Idea of alternative cultural spaces

The Pekarna complex includes a youth centre, artist studios, rehearsal spaces for bands, theatre stage, several galleries and bars as well as three clubs, covering rock metal, electro clubbing and avant music scene. The idea of places like Pekarna is that they are open spaces. This means that they are open to ideas, open to the creative praxis and open to social engagement. It means that they are truly open to people, that it is easy for them to come and start to work here or start to live with it, that we don‘t have any long structured bureaucratic process for joining nor any official hierarchy. It is very easy to get involved as an artist or audience or as someone who just really likes the idea that you have a real cultural space in the middle of the town which does not look like the rest of the city looks like and which resists the strong pressure to be enjoyable. We are here not to satisfy people; we are here for ourselves and for people who really believe that some things can be changed in the world. There are two really important things about Pekarna. The first is the content. On the one hand, there are the things which started out in Pekarna and which have over the time outgrown this space and became institutionalised, such as the documentary film festival or the festival of creative communications. On the other hand, there are the things which don’t have a commercial potential which we are bringing out. These can be political or theoretical or can have only two visitors. Apart from content, the second thing is what I call the “structural idea.“ This means that because of Pekarna the people working within the municipality started to think differently about culture and cultural policies. At some point they realised that something really big is happening in Pekarna. They started to invest into the centre, albeit small sums initially, because they realised that Pekarna is very much in the public interest. We are delivering not only ideas but also, let’s say, normal life to the city. This is of enormous importance in this town because we think differently. The starting points of our thinking are different: we start from a different idea of society, of mutual relations and also from a different understanding of responsibility to what is happening in the world. This may sound very self-important and like a cliché but politically speaking Pekarna truly changed things in this city. As far as common political thinking is concerned, there has been a large progress in Maribor due to Pekarna.

CultureFighter

Idea of alternative cultural spaces

Gregor Kosi

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