Slovenia transforms 19th-century salt warehouse into cultural centre

A 19th-century salt warehouse in the coastal city of Koper, Slovenia, has been renovated and turned into a flagship cultural centre in what is one of the city's largest investments in this kind of infrastructure to date.

Built in 1825, the former warehouse is now a venue designed to host visual arts, film, music, dance, theatre and multimedia events as well as workshops, roundtable debates and fashion shows, CE Report quotes The Slovenia Times.

Even before the conversion local artists recognised the cultural potential of the industrial building and turned it into a squatted art hub. The venue also occasionally hosted festivals dedicated to theatre and audiovisual and new media art.

Its new chapter officially began in early October when the building reopened to the public. Called Libertas, the centre "will be a meeting point for cultures in several respects, a meeting point for languages, nations and, of course, different art forms," programme director Andraž Gombač was quoted as saying by public broadcaster RTV Slovenija.

Promoting cultural production and consumption

Libertas will host both local and international, established and emerging artists, with a programme spanning a variety of artistic disciplines and formats.

Its opening programme features the exhibition Tu pri nas - libertas (Join us - libertas), which brings together 13 local artists of different nationalities and has been organised in cooperation with the Insula Association of Visual Artists, an organisation based in the nearby town of Izola.

The smaller hall hosts Zlom (Fracture Point), an audiovisual installation by internationally renowned artist and creative coder Tadej Droljc. Admission to both exhibitions is free.

Upcoming events include film screenings, theatre performances as well as concerts by rapper Masayah, the pop-electronic music duo Silence and singer-songwriter Iztok Mlakar.

The characteristically long and fairly narrow venue has a large hall accommodating up to 700 standing or 300 seated visitors, and a smaller hall with a standing capacity of 200 and a seating capacity of 100. There is also a gallery venue and a cafe. Total indoor space is almost 1,900 square metres.

The project is the brainchild of the city's culture adviser Vesna Pajić, who had advocated acquiring the roughly 100-metre-long warehouse, helped prepare applications for European funding, and pushed for the building to be designated a heritage site.

"I feel like the building has a sort of magical power; it is a magical space. And I think we have put some of this magic into it," she told RTV Slovenija, referring to the four years during which Libertas was a squatted art hub that "put Koper on the cultural map", not just the country's art map but also beyond.

The €6.5 million project was financed jointly by the municipality and the state, with EU support.

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