Beirut is not the first place that comes to mind when one thinks of clubbing. Yet Lebanon's capital has a historical connection to discos. In 1980, Ettore Sottsass Jr. designed Disco 2000 there, an environment that allowed the autochthonous population to escape, albeit only with their fantasy, from the country's difficult social situation through the venue’s music and its European-flavoured interiors.

Similarly, Najil Gebran at the end of the decade, with the nation battered by a harsh internal conflict, began selecting music for the locals from a beachside chalet: the B018.

In 1998, the club moved to the site of a former camp for Armenian and Kurdish refugees. There, his cousin and architect Bernard Khoury designed an underground environment, which opens like a sarcophagus in the night revealing a bunker-like space, where mahogany tables perforated by bullet holes resemble coffins on which are placed portraits of musicians martyred for freedom and red roses.

The invitation to the club – displayed as part of the exhibition – is a calcine, housed inside a black perforated case: an object heavy in both its specific weight and symbolic meaning, in which design and the socio-political vicissitudes of a nation develop in symbiosis under the banner of music and freedom.

The socio-political status of a nation in a given historical period also unfolds through design. Japan in the 1960s was a country on the rise after the disastrous outcome of World War II. The influence of American culture began, precisely in these years, to shape the nation to come, and clubs were also involved in this process of change. 

The venue was inspired, as eloquently suggested by its name, by the American sculptor Donald Judd, of whom the club owner was a great admirer. 

The interiors were commissioned to Shiro Kuramata, the designer who in the mid-Sixties embodied, more than anyone else, the combination of Japanese avant-garde design and the westernisation of the nation. Within a sinuous environment clad in semi-glossy aluminium pipes, the white marble dancefloor contrasted with the black fur carpet on which transparent plastic seats with yellow and blue cushions were placed. The result was an environment flawlessly capturing the ephemerality of post-war Japan and of its entertainment industry.

Sitting in-between a spiritual and a political site, the New Afrika Shrine encapsulates Fela Kuti's cultural legacy to his people. In the club, which has been running since 2000 under the helm of Fela’s oldest daughter and son Femi and Yeni Kuti, the catharsis of collective involvement is full of social commitment. 

In fact, the venue was created with the aim of preserving and extending into the present the legacy of the Shrine, the club that Fela Kuti founded in 1972 during the Nigerian civil war. In those very years, the Shrine offered shelter and work to many young people, as well as dedicating itself to initiatives in support of health and education that continue to inspire the work of the New Afrika Shrine today.

It isn’t just the fabled epics of excess and transgression to make Paradise Garage one of the most significant club archetypes in history. Active in New York between 1978 and 1987, the venue was at the forefront of the conceptual revolution of the figure of the DJ as the shaman of a secular rite. It is no coincidence that Bernard Fowler, lead singer of the club’s in-house band The Peech Boys, in an interview with The Guardian described its DJ Larry Levan, one of the pioneers of mixing, as “a Messiah. People would look up at the booth and shout his name.”

Above all, though, its dancefloor was a space of negotiation for civil and sexual rights. The Garage or, as it was also known, Gay-rage represented a place of expression and freedom for the Hispanic and African-American LGBTQ+ community in a New York that was suddenly discovering itself vulnerable to AIDS, an issue the club was always vocal about from the very beginnings. 

Although only recently opened (2014), Bassiani immediately established itself as one of Europe's go-to venues for Techno, often being compared to Berlin's cult Berghain. Yet, the Georgian club is so much more. Its logo, a double helmet, echoes the nation and the club’s common thread with military violence. 

For almost a decade, the Bassiani has represented an outpost of militancy, sexual liberation and resistance in a country with conservative politics, which has repeatedly tried to interfere with the club's activities. In 2014, following an anti-drug raid, the army opened fire inside the club. The episode was followed in 2019 by another shooting, this time by hand of a civilian. It was precisely from the Bassiani that, in May 2018, the rave that for two days held court in front of the Palace of Parliament recently started, putting before the eyes of international public opinion the growing social protest movement that in Tbilisi is inextricably linked to dancing.