Since its opening in 2003, the Prada flagship store in Tokyo – colloquially referred to as Prada Aoyama – has been a landmark for the Aoyama luxury shopping district. Built by acclaimed architecture practice Herzog & de Meuron, the monolithic structure with its diamond-shaped glass panes effortlessly stands out from its plush surroundings. At the moment, the flagship store hosts an exhibition, entitled Satellites, by Danish movie director Nicolas Winding Refn (1970) with Japanese game creator Hideo Kojima (1963). Held on the fifth floor, the collaborative showcase between Winding Refn and Kojima, which highlights their elective affinities, allows the two to transcend the individual dimension and overcome language barriers. These dissolve into a connection fuelled by shared thought processes cultivated together for more than a decade, hinting at a future common territory made possible by technologies that also blur the boundaries between media.
So, what’s Satellites about? The show transports visitors to a cinema-inspired interior set where suspended images of both Refn and Kojima appear, locked in a contemplative conversation as they investigate the universal concept of human connection. The interrelation between two distant entities, also evoked by the metaphorical orbits of satellites in the exhibition title, is the focal point of the entire project. This topic resonates in Kojima’s game dynamics, where the connection of territories and people reshapes the idea of multiplayer, and in Refn’s cinematic poetics, where mental and affective concatenations transcend the logic of reality. For this collaborative endeavour, Prada Aoyama‘s fifth floor has been transformed into a mid-century one-bedroom apartment set dotted with everyday objects such as a couch, a bed, a lamp and a telephone. The setting recreates a tangible domestic space that transports visitors into an alternate dimension. The exhibition sees six televisions, all designed as retro-futuristic spaceships.
Their panels are cut open, revealing intricate internal designs of electrical components, wires, and circuit boards. Within these screens, suspended images of Winding Refn and Kojima engage in a deep and contemplative conversation. The sound of their voices, one in English, and the other in Japanese, invites visitors to witness the creation of an intimate experience of discovery and interpretation. The dialogues address many themes, ranging from friendship, creative collaboration, new technologies and creativity, to identity, communication, death and what remains afterwards. The second part of the show unfolds in the nearby dressing room. Inside, a cassette player sits amid stacks of tapes. The tapes blend sound bites and cinema soundtracks, interwoven with alternate, AI-translated versions of Refn and Kojima’s conversation in various languages. Visitors piece together a unique, personalised version of the dialogue by sifting through the different languages on each tape (on through Aug 25). © superfuture
Prada Aoyama
5-2-6 Minami Aoyama, Fifth Floor (Aoyama)
Tokyo 107-0062
Telephone +81 3 64180400
Daily 11am-8pm
Publishers Note
Just to be clear – superfuture® is a design blog and not a political commentator. No surprise there. The scope of our content has always been global and borderless, however that can often mean covering projects in countries where we will not agree with the politics or actions of those countries. In a world that’s as screwed up as ever right now, the focus of our support is to those designers, architects and other creatives who aim to make the world a more liveable one – as opposed to people that try their hardest to destroy it. So if a project hits our desk and we like it based on its design credentials, we may choose to publish regardless of its location or creators nationality. superfuture® has always been inclusive and hopes for all current wars, aggression, violence, hate and extremism to end.
