A disturbing video for a disturbing song marks a new installment in the 'revisited' series.
Laibach just released a new video for the "revisited' version of one of their first songs 'Brat Moj' (My Brother), included in the 2020 'Revisited' 12-track album featuring recent interpretations of tracks from the first half of the 80s plus live recordings of two tracks that have featured in the band’s recent touring, ‘SMRT ZA SMRT’ and ‘TI, KI IZZIVAŠ’, recorded with the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra and the Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra respectively.
Although a new studio recording, this version is known by Laibach fans, as it is used in their live presentations and it was recorded in the live album 'Monumental Retro-Avant-Garde', recorded during their Tate Modern Museum presentation in London.
Laibach's art (or 'Laibach Kunst', as it calls itself) has been described as "radically ambiguous" and the band has frequently been accused of both far-left and far-right political stances due to their use of uniforms and totalitarian-style aesthetics. They were also accused of being members of the neo-nationalism movement, which reincarnates modern ideas of nationalism. When confronted with such accusations, Laibach is quoted as replying with the ambiguous response "We are fascists as much as Hitler was a painter". However, Laibach also provided most of the soundtrack for Iron Sky, a film that mocked Nazism. Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek described their approach as “radical over-identification”, in a totalitarian state, this boils down to behaving more totalitarian than the state itself.
Laibach also uses cover versions, subverting the original message or intention of the song, to reveal the ambiguity of language and how apparent harmless speeches could be used to spread dangerous ideas. A notable example being the cover of Queen's 'One Vision' with lyrics translated into German under the title 'Geburt einer Nation' (Birth of a Nation), revealing the ambiguity of lines like "One race one hope / One real decision".
The video, based on the short film 'Celica' (The Box) created in 2017 by Dušan Kastelic and re-edited by Lukas Miheljak is disturbing and has a dark twist, and, like many other Laibach's work, is open to interpretation: From the dangers of conformity to the pressures of modern living grinding the joy of life to the physical and psychological violence of absolute states draining people will (China's new Honk Kong Security Law; Myanmar coup).
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