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In a time where the notion of politicised art seems to revolve around Che Guevara T-shirts and Obama ‘Hope’ posters, it’s always interesting to find something that harks back to the (overly) idealistic propaganda style that was so prevalent in the last century. The union of Laibach (political Slovenian rock band) and Morten Traavik (controversial Norwegian filmmaker-artist) was therefore always going to be a perfect match and has resulted in this quirky, Soviet-style music video full of impressively coordinated child-athletes in uniform and exploding flowers. You can see all the fun they had making it here.

Previous work by Traavik has involved organising the Miss Landmine contest, getting North Koreans to play a-ha's 'Take On Me', not to mention his upcoming appearance as a Norwegian soldier for a TV series airing later this year. We caught up with Traavik to pick his brains about his latest music video and find out more about his time in the "most closed country in the world"… 

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Where did your idea for the video and setting come from? Was it inspired directly by the music or from something else?
 
Both, I guess.  I’ve always been fascinated by Eastern Europe, and not least by crumbled (or crumbling) empires like the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Among other things, this led me into learning Russian and studying theatre directing in Moscow in the early 90s. As a big Laibach fan growing up in the 80s I was also well familiar with the totalitarian aesthetical universe that the group both grew out of, celebrated and subverted. Then Yugoslavia fell apart, Laibach in my view kind of became homeless, both physically and spiritually, since they are more than perhaps most people realise true children of Tito’s Yugoslavia. Gradually, after NATO (1994) they turned into a more regular – and therefore perhaps less interesting– industrial rock band. So when I heard “Whistleblowers” I was absolutely thrilled, as it’s the sound of that Laibachian Golden Age of guilty, totalitarian pleasures. I guess I wanted to highlight that feeling of nostalgia AND utopia in the video as well. 
 
Did you know about the young Latvian athletes beforehand or were you searching specifically for something like them as your main subject?
 
I told VFS, the Latvian film production company, that I’d like the group of kids to know each other from before, to have an established common purpose,  a common physical skill, and ideally to have some kind of self-discipline. Whether that skill would be karate, capoeira, football, boy scouting or something else was less important. But then our line producer came across this gymnastics association in Riga, and as soon as I saw them training and interacting I just felt that this was it. 


 
What was the experience like of working with Nowness? Did they approach you directly for a collaboration or was it less formal?
 
The Nowness promotion channel was agreed between them and Mute, the record label of Laibach. I had nothing to do with setting that up, but found the Nowness people really pleasant and professional to work with in the limited exchanges that we had. 
 
Did both Nowness and the band give you complete creative control or did they each have certain ideas / requirements you had to work with? It seems to have a pretty distinct ‘Nowness’ look for instance…
 
Nowness had nothing to do with the production of the video and were only involved as a promotion channel for the launch of the video. The “Nowness presents…” is a standard wording for all videos that are shown through their website. Neither they nor Mute, the record label, had any influence on the creative process and I hardly spoke to any of them until I showed Mute the finished video. Until then, all contact was between me and Laibach itself. Anyway, I choose to take the “Nowness look” as a compliment, so thanks! 

 
How did you initially come in contact with Laibach, were they already on your radar for a collaboration? 
 
We got in touch through Valnoir/Metastazis, a Paris-based artist that I work with regularily and who had done some graphic design for the band. He sensed that we might be “right for each other” and put us in touch. After a while, Laibach asked me to direct the Whistleblowers video and I was of course only happy to make a little payback (or Paybach) on the huge artistic debt I owe them. 
 
You use a rare Soviet-era LOMO lens for this video, which has a very distinct wide-angle look. Can you tell us more about what it was like shooting with such a lens and was it an integral part of the effect you were hoping to create?
 
That lens was actually the darling of Valdis Celmins, the DOP. He, in his turn, had borrowed it from Kristaps Epners, our AD, some time ago but never quite found the right context for it. Originally, the lens was owned by Kristaps’ late father, the film director Ansis Epners who’s the grand old man of modern Latvian cinema both before and after the breakup of the USSR. We did extensive tests beforehand and Valdis was really, really hot for this lens. I was more like, “well, whatever makes you happy”- I wasn’t convinced that the extreme wide angle would work to our advantage even though I could see that the colour and texture of the pictures were really something special. 
 
But, as is so often the case, we discovered that by setting ourselves some really defined limitations, in this case the specific technical demands and compositional nescessities of working with such a lens, we could find a visual language which was completely our own within these seemingly strict frames. Then, of course, I think the wide-angle effect works really well with the kind of parallel epic / Soviet-ish universe we wanted to create. It looks like something that could have been a propaganda movie from a Soviet, or Yugoslavia, that never was. 

 
Your work in North Korea brought you a fair bit of attention on YouTube and in the press. What drew you to it as both a country and subject and has it had an impact on the collaborations you’ve had after?

My initial motivation for going to North Korea first time back in 2008 was the same as everyone else’s, I guess: a sense of adventure and curiosity to get into the “most closed country in the world”. And it really is a very, very special kind of place – a huge social experiment that for various reasons has been allowed to run it’s course largely undisturbed by globalization for the last 60 years. Kind of a Galapagos Islands of world politics. Then, as over the years and through ever more ambitious cultural collaborations I’ve learned a lot more about both Koreas and their people, culture, history and mentality, so of course I become more and more aware of how many sides there is to the conflict. As for my North Korean experiences having an impact on (other) collaborations, well everything is connected to everything. But it might just as well be the other way around, that a combination of the artistic preferences and skills I had honed through earlier projects like, for instance, Miss Landmine and Pimp My Aid Worker were logical earlier steps on that same journey. 
 
This music video and your North Korean work both contain hints of Soviet-era propaganda. Do you have an affinity for propaganda as an art-form or do you find it more of an intriguing subject matter?
 
I definitely do have a soft spot for propaganda aesthetics, and probably have one of Europe’s best collection of hand-painted North Korean propaganda posters by now. Although I don’t dress up in military uniform unless for cash (I’m playing the Norwegian Army Chief in a TV-series being filmed this autumn). This is some of the genius of Laibach, that before almost anyone else (maybe apart from Pink Floyd’s The Wall movie) they pointed out the short distance between political leader cults, mass movements and rock hero worship, between losing your self in the crowd of a political rally or mass demonstration and losing your self in a concert audience crowd. 


 
Your ‘Miss Landmine’ project caused quite a bit of controversy! Do you think it made a positive impact or at least changed the way people think and is this something you home to achieve in your other work?
 
Well, it certainly didn’t make landmines disappear or changed the lives of the participants in any radical way. But this was never its mission either. In my view, Miss Landmine’s greatest achievement  was to spark a global discussion about how “victims” are viewed and, not least, view themselves.  As well as uncover a lot of what I call “left wing racism” that rests firmly on a notion of whole cultures, ethnicities and nations as passive victims who depend, and who should be kept dependant on, our Western noblesse oblige to maintain our self-perception as the good Samaritans of the world. And not least, to out the spotlight on a group of people who up to then were as good as invisible and stigmatized in their local communities as well as in larger society. I know for a fact that taking part in Miss Landmine was a great boost to most of the women’s self esteem and also to how their surroundings perceived them. 

What next? Do you have any further collaborations or projects we can hope to see in the near future?
 
There’s the TV-series Occupied (where the main premise is that Norway is occupied by – wait for it – Russia) where I play the Norwegian Army Chief and which is being filmed for the rest of this year. I’m also finally getting started with writing North Korea – a User’s Manual, an alternative travel guide which will be published in Norway next year. Then there’s a big project I’m developing in the Far North and Barents Region, which is to have its premiere next autumn. And then there’s talk of a Lainach musical that I might be directing. And so on. And there’s always North Korea – but those are state secrets for now…

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