On the intersection of London’s art scene and nightlife

by Bryson Edward Howe

The first time I experienced the collision of clubs and gallery spaces was at south London’s legendary Corsica Studios. It was the summer of 2019, and I was at Ø, a club night hosted by Hyperdub, a music label that regularly brought these two strands together. As I danced to the hypnotic, progressive dubstep of Steve Goodman aka Kode9, my friend returned from the bar with some news: there were people queuing in the next room to use a virtual reality headset.

We went in then watched as people put on a set of goggles and left Corsica for an entirely new space, full of molten silver clones. It felt like being abducted from right where we stood and brought into some parallel reality, with the muffled sounds of Kode9’s bass bleeding through the walls from the stage next door. When I came back into the real world, I found my friend talking to the artist, Estela Oliva aka CLON, who put the installation together. We both had the same question: why?