Fugue for the Nation

The Nation – Opium for the People

(Bojan Jablanovec)

Fugue for the Nation marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ivan Cankar and the 35th anniversary of Slovenian statehood. The project takes as its starting point the figure of Cankar’s folk musician Kurent, who, with his vision of “happy people will live here,” wanders through the Slovenian landscapes and turns a thousand hours of suffering into one hour of joy.

Fugue for the Nation opens a historical window into the relationship between a nation-based state and the rights of man and citizen, as defined by the European Enlightenment. Conceptually, Fugue for the Nation stems from Benedict Anderson’s definition of the nation as an imagined community, which began to form with the development of printing technology and the mass distribution of the print media in national languages as one of the earliest forms of capitalist production.

The belief that the nation is the foundation of statehood was ideologically formed only at the end of the 18th century and gained momentum in the revolutionary year of 1848 (the Spring of Nations). The political imaginary of the nation developed in parallel with the collapse of European colonialism and monarchies, giving rise to the cataclysmic dimensions of national brotherhood. “Regardless of actual inequality and exploitation (…) the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. It is this brotherhood that has enabled so many millions of people to kill and be willing to die for such limited notions in the last two centuries.” (Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 1983)

The failure of the 1848 revolutions led to different conceptual views on the function of the state and institutions of government in ensuring the freedom and equality of citizens. Ideological tension intensified over the issue of property, leading to a split between Marxists and anarchists at the Hague Congress of the First International in 1876. The dominance of Marx’s strategy of the dictatorship of the proletariat in 1917 resulted in the October Revolution. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy after World War I in 1918 led to the emergence of numerous European nation-states and World War II. The defeat of the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War in 1939 marked a rejection of critical thought about the function of property in a free egalitarian society, which became an untouchable dogma of neoliberal politics regardless of its political orientation.

Fugue for the Nation understands current national politics as a symptom of ideological pressure exerted by all political options. The personal confession of bandleader, musician and poet Andrej Fon, performing as Kurent, is a musical fusion of frustration and rebellion against the omnipresent ideological indoctrination of the individual into a citizen. The soundscape of Svojat in Fugue for the Nation is inhabited by the language of the political discourse from The Development of the Slovenian National Question (Sperans, 1939). This highly ideologically intoned “poem” about a small nation is played out in Slovenian politics in a thousand versions and in all political colors.

Like the infernal fugue of the 21st century, the ideology of the nation is increasing its canonical momentum and strength. With the acceleration of digital communications, the travesty of romantic nationalist ideas is also accelerating. This posthistorical machine mercilessly grinds the individual into a formless nationalist mass. Fugue for the Nation is a rebellion against the collective historical amnesia, reminding the viewer that his reason is the legacy of the past and that the nation is an imaginary political community.

Svojat • Vid Drašler, Andrej Fon, Ivo Poderžaj

Andrej Fon

Ivo Poderžaj

Vid Drašler

Fugue for the Nation

2026
Post-performance • 75 min

Concept and direction — Bojan Jablanovec
Music — Andrej Fon in Svojat
Costume design — Olja Grubić
Sound design — Eduardo Raon
Lighting design — Janko Oven
Graphic design — Matej Stupica
Producer — Špela Trošt
Production — Via Negativa
Co-production
— Zavod Ivana Cankarja, Vrhnika
— Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana

Text

Sperans: The Development of the Slovenian National Question (Naša založba, Ljubljana, 1939)
Ivan Cankar: Kurent. An ancient tale. (L. Schwentner, 1909)
Andrej Fon: Songs for Svojat

Cast

Kurent — Andrej Fon
Sperans — Gregor Zorc
Svojat — Ivo Poderžaj, Vid Drašler, Andrej Fon
Triglav — Anita Wach, Kristina Aleksova, Olja Grubić

Performance dates

10. in 11. maj 2026
Cankarjev dom Vrhnika on the 150th anniversary of Ivan Cankar’s birth in Vrhnika

10. in 11. december 2026
Cankarjev dom Ljubljana on the 108th anniversary of Ivan Cankar’s death in Ljubljana