Art Center of the Labor

Latitude: 43.5244064 Length: -5.6117821
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A smart and living museum on the outskirts of Gijón, constantly updated with applications that emerge from internet chats and blogs, webcams, email, that seeks analogies in video games, that is projected on walls or broadcast on plasma screens, and all this with a profoundly interactive vocation, which adds a functional component that the great art galleries lack.

An immense space , with a total of 14.400 square meters of surface area , 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 being a cafe and restaurant, hosts concerts and performances.

Its size rivals that of major museums, but beneath its vast expanse lies a different essence , with offerings not found in other contemporary art centers. It seeks experimentation with new concepts and artistic languages. To this end, it trains emerging talent, awards artistic grants, organizes traveling exhibitions throughout Asturias to cultivate new audiences, promotes festivals and seminars, establishes prizes, and publishes journals.

All of this is approached from a pragmatic perspective , understanding creativity as paramount for driving scientific progress. At the heart of its philosophy, the Laboral Art Center aspires to discover new creative processes for the benefit of society, and thus clearly presents itself as a "laboratory." The very name "Laboral," with "Lab" emphasized, reflects this commitment.

To begin with, and with an international focus , Gijón has brought together the most prestigious curators in the field of new media art . The result is an inaugural exhibition that already reveals La Laboral's essentially innovative approach, with an emphasis on new media and new technologies. In fact, the center's management plans 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 so-called "platforms" (spaces connecting the two main galleries), and the featured artists will be selected by juries from both thematic areas.

This facility in Gijón emerged from old workshops on the Laboral campus , converted and expanded to meet the needs of the new center, and is now the flagship of a larger project: the City of Culture , which will seek to fully utilize the space of the former University. A colossal building overall, two and a half times larger than El Escorial , it was built during the dictatorship by the architect Luis Moya Blanco and is considered the most important architectural work in Asturias in the 20th century. Originally conceived as an independent, closed, and self-sufficient city, in keeping with the autarky policies of the Franco regime , the 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 interests and groups, and the Higher Center for Dramatic Art, a theater, and a conservatory, among other facilities, are already under construction.