Art Center of the Labor

Latitude: 43.5244064 Length: -5.6117821
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A domotic museum and I live on the outskirts of Gijón, renewed with continuous applications that arise from internet chats and blogs, from webcams, from email, which seeks analogies in video games, which is projected on walls or broadcast by plasma screens, and all this with a deeply interactive vocation, which adds a functional component that large art galleries lack.

A huge space, with a total of 14.400 square meters of surface, more than 4.000 for exhibition halls, about 700 for workshops and laboratories and more than a thousand for the LabCafé, a multipurpose place that, in addition to a cafeteria and restaurant, hosts concerts and performances.

Its dimensions bring it closer to the great museums, but at the bottom of so many square meters it beats a different essence, with proposals that are not found in other contemporary art centers, as it seeks experimentation around new concepts and artistic languages. To do this, train new talents, awards artistic scholarships, programs itinerant circuits through Asturian towns in search of new audiences, promotes festivals and seminars, announces awards and publishes publications.

Everything with a pragmatic perspective, by understanding creativity as the most important thing to promote scientific growth. At the core of its philosophy, the Art of Laboral center aspires to discover new creative processes for the good of society, and that is why it clearly presents itself as a "laboratory." The “Laboral” brand itself, with “Lab” underlined, indicates the desire to be so.

To begin, and with international character, Gijón has brought together the most prestigious curators in the field of new media art. Resulting in a first exhibition that already indicates the essentially innovative approach of La Laboral, with an emphasis on new media and new technologies. In fact the managers of the center want to mount four major annual exhibitions in the field of visual arts and another four in the field of industrial creation. There will also be projects in the rooms called "platforms" (rooms that unite the two main ones) and whose protagonists will be chosen by juries from both thematic contexts.

This Gijón equipment comes from some old workshops of the Campus of the Laboral, reconverted and expanded to meet the needs of the new center, and is already the flagship of a larger project: the City of Culture, which will try to take full advantage of the space of the old University. A mammoth building as a whole, two and a half times greater than El Escorial, built during the dictatorship by the architect Luis Moya White and considered the most important architectural work in Asturias in the XNUMXth century. Conceived in principle as an independent, closed and self-sufficient city, in line with the autarquism of Francoism, La Laboral now faces the challenge of giving a new use to its colossal interior space. The imminent City of Culture will gradually open up to new concerns and groups, and the Higher Center for Dramatic Art, a Theater and a Conservatory, among other facilities, are already underway.