The Prada Double Club at Art Basel Miami Beach by Carsten Höller.

Presented by Fondazione Prada at Art Basel Miami Beach, “The Prada Double Club Miami” by Carsten Höller was an art installation that was experienced as a fully-functioning nightclub. Open for three nights only in December 2017, “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 is the second iteration of Carsten Höller’s acclaimed concept which first debuted in London in 2008 for eight months. Similarly to his previous installation, this new project investigates 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, the installation created an unsettling atmosphere from which a powerful, thought-provoking dialogue could emerge. The club was 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 colour 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. Each performer embodied the oppositional concept behind the project itself: guests and clubbers could cross permeable boundaries to venture into a double dimension and “schizophrenic” journey.

[Images courtesy of Fondazione Prada.]