Squatting culture in Ljubljana, Slovenia

81285

Student of the Dhamma 🧠🧘☸️
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Since a big squat here got demolished and broken up, any smaller groups made by others from that one, got immediately put under municipality's pressure, closed and razed to the ground, it got me thinking

I have no experience with squats in more developed countries like Slovenia, only Serbia and Bulgaria where literally no one cares what you do, even cops, as long as you are not an illegal immigrant or a criminal they leave, since they have so much bigger problems to deal with...

in Slovenia these problems are not common, so the focus turns onto potential problems, which are squats and any underground (unregulated) movement, instantly

there are a few squats here, but they are all legalized art/event venues, its for tourists, social media kids and rich people, no punks, anarchists, queers, bums, road dogs, travellers, nomads... nothing, just a more art/open centered community that hosts events and invites artists

its like a "see we still have squats" just everything has to be official, online, has a social media page and its allowed, if you deviate from what daddy municipality lets you do, the bulldozers are there in a week. Its an extremely sad state of affairs here.

The municipality keeps demolishing any actual squat that forms, these "official'/regulated art installations are the only thing allowed, so the tourists feel safer and they can get more money in this perfect tourist theme park wonderland, the city is getting so gentrified its wild

+ since the capital is so small, even one squat actually has a somewhat noticeable impact on the culture of the city (no joke)

so yeah, the municipality wants to destroy squat culture here (they kind of succeeded), anything that they dont have their grubby greedy mits in gets their fascist boners hard and they start terrorizing everyone and demolishing everything

so, my question is, as I said I have no experience with proper squats in europe, or in the US, so Im wondering how is it there

the capital city Ljubljana is so small that it is a unique situation, no real way to put the squat "out of the way"

anyone elses view, of their own city where they grew up in, or any area/culture they know about is appreciated
 

ali

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This is an interesting post. I remember visiting Rog when i passed through Ljubljana a few years ago and wasn't sure if that was the tourist one you were referencing, so i did a search, and found an article talking about how it got torn down and contrasting it with the autonomous arts district of Metelkova that actually i don't remember visiting at all when i was there, but perhaps i did walk through and just didn't register it as a squat per se? Looking at squat.net seems like new squats coming out of the ashes of Rog keep getting shut down too, which seems to be the way of things in Europe recently, at least in the bigger or more central cities. Maybe there's still options in the smaller cities or places where the land is less valuable to developers?

Anyway this was the article: A Tale of Two Squats: Gentrification and Urban Movements in Contemporary Ljubljana - Urban Matters Journal - https://urbanmattersjournal.com/a-tale-of-two-squats-gentrification-and-urban-movements-in-contemporary-ljubljana/ I never heard of Urban Matters Journal, but looks like there's some other interesting stories on there if you're into academic takes.

I don't have anything to add of my own experience because i never lived in a squat, i just passed through sometimes for drinks or parties and supported my neighborhood autonomous movements at protests/demos. Speaking as someone who just passes through, though, i don't think there's anything wrong with squatters going "legit". I think when people get older they lose a bit of the will to constantly be fighting for their existence and find some peace of mind by following whatever route is required to make a place mainstream enough that the cops will leave it alone. I think that's the natural order of things - young people are always going to be more angry and idealistic, they will have more energy to fight.

Should the old guard hand over the squats to the young people, then? I don't think that's really the right path, since that would just be recreating a broken system of nepotism and propagating generational wealth. If squatting is really about finding unused spaces and adapting them to shelter people who are looking for community, then step one is finding unused spaces. The real assholes imo are the people who "own" unused spaces and enforce wack property ownership laws to keep those spaces unused for no reason other than selfishness.

If a land owner comes along and actually intends to develop a space, not just evict for the sake of eviction... well that's a more difficult question. People talk all they like about how property is theft and smash the state and whatever, but end of the day modern society is the way it is, and land owners are not broadly seen as evil. In many countries property ownership is well over 50% - check out List of countries by home ownership rate - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate for a rude shock. It's easy to win a moral victory (if not a legal one) when you are establishing a home in an otherwise abandoned factory, but if a developer proposes to build housing that would raise the property value of neighboring units, or encourage shop owners to move into the neighborhood... yeah it's gentrification, but there's a big chunk of the public that doesn't see that as a bad thing. So it's hard to get public support, and even if you do get support and block the development, then what you're gonna get is some kind of watered down arts district that's pretty much gentrified anyway, just in a different direction than what was proposed. For hardcore anarchists, that's not gonna be enough, so at that point... they might as well just say fuck it and go elsewhere, start again.
 

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