Responding to my post about the State of Sabotage art “passports” confiscated from an artist’s luggage on the way to exhibition, reader Jussica Hummel says:
Maybe the US Department of Homeland Security “State of Sabotage” passports knew about the use of NSK passports during the war in Bosnia.In 1991 (Slovenian industrial musicians) Laibach and the (art collective) Neue Slovenische Kunst founded the state of NSK and published an official NSK passport, to be applied for at different embassies or consulates around the world. Link
In 1995 NSK passports made it possible for a group of people to leave occupied Sarajevo, according to a quote from a Laibach interview:
“So we decided to give away these passports, and in some cases, they were used in very different ways, in very creative forms. In some cases they were used in a very pragmatic way: many people were able to get out of Sarajevo while it was occupied and they couldn’t get out with Bosnian passports. We gave them NSK diplomatic passports, and they went out with those. There was a French solider who just saw a diplomatic passport and let them go through. We are using it whenever there’s a chance to cross other borders, sometimes successfully, sometimes with less success, but you know it actually works.” Link
