Club Heaven

Over the course of a single night at the Playhouse in Chengdu, one of the world’s most renowned EDM clubs, Club Heaven captures both the ecstasy of the crowd and the exhaustion of those whose insecure work keeps the party going.  The partygoers seek a euphoria that, for a moment, embodies the feeling of a full life created from peaks of joy and extreme bliss – a fullness that can overflow, spilling out of the body and leading to the quintessentially tragicomic outcome of the party (spoiler alert): vomiting. But it is also an opportunity to display wealth, notably through the purchase of champagne bottles brought to the private tables by the club staff in a ritualised choreography that crystallises the power of money.  Conversely, the euphoria of some feeds on the exhaustion of others. Backstage, the workers are reminded that they are replaceable; in the back rooms, they discuss the beauty standards they’re required to meet, their wages and how to survive. Here, the night does not follow different rules in some carnivalesque reversal; rather, it reveals – and magnifies – the social dynamics of the day. And the careful, occasionally amused observation of these two interdependent yet reflected worlds reveals the belief structures of the capitalist system – the very ones that shape our dreams and behaviours.

Mourad-Anis Moussa

Club Heaven, 2026
Up or Out, 2015