Some collaborations are surprising in the easiest way. “Satellites”, a brand new exhibition conceived by Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn and celebrated Japanese recreation designer Hideo Kojima – is one among them. Offered by Prada with help from Fondazione Prada, the present landed at Prada Aoyama Tokyo with a easy however lofty aim: exploring how two creatives, from reverse sides of the world in several industries, overcome language obstacles to attach over time, house, and shared creativeness.
Whenever you arrive on the fifth flooring of the Herzog & de Meuron–designed Prada Aoyama constructing, you’re not stepping right into a typical gallery. As a substitute, you enter a meticulously staged, mid-century one-bedroom house, full with a sofa, mattress, lamp, and rotary phone – every seemingly pulled from one other period, eerily lifelike and unusually timeless . The house feels extra like a film set than an exhibition, setting the tone for what unfolds subsequent.
The exhibition is split into two components. Within the first, Refn and Kojima seem on six retro-futuristic televisions harking back to small spaceships with uncovered circuit boards, wires, and glowing parts. Inside these sculptural screens, the 2 creatives have interaction in a sluggish, contemplative dialogue – one talking in English, the opposite in Japanese. Their dialog drifts by way of themes like friendship, collaboration, know-how, creativity, identification, and even mortality. The impact is intimate and reflective, inviting guests to linger, hear, and interpret at their very own tempo.
The second a part of the set up unfolds in a close-by dressing room, the place a cassette participant sits surrounded by stacks of tapes. Every tape incorporates a remix of Refn and Kojima’s dialog, mixing sound bites, cinematic scores, and alternate variations of their dialogue translated into varied languages utilizing AI. Guests are inspired to sift by way of the tapes, piecing collectively their very own model of the change.
At its core, “Satellites” is an exploration of connection between folks, mediums, and realities. Because the worlds of movie and video gamess proceed to converge, they trace at a future shared digital dimension – one which reimagines how we create, talk, and expertise collectively. It’s a poetic have a look at how creativity and know-how may in the end convey us nearer, regardless of how far aside we start.
Nicolas Winding Refn and Hideo Kojima Photograph: Daisuke Takeda
“Satellites” is on view till August 25, 2025 at Prada Aoyama Tokyo every single day from 11am – 8pm. For extra data, go to prada.com.
Pictures by Yasuhiro Takagi courtesy of Prada.
