Presented by Fondazione Prada, “The Prada Double Club Miami” by Carsten Höller was an art installation to be experienced as a fully-functioning nightclub, on the occasion of Art Basel Miami Beach.
“Let’s explore the best of two worlds, brought together in two adjacent locations, without any concession to fusion, a kind of schizophrenic wonderland (if only “schizophrenia” could be positively used to describe the double sidedness which is at the heart of beauty).” – Baldo Hauser
“The Prada Double Club Miami” offered a unique approach to entertainment and hospitality, as well as creating a dialogue between contemporary art, music, lifestyle, and design. This was the second, yet very different, iteration of Carsten Höller’s acclaimed concept which first debuted in London in 2008 for eight months.
The previous “Double Club” in London, set up as a secluded “guerrilla” venue, was conceived as a living artwork to be as challenging and enjoyable. Consisting of three spaces—a bar, a restaurant and a disco—each one of them equally divided into Western and Congolese parts, the club provided the ground for the construction of an entirely new experience, generated by division. Both cultures were iconically represented by musical, culinary, and aesthetic details: the electric energy of Congo on one side, and recognizable elements of Western culture on the other.
In this new project, the artist further investigated the notion of two-sidedness: the audience was presented with two different spaces which offered visually and acoustically opposed experiences, with no concession to fusion. The vital and most important aim of “The Prada Double Club Miami” was to allow art to move outside its usual restrictive contexts— transforming it into a real life experience.
Conceived as a human experiment exploring the idea of duality in a playful environment, it created an unsettling atmosphere from which a powerful, thought-provoking dialogue can emerge. The club is a physical embodiment of what an art installation can become: crowds are free to engage with the surrounding environment on multiple levels, all equally compelling and authentic, and become living components of a participatory experience.
Set in a 1920’s film studio complex, formerly an ice factory, the installation was divided into an internal club space and an outdoor tropical garden, one being entirely monochromatic, the other hyper-polychromatic.
“I want guests to feel like they are the only element of color in the monochromatic side that has only greys, blacks and whites, as if a foreign element in a black and white movie – and to feel pale in the hyper-polychromatic other side, where the tropics hit a bit too hard,” explained Carsten Höller.
International live music acts and DJs were showcased in one space, whereas the other hosted a range of Caribbean and South American diasporas from Miami. Each performer embodies the oppositional concept behind the project itself: guests and clubbers can cross a permeable boundaries to venture into a double dimension and “schizophrenic” journey.
Photography © Casey Kelbaugh
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