the implications of its work appearing in 21st Century London, teetering on the brink of massive historical change and the attempted technological abolition of death.
Endorsements:
"This gorgeously printed (red & black inside) book is full of surprising graphics and ignorance-alleviating texts both provocative and beautiful" Val Vale, RE/SEARCH NEWSLETTER 157.
"Alexei Monroe masterfully unravels the many facets of this largely unknown group of cultural engineers operating between London, former Yugoslavia and Prague. A fascinating journey of discovery into one of the overlooked pioneers of industrial culture, who fused diverse elements including esotericism, critical theory, modernist composition and an unrelenting focus on the theme of death into a unique body of artistic work."
Dr Uwe Schütte, Reader in German, Aston University
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»Heute sind Laibachs Lektionen zweckdienlicher denn je.«
– Slavoj Žižek
Der Kulturtheoretiker Alexei Monroe folgt Žižeks Diktum, indem er in seiner umfangreichen Arbeit über den komplexen kulturellen wie politischen Kontext die Aktualität des Künstlerkollektivs behauptet. Monroe befragt Laibach und NSK intensiv hinsichtlich ihrer Herkunft und Organisationsstruktur, ihres Erscheinungsbildes und der zum Teil sehr kontroversen öffentlichen Aktionen. Ihre Bedeutung für zeitgenössische Debatten über Kultur, Macht, Krieg und Globalisierung wird genauso herausgestellt wie die fortwährende Symbiose zwischen E und U, zwischen Underground und Hochkultur, die von Laibach meisterhaft beherrscht wird.
Für die deutsche Übersetzung wurde das englischsprachige Original überarbeitet, und um eine Chronologie erweitert.
Stimmen zum englischen Original:
»Monroes geduldige Freilegung des slowenischen Untergrunds und seiner diskursiven Traditionen ist genauso empfehlenswert wie brillant und liefert den hochwichtigen Hintergrund für die Geschichte von NSK und Laibach.«
– Diedrich Diederichsen
»Eine wahre Explosion von künstlerischer und politischer Energie ereignete sich während der 1980er in Ljubljana, die weltweit kulturelle Spuren hinterließ. Alexei Monroe beschreibt nicht nur einfach diese Explosion, er setzt vielmehr ihre Energie beim Leser frei.«
– Boris Groys
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Vorwort: Präludium 2014
Kapitel 1: Vorspiel: 2001
Kapitel 2: Blutige Erde, fruchtbarer Boden: NSK-Kontexte
Kapitel 3: Was ist Kunst? (Real existierender Retrogardismus)
Kapitel 4: NSK
Kapitel 5: (Trans-)Nationale Dynamiken in der NSK
Kapitel 6. Laibachisierung
Kapitel 7. Retrogarde Veranstaltungen
Kapitel 8: Apologija Laibach
Kapitel 9. Država: Kultur als Staat
Kapitel 10. Panorama
Chronologie
Abkürzungen und Glossar
Radio-Activity (1975) deals with the most dystopian themes the pioneering German electronic group ever addressed. It was released shortly before the emergence in Britain of what became known as industrial music. The paper will argue that the more sonically radical and conceptually dystopian elements of the album were a strong precedent for industrial music and the way in which it used electronically-generated sound and noise. The minimalistic electronic percussion, oscillator and voltage sounds, shortwave radio recordings and collages of sampled voices deployed by Kraftwerk here can be directly compared to industrial's use of noise as a texture, within and against a pop format. The use of these sonic elements to explore dystopian and ambivalent subject matter is also relevant here. Geiger Counter manipulates the fears surrounding radiation and The Voice of Energy features an alienated, electronically processed vocal that gives voice to fears of technological domination. The use of simulated and actual radio sounds and news reports on News has parallels with the near-contemporary work of the British group Cabaret Voltaire and their use of similar materials and themes, for instance on the early track Baader Meinhof. While Kraftwerk took this sample-based technique no further, it would become a key stylistic trope of industrial music. Uranium is a chilling soundscape that coldly dramatises the lethal potential of the element, and uses electronic sound to communicate a sense of ominousness. Another important parallel to be considered is the use of sonic and conceptual ambivalence. The album was the group's most controversial, with some seeing it as being uncritical of, or even consciously aestheticising nuclear power. This overlooked Kraftwerk's documentary ambition to present tone pictures of everyday technological life, as well as their sly irony. The presenation of extreme and disturbing subject matter in industrial has generated even more severe criticism, with many being disturbed by its sonic-conceptual ambivalence. With these questions in mind, Radio-Activity will be compared with examples from groups such as Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, Clock DVA and others, illustrating some of the related approaches that appeared in the wake of the album. Both Kraftwerk and these artist consciously used what were then the still-alienating potentials of electronic sound, manipulating and ambivalently exploring technophobia and the darker side of late 20th Century ideas of (post)-industrial progress. Due to the controversy generated by its apparent “over-identification” with nuclear power, it has been relatively overlooked and is seen as less influential than those before and after it, yet it did exert a hidden influence as what Slavoj Žižek terms as a “vanishing mediator” between the approaches informing the elektronische musik of the Cologne School (which Kraftwerk members were fully aware of) and industrial. From there the still under-narrated industrial's effect on subsequent forms including Electronic Body Music (EBM), New Beat, Techno and certain strains of electronica can be traced, expanding our understanding of Kraftwerk's stylistic and conceptual influence further than previously.
Despite being deeply connected to and celebrating Italian Fascism, Futurism is a violent but accepted presence in histories of music over the last century, particularly narratives which seek to explain the incorporation of noise and electronic/concrete sounds. It is a normalised but inherently violent presence. In contrast, industrial music is a violent (and misleading) absence in many such histories and even when mentioned it is often in passing or even in hostile terms. 40 years after its emergence, it is time to re-place industrial within this history and produce a fuller, more ambivalent narrative. Analysing not just the form itself but precedents such as the work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop as well as consequences such as the industrial influence on the development of techno, the paper aims to spark debate on this neglected subject.
Research interviews for this project are now underway. See the youtube playlist link below for examples of the links between these two schools of electronic music.
Over-identification is often discussed in terms of ideology, performance or politics. However, the specific visual, sonic and symbolic motifs used to produce over-identification effects sometimes receive less attention. Therefore it may be useful be to explore one of the most commonly used motifs of the Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), the Stag. An understanding of the dynamics associated with this is critical to any detailed analysis of NSK’s “retrograde” mode of over-identification. There are similarities between NSK and the “symbolic Stag” that appears in folklore, art and mass visual culture. Both have seemingly clear meanings but are actually more transitory and multi-faceted and NSK’s “Slovene Stag” leaves elusive and illusory tracks and scents. In Celtic tradition it is one of the three oldest animals and the emergence of such a primeval symbol in ultra-contemporary underground culture at first seems surprising but this only underlines its continued and surprising relevance within the most unlikely contexts.
Stag-related imagery is especially prevalent in advertising and there are many hyper-contemporary examples, often for seemingly unrelated products.
Advertisers, designers, artists and others are all drawn to the symbol but are often unable to explain precisely why they have used it, and why it remains such an efficient generator of fascination. Found stags have always occurred in human culture and representation, and even in earlier times they have often strayed beyond their “natural” territories (rural and hunting contexts) and appeared as found stags in unexpected domains. Found stags can manifest as artistically deployed “interpreted natural objects”, brewery logos, CD covers, military insignia and in many other forms.
Sometimes the specific reasons behind its appearance have been lost with time, but in many cases there may not have been any stronger reason than the undiminished (and perhaps not fully explicable) power of the symbol itself. By gathering examples of the found stag, the project will attempt to identify the significance of each (type) of found stag and what it reveals about historical and contemporary cultural processes. It will also explore the conscious and unconscious motivations associated with its use, and begin to construct a history and analysis of this most intensively-exploited symbol.