Robert Jelinek and Christoph Steinegger, Graphic by Gustave Doré and SGD
The formation “Sabotage” was founded by artist Robert Jelinek in the area of the Documenta IX in Kassel in June 1992. Sabotage” began operating in 1992 as a small project and collective, later 1994 as Sabotage Communications- an art organisation and music label, than a union of various sublabels brought together by their shared way of thinking and similar style of expression through different media. Since 1992 more than 100 international “public sabotages” have taken place in form of performances, actions, events and exhibitions. There are a number of flexible subdivisions which emerge as the needs arise and dissolve under their own inertia. Each of the sublabels primarily works within its medium, nevertheless their bonds are firm and fruitful.
The fields of activities of Sabotage defy definition of contents, theme and geographic concentration and therefor different projects and target groups are represented in different sublabels such as: art: Sabotage actions (1992-95), Alibi Service (1992-95), Sabotage projects (since 1995) or CaSH (1998). music: Sabotage Recordings (1994-99), Craft Records (since 1995), Subetage Records (since 1999).
“Sabotage” in this sense means the braking of conventions, the artistic interruption of processes of thinking and manipulational transfer. “Sabotage” is not a technic that transports meaning. Sabotage transgresses positions without presenting a new social order, provokes thinking by intervening in the official discourse. Sabotage is the experiment to brake up incrustation of an organised bourgeois society that insulates itself against all changes and tries to make thinkable new possibilities.
The State of Sabotage
