Prada Aoyama Tokyo is set to host a boundary-pushing exhibition this spring: Satellites, a collaboration between Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn and Japanese game designer Hideo Kojima. From April 18 to August 25, 2025, the iconic space, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, will become a vessel for the duo’s unique exploration of human connection through the intersecting worlds of cinema and video games.
This ambitious installation is the result of over a decade of creative dialogue between the two, melding their shared interests into a single, immersive experience. Satellites draws on the idea of connections—those between people, cultures, and even media—framed by the metaphor of the satellite. Space isn’t the final frontier, but a shared space of contemplation and exchange, unifying the artists across language, genre, and medium.
Visitors enter an unexpected scene: a retro-futuristic, mid-century apartment where the mundanities of domestic life feel strangely out of time. A couch, a lamp, a bed—ordinary elements repurposed to create a space of otherworldly dislocation. But the true intrigue lies in six retro-style televisions positioned around the room, designed to evoke the feel of alien spacecraft. Their disassembled panels expose the complex circuitry inside, while on the screens, Refn and Kojima appear, suspended in a quiet but intense conversation. The sound, one voice in English, the other in Japanese, anchors the experience, drawing viewers into the heart of the dialogue.
This conversation isn’t just between two creators. It’s about connection, the intersections of their work, and what happens when digital and analog worlds collide. The subjects they touch on range from creativity and friendship to technology, identity, and the afterlife, giving a sense of both personal reflection and universal inquiry.
A second chapter of the exhibit exists in a nearby dressing room, where a cassette player sits at the center of a sprawling collection of tapes. These tapes, filled with fragments of their conversation and cinematic soundtracks, offer a multisensory component to the exhibit. But the twist is that they’ve been AI-translated into various languages, creating a new layer of interaction. Visitors can sift through these recordings, piecing together a personalized version of the discussion, emphasizing the exhibition’s theme of fragmentation and connectivity.
Ultimately, Satellites invites the viewer to engage with both absence and presence, digital and physical, immersive and introspective, blurring the lines between these poles in ways that feel immediately relevant. It’s a commentary on where our worlds are headed: a space where film, video games, and art continue to merge, redefine boundaries, and prompt new ways of relating to each other.
