NSK Embassy Moscow Revisited is a series of conversations and roundtable discussions between some of the original participants and a new generation of practitioners.

On May 10, 1992, The IRWIN Group (Ljubljana, Slovenia) and APT ART International established the NSK EMBASSY MOSCOW in collaboration with Regina Gallery, one of Moscow’s first privately-owned galleries.

The Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) movement, launched by the Yugoslavian collective Laibach in collaboration with IRWIN and Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater, announced the foundation of a new ‘State in Time’ in 1991. The micro-state, which mirrored the structure of the NSK artistic movement, was established in response to the disintegration of the Yugoslavian Federation.

For one month, the NSK Embassy hosted lectures and debates around the concept of ‘How the East sees the East’ in a rented apartment at 12 Leninsky Prospect in Moscow.

APT ART International — comprised of members Victor Misiano, Konstantin Zvezdochetov and Lena Kurlyandtseva — established its name in reference to the apartment-based exhibitions of unofficial art in the 1970s and 80s, founded by Moscow Conceptualist Nikita Alexeev, amongst others. An essential element of this kind of exhibition was its intense kitchen conversations. The group spearheading APT ART proposed to take this tradition to the international stage by establishing a model for interaction whereby artists could discuss their issues and differences as if sitting around a kitchen table. At the NSK EMBASSY MOSCOW this was an opportunity to compare the developmental paths of art in the 1980s in the former USSR and the former Yugoslavia and to identify the intersection points of the two ‘socialisms.’ Thus, the Embassy became the first project in modern Russia to establish a direct dialogue with artists from Eastern Europe, in opposition to both their common past and the looming West.

NSK Embassy Moscow Revisited is a series of conversations and roundtable discussions between some of the original participants and a new generation of practitioners. Together they will reconsider some of the urgent questions from 22 years ago in the context of our current social and cultural climate.