Set in the city centre next to the city hall, Pritličje is possibly the only private establishment of its kind in Ljubljana. It frequently cooperates with Radio Študent (which, among other things, sets up monthly DJ evenings), the Emanat Institute, the ŠKUC Association and with various sporadic partners like the Spider Festival, Stoptrik International Film Festival, City of Women International Festival, and the Druga Godba Festival.
Background
With its activism and a policy of endorsing LGBT (and partly also in terms of its managers), Pritličje is the heir of the Café Open, the first explicitly gay and lesbian friendly bar in Ljubljana which had a similar, but – due to its size and location – much less ambitious programme. The place had to close down in 2013, as its location in a residential area proved to be too much of an obstacle to its programme.
Programme
Music-wise, Pritličje focuses on electronic music and presents its various forms on weekly DJ evenings and with regular live acts. Occasionally, other genres come into play as well and the place has seen its share of rock and jazz concerts as well. The artists are mainly Slovene (though artists like Juno Reactor and Dennis Bovell do stop by), but chosen with a daft touch.
The lectures and round tables feature prominent Slovene intellectuals, both those from the centre of academia as well those coming from its outskirts (like, for example, the folks around the journal ČKZ Journal for Critique of Science, for Imagination and New Anthropology). Although the lecturers and debaters are predominantly humanities specialists, the guests at Pritličje are sometimes also curious people from public life or the arts.
The harm-reduction organisation DrogArt organises events and lectures at Pritličje as well, and so do the people gathered around the comic book retailer Stripolis. Among numerous other social and cultural productions, literary theory and practices have also found their domicile here.