London’s digital gallery W1 Curates continues its collaboration with The Night League for the second edition of their Culture Collective meet up. Spread across three days and three clubs (Hï Ibiza, Ushuaïa, and [UNVRS]), the event brings over 70 artists from around the world to share ideas, showcase their work, and explore the relationship between music, art, and fashion.
The partnership between W1 and The Night League is built around a shared idea: creating new experiences. For W1, this means bringing art outside of the galleries and into public spaces, fostering ownership for the artists themselves, and making art more accessible. For TNL, this means connecting cultures and transforming clubs so they can better reflect what shapes them, and this gathering has become a space to show how that could work.
The first day of the weekend featured panel talks in Hï’s gallery space on its Dom Peringnon rooftop bar space. It’s the world first in-club digital art gallery and was designed with W1 Curates signature high-quality LED screens as its centrepiece.
The weekend featured talks from W1 founder Mark Dale, The Night League’s Creative Director Sam Mooney, and a range of artists including Karimah Hassan, Ulrich Schrauth, Omar Karim, Indira Paganotto, Tinie Tempah, Ian Davenport, Pascal Sender, Domingo Zapata, Coco Dávez, Olivia Steele, Yulia Coulon, Artur Gadzhiev, Lorenzo Masnah, Alex Avanzanto, and Michael Burgess.
Omar Karim, Lorenzo Masnah, and Artur Gadzhiev discussed Worldbuilding and AI. They had some interesting conversations about using AI for creative purposes. There is a lot of hate for AI, and rightly so because of the damage it does to the environment, but from a creative standpoint, many criticise its use as lazy and uncreative; Omar’s comments puts things in a different context. “AI is just a tool, like a paintbrush is. It can’t be creative on its own—it’s up to the person using it to unlock its potential,” says Omar in a private interview. “We need to take ownership of AI when it comes to creativity because if we don’t, the tech execs will, and that would be bad.”
On the Women Shaping Culture panel, Karimah Hassan, Coco Dávez, and Olivia Steele spoke about bringing much-needed feminine energy into the world and using art intentionally to shift perspectives. The weekend’s most beautiful quote came from Karimah, who was asked for advice for other artists. Her response was, “Evolve out loud” which we felt encapsulated what Culture Collective are trying to do with this idea. Karimah wrote more about her experience at the panel talks in her Substack, The Gremlins.
Another exciting moment was in the Reimagining The Museum panel talk with Ulrich Schrauth, Michael Burgess, and Pascal Sender. During the talk, Ulrich discussed a new digital art museum they will soon open in Hamburg which will feature a permanent installation by legendary Japanese collective TeamLab. Finally, in the Mastering Modern Art panel, W1 founder Mark Dale and Ian Davenport talked about pushing boundaries with art, and how new mediums are allowing artists to reinvent themselves and take ownership away from traditional galleries.
The centrepiece of the final day was the unveiling of Italian artist Nazareno Biondo’s new work MORNING STAR. Born in Turin in 1985 and trained at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts, Nazareno has run his own marble-sculpture laboratory since 2012. MORNING STAR is an intricately detailed pyramid sculpture that exposes further details when bathed in UV light. This isn’t the first collaboration between Nazereno, W1 and TNL however. If you have ever been to Hï Ibiza, you will have surely noticed a car titled ‘Old Lady’ and a 15-tonne Vespa, both carved out of solid marble in the garden areas. These works were possibly the most impressive that we saw the whole weekend.
Examining alternate perspectives
So, let’s be frank. This idea of bringing fashion brands and artworks to nightclubs is nothing new. Keith Haring’s work appeared in venerated venues such as Club 57 and Paradise Garage as early as the 70s, and there have been many more instances since then. The difference now is that there is better technology available, which lends itself well to the modern club aesthetic.
Alongside this, Ibiza has a rich history of the arts itself. One of Spain’s oldest contemporary art galleries, the Museu d’Art Contemporani d’Eivissa (MACE), opened in 1969 and set the stage for the cultural impact the island would eventually have. Since then, a range of galleries and street art has spread across the island, showing the visual culture scene is still alive there despite being overshadowed by the gargantuan club scene.
Now, whilst we bask in this idea of transforming clubs into multidisciplinary art spaces, it’s important to think about where this could realistically work and, as with most things in life, it depends. Constant residential expansion and rising economic barriers for partygoers have forced clubs in many cities to switch from permanent to temporary formats. Manchester’s WHP is a good example, with seasonal shows set in temporary spaces. This makes it hard to see how this idea could translate to a smaller club setting unless it runs on this format. It may well be that this could only exist in Ibiza, which, in a way, is also seasonal.
One place it could exist (and does, in some capacity) is festivals. For visual artists who struggle to connect with or feel intimidated by galleries, this is a golden opportunity to have their work seen by lots of people in a different context. This is how W1 founder Mark Dale views the situation, but from a consumer perspective. The goal is to make art more accessible.
The obvious winners in this arrangement seem to be the visual artists. Having their work platformed in high-footfall areas like Ibiza’s superclubs, which entertain millions of visitors a year, is an incredible opportunity. One concern around these ideas however is accessibility. Whilst the idea of clubs reflecting culture is nice, it shouldn’t come at the cost of exclusivity. Balearic super clubs are becoming increasingly expensive, and bringing in high-end fashion brands and fine art might create a similar effect to how W1 views the current gallery situation. They’ll need to think deeply about it over the coming years if they want it to be as groundbreaking as they have pitched. Culture comes from a mix of different experiences, backgrounds, and viewpoints, and if clubs want to reflect that while staying interesting and forward-thinking, they will need that diversity.
Strengthening the visual art community on the island and bringing in that demographic from overseas, however, is super exciting and something to look forward to.
Final Thoughts – Future of Ibiza, Cultural change
The scene in Ibiza is a bit like Marmite—you either love it or hate it. Nevertheless, if the work between W1 and TNL allows alternative cultural scenes to emerge and blend across the island, it will be interesting to witness. There is a lot of discourse currently around the island’s cultural climate. It’s almost cool to hate it these days, but despite what your thoughts are on the big room, Instagrammable clubs there, the fact that these clubs are willing to platform visual artists in an attempt to create more multi-faceted experiences isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
With all this in mind, it seems Culture Collective is still trying to evolve its spaces—it’s just that, in this instance, it’s more of a return to what early clubs used to be: cultural incubators designed for exploration.
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