The Municipality of Trbovlje covers a total area of 58 square kilometres and has a population of 18,100 people (2002) living in 17 settlements. Trbovlje is a coal mining town in the centre of Slovenia. The chimney of the Trbovlje coal power plant on the shore of the river Sava built in 1976 is the tallest chimney in Europe. 360 m high, it should ensure that emissions would not pollute the deep, narrow valley.
In the town of Trbovlje the group Laibach was established in 1980, in 1991 a choreographer and dancer Iztok Kovač, a founder of En-Knap, premiered his internationally awarded solo performance How I Caught a Falcon at Delavski dom Trbovlje Cultural Centre. The Vertigo bird film 1996) featured the Trbovlje chimney as a vertical dance surface. In 1997 Kovač was the first one to be bestowed with the Tončka Čeč Award of the City of Trbovlje for his achievements in arts and culture.
Under the slogan Trbovlje - the new media setting (Trbovlje novomedijsko mesto) the Speculum Artium New Media Art Festival in 2009 launched new media art events as a dialogue between two European academies and one from Asia, bringing to Trbovlje student works as well as artworks of three recognised artists selected by a new media theoretician Peter Weibel.
