RED DISTRICTS IV, 1980 - 2009
Mixed media, print on aluminium plate, 200 x 150 cm
Unique work
RED DISTRICTS IV - Trbovlje Thermal Power Plant 2, signed and stamped by Laibach
This depiction"Construction of a New Power Plant in Trbovlje" is one of eight iconic motifs from the Red Districts series in this set (all prints on aluminium plates) and represents the construction of the newer thermal power plant complex, which took place between 1964 - 1968. The plant originally was created with too low a chimney for its ultimate purpose, so a 360 m high chimney was added in 1976, which is still the highest chimney in Europe.
The Trbovlje Thermal Power Plant complex was one of the largest power plants in Yugoslavia. Together with the coal mines in Zasavje, it was a critical ingredient for the development of many factories, industrial and craft enterprises, transport and social activities in Zasavje and wider Slovenia.
Laibach performed twice in the Trbovlje power plant area (actually in the premises of the older Thermoelectric Power Plant I) in December 1990 and October 1992. These events were actually the first ever concerts of the group in their home town. The 1990 performance took place on the historic date of 26 December, when Slovenia declared the results of the referendum on its independence. Laibach played the concert in an old industrial hall in temperatures as low as -10 °C. The British music magazine Wire listed the concert as one of the 60 concerts that "shocked the world".
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Laibach first presented the motifs of the Red Districts in 1980 at the Delavski dom (Workers' Home) culture centre in Trbovlje – at an exhibition that never took place (because it was banned by the local municipal authorities). Subsequently, Laibach presented the same motifs at their first exhibitions in Belgrade (Srećna galerija, 1981), Ljubljana (ŠKUC Gallery, 1982), and Zagreb (PM Gallery, 1983).
In the following decades, the group showed various variations of the Red Districts in some of their major exhibitions. In 2009, eight motifs were printed on aluminium plates and presented at retrospectives of their visual work in Łódź (Muzeum Sztuki, 2009), Maribor (UGM, 2011), Zagreb (HDLU, 2011), as well as in Olomouc (Galerie Caesar, 2016) and some other galleries.
The original linocuts represent historical motifs from the so-called Red Districts, as the industrial basin of Slovenia in the Zasavje region is called, which encompasses the towns of Trbovlje, Zagorje, and Hrastnik, i.e. the environmental area where the band Laibach were formed in 1980. These ‘industrial’ motifs became part of the basic aesthetic content of Laibach, which never denied their industrial-cultural origins, and after the formal establishment of the broader umbrella art formation Neue Slowenische Kunst (1984–1992), these motifs were adopted and appropriated from Laibach by other NSK groups, most notably by the Irwin painting group.