Since 2004, KUD Mreža has been running a programme called Urban Art Projects, also called Gesamtkunstwerk Metelkova mesto. The project is devoted to renovations and artistic augmentations of public spaces in and around Metelkova. The programme is responsible for more than hundred projects, from smaller interventions with semi-permanent installations to bigger ones, such as park sculptures. Beside Alkatraz Gallery, KUD Mreža also runs the somewhat unique Night Window Display Gallery Pešak which exhibits special light-based artworks behind the glass windows of one of Metelkova’s buildings, and can be seen consequently only by a telescope placed on a tower nearby.
Visual appearance of Metelkova Mesto has been developing according to the “work-in-progress” principle. The intentionally-never-completed image of ACC Metelkova Mesto offers to its residents as well as to the growing number of visitors something Ljubljana has not witnessed before: public art does not come into being commissioned by market-oriented or urban planners but arises from creative initiative of local artists and craftsmen and also international art residents.
The “Metelkova Style” is characterized by fine art recycling aware if the fact that artistic intervention into space can not be limited to the beaux arts filed to consider wider social context. Exterior of the buildings is therefore being converted into a particular location and public art, which partly preserves ACC Metelkova Mesto from destructive forces of profit and appeases the gentrification processes. For the last 13 years, the Urban Fine Arts Projects have been propping up artistic transformation of the Metelkova agora; partly with a view to reminding the audience with 107 well-preserved artworks of the fragility and continuous transformations that the collectivity of such magnitude is experiencing.