How Nicolas Winding Refn and Hideo Kojima Turned Friendship Into an Art Installation

The friendship between Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn and Japanese game creator Hideo Kojima is an unusual one. Though separated by geography and language, the pair have forged an unexpectedly intimate bond. “We’ve never had a conversation except through other people,” Refn said. Over the years, they’ve connected through music, visuals, and ideas—like two satellites orbiting each other, Kojima explained, communicating from afar.

Satellites, in fact, inspired the title and concept of Refn and Kojima’s first collaborative installation, which debuted at Prada’s Aoyama store in Tokyo in 2025. Now, an expanded edition of that same exhibition has landed at New York’s Hotel Chelsea as part of Prada Mode, the Italian house’s traveling cultural series.

From June 3–7, Satellites II transforms the historic hotel into a space station, with rooms reimagined in silver and with cloud motifs to offer a “spatial narrative.” As in Aoyama, the installation is anchored by pairs of retro-futuristic television sets, each playing footage of either Refn or Kojima taking turns contemplating connection, creativity, identity, and death, in English and Japanese. It’s as if a conversation between the artists were unfolding in real time, across airwaves.

Though alien at first glance, the installation is personal for both Refn and Kojima. Threaded throughout the work are elements from their creative universes, they told me ahead of the show’s opening.

Chief among them, of course, are the screens, a canvas that the director and game creator both share. Television “fundamentally changed our lives,” Refn said. For Kojima, while growing up in Tokyo, television offered glimpses beyond Japan. Reflecting on his childhood, he said via an interpreter: “When I say I’m connected to the world, I don’t mean the internet. I mean T.V.”

But Satellites II is also borne out of a deep kinship. “We talked about each other and that became an installation,” Kojima said, referring to Satellites in Tokyo. “We didn’t know how people would react to that. We’re just inviting people to come join our satellite with its own gravitational force.”

Worlds Apart

Refn and Kojima connected more than a decade ago, “on what you would consider a blind date,” the filmmaker said. At this point, Kojima had built an empire off his blockbuster Metal Gear series. A fan of Refn’s movies, he reached out to the director shortly after the release of 2011’s Drive, the film that rocketed Refn and his star Ryan Gosling to prominence. 

Their initial meeting in London would translate into an enduring friendship, conducted over letters then text messages. In lieu of words, they sent each other photos, videos, music, and emojis. “We kind of talk in that way,” Kojima said. “And it’s hard for us to argue,” Refn added.

Collaborating for Satellites then Satellites II was an equally harmonious experience. One reason? Because they work in entirely different realms, the pair said. “If we created a game together or made a movie together, it wouldn’t have worked out creatively,” Kojima reflected (though Refn did provide motion capture for a character in Kojima’s 2019 game Death Stranding).

“It was very easy for us to collaborate, because we were coming from two different worlds,” Refn added. “We’re like air and water, or fire and clouds.”

The installation’s locations reflect those separate worlds. While Satellites opened in Tokyo, where Kojima was born, Satellites II is taking place in the city where Refn grew up. He remembers visiting the YMCA a few blocks over from Hotel Chelsea and the comic book store next door.

Still, there’s much Refn and Kojima share, as reflected in Satellites II. There’s their similar interests in UFOs, for instance, as much as their inner emotional landscapes. Kojima pointed out how the show reveals “what we think about, what we fear, how we fail,” while Refn noted how it explodes the idea that creativity should be measured by success or failure. “Satellites,” he added, “is an emotion.”

“People think that we creators are tough. But Nicolas has a glass heart and so do I. We’re emotional,” Kojima explained. “I want future creators to understand that we are human, that you can be yourself.”

Worlds Collide

Subtly running through both Satellites, too, is a motif of technology—in the T.V.s, the satellites, the scattered cassette tapes. Modern media has likewise facilitated Refn and Kojima’s connection, but the duo seem to embrace both the difference and distance between them.

“If the communication is too close, you might clash or develop wrong emotional conclusions,” Kojima said. Refn added: “You show yourself a lot when you can’t use words.”

For Refn, working on the installation has drawn him and Kojima closer—they’re “more and more interconnected,” he said, almost “as one.” Their collaboration has grown ever more ambitious, he joked, that their next show might just pop up on Mars. (The pair are also planning to meet up in Rome in about a month, where, earlier this year, Refn lightly flirted with the idea that he and Kojima might co-curate a film festival.)

Kojima, at this point, simply deems them “old friends,” a feeling he’s carried with him since their first meeting. “We’re satellites in a way, so our relationship doesn’t really elevate or go down,” he said.

He continued, musing: “Maybe we’ll collide if we have to create something together in our individual fields, but then we could then do an installation not called Satellites, but Collision.”

“Major collision!” Refn added.

“Maybe we’ll make a new crater,” said Kojima.

Satellites II is on view June 3–4 to private members and June 5–7 to the public at the Hotel Chelsea, 222 W 23rd St, New York City.