‘You cannot manufacture what a place means culturally’: Silencio founder Arnaud Frisch on 15 years of cinematic nights out

Anyone who knew Mulholland Drive (2001) needed little introduction to the name Silencio. So when a real-world version of the fictitious nightclub opened in Paris in 2011, with interiors conceived by David Lynch himself, the curiosity was inevitable.

In the former printing rooms of L’Aurore, founder Arnaud Frisch had given the late filmmaker’s enigmatic nightspot a tangible Paris address, with a cultural cachet as idiosyncratic as its surroundings.

Silencio at 15

Lynch may have been the initial attraction, but the programme quickly became a reason to pay attention in its own right, bringing musicians, filmmakers, artists and writers into regular company. Fifteen years later, Frisch’s favourite milestones range from Lana Del Rey’s first Paris concert to Virgil Abloh’s first DJ set. ‘We understood that people were looking for more than a conventional nightclub,’ says Frisch. ‘The idea was to create a place where cinema, art, music, food and conversation could coexist, and where different creative worlds could meet.’

Prince, Björk and Kendrick Lamar have all performed at Silencio too, while the club’s wider creative cast includes filmmaker and photographer Larry Clark, designer Michèle Lamy, director Gaspar Noé and novelist Bret Easton Ellis. Their shared taste for provocation gives some sense of Frisch’s programming instincts, which allow music, cinema, fashion and literature to rub shoulders. In his words, they belong to ‘the same editorial universe’.

Frisch’s own tastes took shape in the electronic music scene of 1990s Paris, where going out eventually grew into an interest in creating places for others to gather. He launched Social Club with his partners, catering to the city’s appetite for electronic music, and his ventures now include Wanderlust, Salò and FVTVR. Each has taught him something about the relationship between a venue and its public: Social Club found a committed musical following, while the rooftop club Wanderlust showed him how nightlife and the seasons could alter the habits and geography of a neighbourhood. ‘What connects them is that we have never tried to reproduce the same formula,’ he says. ‘Each project responds to a place, a moment and the community around it.’

In Paris, a few kilometres can separate an underground club from a rooftop party, a cultural venue or a large electronic night. Frisch sees that proximity and variety as essential to the city’s character, though the allegiances of its audiences have changed. Younger guests are comfortable sampling several scenes, following their interests between music, fashion, art and food without feeling obliged to belong to any one of them.

At Silencio, a screening or a talk is as much a reason to visit as a night of music, with private events also punctuating the calendar. Membership helps pay for that breadth and gives the team some freedom in choosing what to programme. For Frisch, the value lies in seeing the same people often enough to get acquainted with their work – and, occasionally, find someone to collaborate with. ‘Exclusivity is not the objective,’ he says. His account of membership centres on familiarity: enough repeated encounters for people to get beyond introductions. A well-connected opening party is one thing; maintaining that company over years requires attention. He is similarly measured about the famous names.

‘You can create the conditions for things to happen by inviting artists, directors, writers and musicians you believe in and giving them freedom,’ he says. ‘But you cannot manufacture what a place means culturally.’ That depends on the projects, the encounters people remember and whether artists choose to return.

Frisch’s choice of architectural collaborators has given each address its own personality. At the short-lived Joséphine, which occupied the Théâtre du Châtelet from 2019 until March 2020, he worked with Virgil Abloh. Studio KO furnished a different Parisian proposition at Silencio des Prés, which opened in 2021 at the former Beau Regard, combining a restaurant, terrace and cinema. The venue has since closed, but that same year took Silencio to Cala Molí in Ibiza, where Moredesign’s timber, raffia and sandy floors accommodated art, music and long lunches by the sea. Artist Miranda Makaroff contributed to the opening, and the addition of Japanese restaurant Urusai in 2024 brought architect and designer Kulapat Yantrasast into the company’s creative roster.

In New York, meanwhile, Harry Nuriev arranged Silencio around a rectangular red dance floor, framed by curtains, LED strips and reflective padding. ‘We start by understanding the venue: its architecture, its neighbourhood, and the cultural scene around it,’ says Frisch. ‘We can’t reproduce a single model.’

Later this month, Silencio will take up residence in Berlin’s former Watergate nightclub, overlooking the Spree in Kreuzberg. Running until May 2027, the pop-up will host a different collective each weekend, allowing successive organisers to shape the programme and bring their own following to an address already familiar to the city’s clubbers.

For the opening, artist and architect Marc Leschelier is working with Studio Karhard, with lighting by Studio Raito and visual identity by Bureau Borsche. Leschelier’s practice draws on construction and heavy industry, giving the temporary occupation a vocabulary of weight and apparent permanence. ‘What I find extraordinary in his work is the precision and economy of his vocabulary,’ says Leschelier. ‘A few elements can acquire an incredibly strong presence and create an entire atmosphere.’

Silencio is accustomed to temporary arrangements, having become a familiar presence on the international art and film circuit, with pop-ups around the Venice Biennale, Cannes Film Festival and Art Basel Miami Beach. In February, it spent three nights at the West Hollywood Edition during Frieze Los Angeles.

Frisch is considering a hotel, too, although he offers no definite plans. His interest in hospitality has always accommodated screenings, dinners and conversations alongside the music; somewhere to stay would extend that thinking. Berlin, meanwhile, offers ample reason to retain his faith in the nightclub as a destination in itself. A book due in September 2027 will collect Silencio’s first 15 years. Frisch has plenty of material, and a reservation about dwelling on it: ‘A club cannot be preserved like a museum; it has to respond to new generations, new artists and changes in the city around it.’

lesilencio.com