Ljubljana – Rog Autonomous Factory

Ljubljana – Rog Autonomous Factory, known as Rog, was a squatted bicycle factory in Ljubljana. The bicycle manufacturer Rog constructed the factory in 1951 and used it until 1991, when the site became abandoned. It was recognised as a monument of national heritage in 1998 and bought by the City Council in 2002, but remained empty apart from occasionally being used for events. The factory complex was squatted in 2006 and kept the name Rog. The centre was used by many groups, such as the Antifascist Front, Invisible Workers of the World, and the Anarcho-Queer-Feminist collective. Volunteers built the largest skatepark in the Balkans in an empty factory hall. Another hall housed the concert venue and there was also a football pitch, a circus space, artist ateliers, galleries and a graffiti workshop. Rog was evicted in January 2021 by the City Council, which claimed it was empty and abandoned at the time. 

Authors: Sandi Abram, Lana Peternel, Nikolina Hazdovac Bajić

Types: OBSERVATION, VISUAL ESSAY

Theme: Deindustrialization, Materiality, Meaning, Postsocialism, Representation, Squatted Space

Figure 1: “Rog Autonomous Factory” a disappearing squatted bicycle factory in Ljubljana (September 2023).

Figure 2: Podhod Ajdovščina in Ljubljana – “Experience of Ljubljana underground” – (July 2023).

Figure 3: “Hidden Gallery” – Podhod Ajdovščina in Ljubljana (July 2023).

Figure 4: Balkan Anarchist Bookfair (July 2023).

Figure 5: “Ljubljana underground” – Podhod Ajdovščina in Ljubljana (July 2023).

Photo Album, Diary Secrets or Field Notes

During the last few years, through mutual collaboration, we have spent many working days in Ljubljana. Sometimes, it seems that we are in Ljubljana constantly. At meetings, lectures, conferences, and on the fieldwork doing research permanently, 24/7. Our goals in Ljubljana are always the same, to imagine research projects, again and again. The best part of our jobs, playing with ideas. Imagine the project and field–field research that does not exist, isolated in our imagination. However, one of them, an Autonomous squatted bicycle factory has disappeared from Ljubljana’s urbanistic planning as such. From application to the realization of the project, our ethnographic site Rog was demolished and disappeared. Literally vanished and gone. Only the construction area remains with few foreign workers. However, not everything is so bleak for those of us who want to investigate the disappearance. There are other locations that contain the same spirit as Rog. I sincerely hope Plac will stay until the end of the project.