Around 1992, after NSK State was created, they issued NSK passports, which some people have used to help them immigrate. 2 See Slavoj Žižek, 'Why Are Laibach and the Neue Slowenische Kunst Not Fascists?' (1993) in The Universal Exception: Selected Writings, Volume Two, edited by Rex Butler and Scott Stephens (London: Continuum, 2006) 63-66, and Inke Arns and Sylvia Sasse, 'Subversive Affirmation: On Mimesis as a Strategy of Resistance,' Maska 21:3-4 (2005) 5-21. If so, I would be interested in knowing your relationship to NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst) and in relation to them what’s been written by Slavoj Žižek in terms of over-identification, or what some others have referred to as subversive affirmation. MJL: Is there any theoretical or philosophical approach to the notion of names that you were particularly concerned with? For example, Jacques Lacan discusses ideology in terms of the Name of the Father, and so if you think of it in those terms it opens up a very specific psychoanalytic field of knowledge. MJL: United States immigration uses the term naturalization. We can say that there is one common feature in most countries of widespread immigration and multiculturalism and that is tolerance towards name changing in order to allow for easier integration into the host culture. In Slovenia it’s a relatively simple procedure, but in some other countries within the European Union, it can be much more difficult. Name change has many aspects and name change procedures are very different from one country to the next. Our agenda involved a much wider question about the status of names in cultural, political and social life. So very little of what we’ve been doing is related to a concrete person – a politician – which anyhow, legally speaking, is not Janez Janša but Ivan Janša. JJ: Not that I’m aware of and not that I know, in legal terms, but there have been occasions in which artists or journalists and even activists have done so as a temporary parody. MJL: Has anyone so far followed your lead in this regard? Could you imagine a G8 meeting where all the presidents and prime ministers of different countries would be called Janez Janša? It would be interesting to see if another politician would change his name to Janez Janša, or another public person, for example an athlete, and what that would produce. The only thing that makes it artistic is who we are, our respective professions. JJ: Yes, it’s not something artistic per se. MJL: This comes very close to Fluxus, where you don’t need to be specially trained or qualified in order to perform the work.

Anyone in Slovenia, or elsewhere, can change his or her name into Janez Janša or into nearly any name. The point is that you do a precise gesture that is very small and in a way administrative and that basically everyone can do. JJ: We call this “collateral effects.” So basically you do something – you change your name – but it has as a side effect many implications. MJL: Like a Robert Smithson site/non-site strategy? If a person is in a position of power, how does their name function, and what happens if they are not the only person with that name? The questions that we were asking are: ‘How can you actually produce something in the wider social and political reality but not necessarily by doing something in political reality as such but from a specific standpoint, a different context, from which you can generate questions?’

Janez Janša: One aspect was certainly the status of the name in the public sphere and the power related to names.

I wonder, when you set out to change your names, what were the specific conceptual, theoretical or social and political concerns that motivated you? See also, Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Podpis/Signature (Ljubljana: Institute for Contemporary Art, 2010). 1 See Name Readymade (Ljubljana: Moderna Galerija, 2008). For example, in the book Name Readymade there are many different approaches to your work. Marc James Léger: Often there are art critics who write about an artist and who override or influence them in some way to the point where you can’t tell the difference between the artist and the theoretical criticism of their work.

Namechanger me