A series of events curated by Folch for Soho House.
Founded in London in 1995 as a an international private members’ club for people in the creative industries, Soho House has now numerous clubs around Europe and North America.
The series of events we are curating for Soho House aims to offer the venue’s selected public relevant visions from the world of arts and creativity. With a focus on conferences, workshops and events, Soho House Barcelona came to us to initiate a collaboration. We started to create a concept that could be relevant for the club’s audience, representing our way of understanding different creative visions and thinking. The idea was to create a platform where boundaries between disciplines are melted together and ideas are key.
We curated a year long session programme consisting of ten monthly events featuring international and national speakers in Barcelona, Berlin, and Istanbul.
We curated a year long session programme, consisting of ten monthly events featuring international and national speakers in Barcelona, Berlin, and Istanbul. The conference sessions were designed to be inspirational and to create a closeness to the audience, while sharing new ideas and experiences. We wanted to map our ideas not only through our own words, but through people who belong to the Folch universe. In other words, a curation of diverse personalities and professionals within the same field, with different ideas and points of view, revolving around a variety of topics. Always visionary, never theoretical.
For the seventh edition of our talks we invited the sailer behind Narinan, and contributor to one of our Eldorado stories: The Man Who Sails With The Stars. Sailor Kenneth Perdigón spoke of the Narinan boat and its concept, individual activism, life on the sea, and how the far and exotic can sometimes be found more closely than expected.
We wanted to map our ideas not only through our own words, but through people who belong to the Folch universe.
For the fifth session we called Playground founder Isaac Marcet and invited him for a talk at SOHO Barcelona to have a conversation with our editorial director Vincenzo Angileri. They spoke about weaving the future of communication, trying to interpret the ever-changing world of journalism, media, millennials, and politics, while reflecting on a greater collective challenge: fashioning a better Internet.
Back from Berlin, the fourth session took place in the Catalan venue. From the lighting design company Marset, potter Xavier Mañosa and architect Stefano Colli entertained the audience with an interesting, funny and insightful yet laid-back conversation about light, its meanings and nuances. The duo delved into diverse topics related to what they do —from beauty, mistakes and detail, to craft vs industry— they shared with the crowded hall of the cinema how every one of these aspects is present in both their work and life.
In the third session Odiseo’s Emmy Koski introduced the brand’s distinct and personal vision of seduction – this time in Soho House Berlin. During the evening she delved into the process, conceptualisation and curation of Odiseo, as well as the crucial act of blurring the lines between art, fashion and eroticism. Walking the audience through the magazine’s genesis to its future visions, Emmy also discussed the consequences of working on a self initiated project, including free expression and the challenges of learning by doing.
“With Odiseo we want to create many layers of interpretation to give the reader time for contemplation and reflection. This is our way to conceptually tackle a theme, work according to a specific aesthetic and theme and aim to make a statement on a long term basis.”
Emmy Koski, Odiseo Editor in Chief
For the second session we invited designer and artist Antoni Arola. Fleeing from definitions, Toni’s award-winning work covers diverse fields —from lighting projects to furniture, interior design to ephemeral installations and perfume containers— and it has been exposed in many cities around the world. But the event which he was protagonist of wasn’t about any of these.
“We spent long hours talking in front of those pictures, imagining and fantasizing about these places. Without the internet, we had no idea of what we would find. I had only seen about a dozen images of Africa. Before long we had a ticket to Mali in hand.”
Toni Arola, Designer
Instead, it delved into a journey that Toni did ‘before anything else happened’ as he presented his African initiation trip to the audience. In a laid-back and fine evening, he captivated the audience with photographs, drawings, sketches, painting, sculptures that he produced during his journeys at the beginning of the Nineties in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana, exploring the land of the Niger and the fascinating communities of the Dogons and the Gurunsis, among others. The material was premiered for the Soho House audience, and it will published for the first time ever on Eldorado Experience this fall.
The first session Dreams of Matter was held by set designer and co-founder of the magazine DREAM Cristina Ramos, a talk where she highlighted her love for objects and compositions. In her talk, she delved into her research about artists and their relationships with objects: Cristina shared with the audience of Soho House stories and images by Ai WeiWei, Xavier Corberó, and Patti Smith, among others. An inspiring event, capped by the exclusive premiere of the latest short film by photographer Txema Yeste.
“Everything is about seeking beauty. I’m so grateful I have the ability to create and experience beauty, but somehow the fashion world is very headed towards commerce. We really felt the need to express beauty in a more abstract and poetic way.”
Cristina Ramos, Art director
