Meeting with Robert Blasko (Alternative Centre for Culture "Stanica", Slovakia)
Stanica is an initiative whose activities are a manifestation of a non-standard approach to space organisation and management. Stanica is an alternative centre for culture housed inside a re-vitalised/re-furbished/re-novated Żylina-Záriečie train station, leased from the Slovak Railway. The train station is located on the Żylina-Rajec track.
As defined by its originators, Stanica is “a space station for contemporary art, culture, and social activism.” Stanica’s programme addresses a wide range of recipients and beneficiaries - children, teenagers, adults, artists, passengers, and passers-by.
Stanica is simultaneously a regular train ticket-selling point so as a result passenger waiting for incoming trains become the target audience of the centre in particular and culture participants in general. Stanica is part of “Kulturfabrik”, the international artistic project-cum-idea around which young people, cultural activists, and artists willing to re-vitalise and re-interpret post-industrial spaces, derelict residential buildings, out-of-use shopping malls (and the like) rally round.