Bringing the Himalayas to Berlin

Berlin, 2016: Bompas & Parr helped take 1,600 guests on a journey to Neuland – a fantastical land filled with sensory delights that defied all expectations.

Bringing new life to a disused power station in former East Berlin, the studio worked with Icelandic dance music collective gusgus and Russian lighting specialists Sila Sveta to create the path to Neuland.

The event was loosely inspired by the epic unfinished work Mysterium, by the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, who envisaged a synaesthesic performance involving a whole audience on the slopes of the Himalayas. In Berlin, the idea was that guests would emerge from the all-night music and dance event having been transported to a new dimension in space and time.

Bompas & Parr conceived a number of world-firsts – a bar where drinks were struck by lightning; gardens of edible gastropods; a chamber of glow-in-the-dark jelly served from a miniature river; a crocodile-meat sandwich bar; pizzas cooked by flamethrowers and more.

Sam Bompas and Harry Parr also personally served guests bespoke distilled spirits made using Himalayan minerals, from a unique chalice built from a human skull.