Carsten Höller


I have been to Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a few times since 2001. Kinshasa is electric, filled with music, Sapeurs and live concerts like no other town I've seen. I love this culture and thought it would be great to put it on a 1:1 ratio with our so-called Western culture. Here we are in London installing the Double Club, a disco in two parts with a revolving dance floor in the middle, a courtyard in four triangular vectors, and a restaurant designed like a chessboard. When the club is up and running, the music will change from Western to Congolese every forty-five minutes or so. When this picture was taken, the space was obviously still under construction. In the middle you see the central entrance to the courtyard; on the left is an enlarged reproduction of J'aime La Couleur by the Kinshasa¬–based painter Cheri Samba; and on the right, a part of the Tile Garden can be seen. Two cornering walls and the floor in between are covered in tiles painted with motifs from the "Flying City" as drawn by the Russian Utopian architect Georgi Krutikow in 1928. The four Sapeurs were cast by Jason and me and together it all looks like science fiction.