May 9th, 2007
State of Sabotage Vol.1 on DVD
On the occasion of its three-year anniversary, the “State of Sabotage” (SoS) proudly presents a documentary DVD travel guide. For the first time ever, SoS reveals the entire spectrum of its activities in the form of a film compendium. Sabotage’s status is incalculable and contains an intangible richness, positioning it in contradiction to society and its demands. Seen from the standpoint of technology and economics, life itself, because never totally controllable, is ultimately a disruptive factor – a potential act of sabotage.
SoS, an art-hybrid as state form, was founded by Robert Jelinek in the context of the ‘Sabotage’ music and art label on an uninhabited Finnish island on August 30, 2003. It is a state recognized by the U.N. yet it has no clearly demarcated territory. SoS is committed to civic values in the best sense of the word – such as education, culture, democracy and human rights – and it parasitically foils state dominance, e.g. with its passport policies that grant de facto recognition to African migrants, thereby enabling them to visit countries they had been forced to leave.
Unlike virtual micro-nations or static mini-states, SoS (which now counts 5,000 citizens) possesses three real territories in Australia, the Czech Republic and Austria, and continues to gain new terrain with artistic collaborations (e.g. with ‘Alien father’ H.R. Giger, Jonathan Meese, or Herman de Vries), as well as its own state art collection and architecture. Artistic sovereignty and trans-nationality are mediated by state negotiations.
This filmic travel guide accompanies the SoS pest medics’ olfactory fumigations around the globe, documents the confiscation of SoS passports by the F.B.I., provides instructions on how to dissolve the SoS state, and pans to a house suspended 30cm above the ground, built according to the principle of Foucault’s Pendulum.
As exclusive bonus material, the DVD also presents the various Sabotage cult projects of 1998-2003, such as CASH perfume – the $100 fragrance, € de Toilette, and the asphalting of Sabotage vinyl into the Flex club’s dance floor in Vienna.