About
State of Sabotage
Fact File:
Official designation: State of Sabotage, Abbreviation: SoS
SoS is a secular, sovereign and democratic state.
All citizens of the SoS state are to adhere to these principles.
The Constitution is the highest law of the SoS state and is binding for all SoS state authorities. The SoS State Constitution was publicly recited and resolved on September 4, 2005 and has been valid and legally binding since that time.
The SoS state symbols are the colors black and white, the coat of arms in the state flag, as well as the state anthem. The two official SoS state and diplomatic languages are German and English. The assets of the SoS state are the creation, protection, mediation, and positioning of art and culture. SoS is the first sovereign cultural state according to international law. SoS fulfills all criteria required of a sovereign state (territory, population, and state organization), as well as education and training in terms of artistic freedom.
I. Formation
On August 30, 2003 at 1:00 pm Finnish time, on the island of Harakka just off of Helsinki, SoS (the State of Sabotage) was called into existence before a large audience. ROBERT JELINEK and H.R. GIGER, together with “HUUTAJAT,” the Finnish 25-man screaming men’s choir, ceremonially inaugurated the state.
To duly commemorate this historic event, the State of Sabotage declares the 30th of August its State holiday, to be celebrated annually.
The word “sabotage” comes from the French word “sabot” and means “to trample with wooden shoes.” A sabot is a clog with a leather top. At the beginning of agricultural mechanization French farm workers threw their “sabotes” into harvesting and processing machines (which were taking their jobs), thereby blocking the complicated mechanics of the mowing and threshing machines and rendering them useless. For the sake of their labor, they engaged in “sabotage.”
A state is the highest existent authority because it is more static than the other forces that influence our lives. On the other hand, the state is subject to these same forces, yet it lags helplessly behind emerging cultural, scientific and technological developments. Today’s states have the condition of realized utopias, the condition of all realized utopias in which one must paradoxically continue to live as if they had not been realized. When things, signs and actions are freed from their ideas and concepts, from their values and references, and from their sources and designations, they enter the realm of endless self-reproduction. Things continue to function, but the idea of them has long been lost, in total indifference to their content. The paradox is that they function even better this way. Since all tendencies lack what was once specific to them, they can now coexist in the same cultural space. And as they only affect us with deep complacency, we can accept them without indifference.
II. State Goals
SoS promotes justice, the universal protection and preservation of human rights, as well as of individual rights.
SoS promotes the community of its citizens through culture, solidarity and unity.
SoS respects the rights, autonomy and self-determination of its citizens, as well as the right of minorities to group autonomy.
SoS promotes the conservation, protection and creation of the freedom of art and culture.
SoS promotes:
a) Education, vision and utopia;
b) The preservation and development of art and culture;
c) Historical consciousness;
d) Protection of the environment and conservation of nature as an inherent value, as well as all rights of nature;
e) Internal locations and dislocations, displacements and dissolutions of the self- compositions that form a living society;
f) The natural and social sciences.
Every dynamic process conditions its own laws and is independent of its freedom of movement. One is willing to quickly test the reality of such a movement if one wants not only to unfurl the banners of cultural independence, but to signal real political statehood, to attain it and to share it with others. Statehood in the sense of legal framework and instruments is the prerequisite for individually reclaiming retracted social-political rights, free spaces and cultural structures.
SoS does not presently wish to join ideological blocs or systemic structures through international agreements or contracts. Politically, SoS neither can, nor wishes to be a great power. It is precisely the advantage of a microstate, with its minimal administrative organization and competent trusted partners, that it creates a high degree of flexibility. SoS has the quality of a cultural state. It knows neither officials nor functionaries – it knows only self-determined artists and active associates.
III. Seduction as Rule
The good lives from the dialectic of good and evil, evil from the denial of this dialectic, from the radical rupture between good and evil, and from the autonomy of evil. Whereas good presupposes the dialectic complicity of evil, evil is based on itself, in absolute irreconcilability. It controls the game, and evil triumphs – the kingdom of eternal antagonism. There is no solution for otherness, foreignness and incomprehensibility. It is eternal and radical. That is the rule of SoS. There is no law. The law is always the universal principle of comprehension, the regulated play of differences; it is moral, political, economic rationality. It is a norm and it implies an arbitrary predestination. A law is never indispensable: it is a concept and is based on consensus. A rule is always indispensable, as it is not a concept: it is a form that regulates the game – just like seduction.
Seduction is the more radical form of dissociation and dispersion, of illusion and the avoidance and transformation of essence and meaning, of the shifting of identity and subjects. The seductive rule is the law of the State of Sabotage.
IV. State of Emergency
Unpredictability and subversion of expectations are the sources of intelligence, culture, technology and progress. Autonomy is the self-regulation of the social body, both in its independence and in its interactions with the disciplinary norm. SoS autonomy means that social life is not only dependent on the limits and regulations imposed by economic power, but also on internal dislocations, displacements, deferments, and dissolutions, which form the process of the self-composition of a living society – struggle, deprivation, alienation, sabotage, escape routes through the system of dominance. Autonomy is the independence of social time from the temporality of capitalism. The status of Sabotage is not determinable, but SoS is rich in non-tangible resources, thus rendering it in contradiction to the society and their demands. Life, from the standpoint of technology or economics, is never completely controllable. And therefore it is always a disruptive factor, a potential act of sabotage.
It’s not about rehabilitation or securing a seat at the concert of human rights, it’s about destabilization. SoS is a phantom-like, viral, spectral presence in the synapses of our brains, with a finger on the ignition switch of our own rockets. In logical, creative consequence of its artistic process, SoS has designed an instrument for the culmination of human potential – the state as the ultimate negation of the civilized Occident.
V. State Territory
1) SoS has a priori no defined territory. The State may emerge anywhere geographically.
2) SoS regions and provinces are clearly demarked as State territory.
3) Regions and provinces are bound to the SoS State Constitution, with the exception of their local rights and autonomy.
Even if the SoS state only secondarily represents a concrete territory, the development of its own territory in Baldrockistan is of recreational and spiritual significance. The grounds already offer accommodations, an excellent road network and electricity. In the next few years, artist studios and artistic projects should emerge in harmony with flora and fauna, without the intention of settling. Baldrockistan is a neutral zone. Just like natives and visitors, the SoS state is itself a guest in Baldrockistan/Australia. The grounds are utilized and protected in accord with nature, aborigines and natives.
VI. Basic Rights, Citizenship
SoS is a design for life, a parallel alternative to existing forms, developments and impending conflicts. The model deals with conflicts of classification and interpretation without abandoning the social, because it is at these points that one can locate decisive, as well as tangible, conflict zones.
*) Every person has the right to life, freedom and justice, freedom thought and opinion.
*) Every person has the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community and to enjoy the arts and their achievements.
*) Every person has the right to protection of intellectual and material interests that accrue from the creation of works of art, literature and science.
*) SoS citizens are all persons that have applied for SoS citizenship of their own free and natural will.
*) Citizenship is granted and effected through receipt of the SoS passport.
SoS citizenship is unlimited in time.
*) The SoS passport carries an expiry date. Upon expiry, a new application must be made.
*) SoS citizens may relinquish their citizenship at any time.
Current Status: 01/2006
Area: 283.910.61 m2
Citizens since 30.8.2003: +2.900 growth
Sex ratio: 48:52 males/females
Ethnic groups [%]:
96,5% European
1,5 % African
0,5% Asian
0,5% American
1% Australian
Languages: global
VII. Diplomatic Relations
SoS has opened several embassies in Europe and the U.S.A., which conduct diplomatic relations with their respective receiving states.
SoS maintains absolute neutrality in its relations with other states. SoS is intent on preserving its independence and right to free self-determination in the framework of international law and artistic freedom. The main interests of SoS are in the cultural and economic spheres. This involves cultural and economic cooperation with partner states whose societies and cultural facilities operate according to their own state laws.
VIII. SoS State Art
State diplomacy is conducted through artistic sovereignty and trans-nationality – art as state as a direct form of independent state art.
The “state” is static by definition (both concepts derive from Latin “status”). In our contemporary understanding the state is a kind of steely skeleton or matrix – constructed so that it can provide structure, grounding, and duration to a constantly changing society.
Political scientists and state theorists, however, maintain that the state reached the apex of its development in the seventies and has since been in decline. Yet even at a time when the state is being pushed out of more and more areas of life and continues to lose esteem, it remains the highest existing authority – precisely because the state is more static than other forces affecting our lives. On the other hand, the state is inferior to these highly dynamic forces and lags helplessly behind the newest developments in science and technology.
The German concept of Staatskunst (art of state) alludes to the fact that in governments of previous centuries the balancing and equalization of manifold factors and powers was in fact understood as an art. The antiquated concept of Staatskunst also has another meaning: It reminds us that in former times the promotion of art and culture was seen as a state goal and rulers recognized that art and culture were essential components of their wealth and capital.
The SoS state is bound to this understanding of “state art” and strives for the development and promotion of its own SoS Art Foundation. In cooperation with various artists, artistic practices, models, visions and utopias, as well as trans-national characteristics, will become visible and new conditions of the reality of state and art will be exemplified.
SoS Art Collection:
JOSEPH BEUYS, CHRIS BURDEN, WALTER DAHN, BEATRICE DREUX, LUDGER GERDES, JOCHEN GERZ, HR GIGER, GILBERT & GEORGE, DOMINIQUE GONZALEZ-FOERSTER, FRANZ GRAF, Conny Groenewegen, GEORGE HANNA, CM VON HAUSSWOLFF, Michael Horsky, ANABELLE HULAUT, JÖRG IMMENDORFF, ROBERT JELINEK, JOE JONES, ZIGA KARIZ, Jannis Kounellis, MARIA LASSNIG, ARMIN LINKE, STEPHAN LUGBAUER, MIES MAHIEU, PIERO MARIONI, JONATHAN MEESE, GERHARD MERZ, ROBIN MOLENAAR, JULIE MONACO, ROBERT MORRIS, HERMANN NITSCH, NSK, NUNE PRODUKCIJA, MARKUS OEHLEN, OLIVER OTTENSCHLÄGER, LISL PONGER, FRANZ POMASSL, Arnulf Rainer, THOMAS RUFF, Gerhard Rühm, Georg Salner, WALLY SALNER, JOHN SALT, ROMAN SIGNER, LEO SCHATZL, JOHANNES SCHWEIGER, TIM SHARP, CHRISTOPH STEINEGGER/SABINE FEICHTNER, GISELA STIEGLER, Timm Ulrichs, TONI VILLAR, WOLF VOSTELL, SASO VRABIC, HERMAN DE VRIES, Franz Erhart Walther, PETER WEIBEL, FRITZ WOTRUBA, HEIMO ZOBERNIG
IX. De Facto
In the principles outlined above, neither physical size nor the executive is of crucial importance. Only existence according to international law and artistic freedom are relevant. The endeavors of SoS are based on this consciousness. SoS recognizes and respects the limits of its own capabilities. As a territory, SoS continues to grow and can emerge anywhere on the globe.
As a political entity, SoS can achieve more than its size suggests. It is up to the active citizens, friends and partners to strike out and pursue the right path with the necessary interest, instinct, and joy. SoS is the first sovereign cultural state according to international law. SoS fulfills all criteria required of a sovereign state (territory, population, and state organization), as well as education and training in terms of artistic freedom.