I think we live in a world in which we want experience more than ever.

I think the post-Covid world really put a battery in the back for that.

And Luna Luna didn't sacrifice the artists to execute that, and it did that in 1987.

It is a complete integration, artistic, wine tourism and architecture, with the addition of one, one, a real gastronomic offer that is now very important.

Even me being here every day and working for years, you find moments with the light and with views and things all the time that you might not seen before.

Luna Luna was born from the mind of an incredible artist, curator, peace activist, radio show host, pop star Andre Heller.

Andre had this incredible idea and vision to invite some of the biggest artists of that time to basically design the entire park.

So rides, games, interactive pavilions.

Roughly 1974 he comes up with this idea that he wants to build a fine art amusement park.

His buddy says, oh, I know Dali.

And the next day they get on a plane, fly to Spain, sit with Dali for two days.

He brings up the idea, and Dali says, if you could ever figure this out, all participate.

He reached out to Andy Warhol and Andy connected him with Roy Lichtenstein.

Roy Lichtenstein said: "You got to talk to David Hockney."

So Andre, he met with Keith Haring.

Keith Haring connected him to his good friend Kenny Scharf.

Andre connected with Jean-Michel Basquiat and, you know, convinced him also to be a part of this project.

My name is Keith Haring.

I'm from New York City, and, I got involved in the Luna Luna project about a year ago when Andre Heller came and asked me if I was interested in doing something for the project .

Immediately I thought the idea is to have a great because it is, in a way, something that has been a fantasy of mine since the first time that I went to Disneyland.

You have an incredible representation of different art movements.

Also different artists are at very different stages of their careers.

You know, major names in the art world.

And then you have this up and coming class coming out of New York.

All these artists are in their 80s.

You're young as artists in your 20s, and then they have everything in between.

He would look at the artist in the eye and would just ask them a simple question of: "Have you ever been a child?"

and everyone would say: "Yes."

And this desire to connect back in this nostalgic quality of Luna Parks and thinking back to the way Luna Parks made you feel when you were a child, I think everyone you know remembers these experiences with family or friends, and being able to provide that for people and being able to create a ride or a pavilion is a unique opportunity for these artists.

I think it all starts with the story.

It's part storytelling, part experience.

Luna Luna was born, it's shown for the first time during this one summer in 1987, nearly 300,000 people attended, during that summer.

You have the ability to take yourself into the world that existed for three months in 1987.

Understand what Andre did to to build this incredible park and look at what I think the possibility of the future is.

People reacted, you know, with excitement.

They were I mean, is they never seen anything like this.

What's also really unique is that, Luna Luna kind of fell out of history books.

So I've met with a couple of people that attended the original Luna Luna, but 30 years later, they kind of question their memory of like, was that was that a dream or was that real?

Andre had the plan to take it around the world.

He didn't have the means at the time to, to do that.

So he started to figure out who could help him, realizing the dream.

That ended up falling apart, which turned into quite a long legal battle where the art stayed store in Europe until 2007.

Andre won.

44 shipping containers get sent to the storage in Texas and sit there, from 2007 and until 2022.

My partner, Michael Goldberg, he stumbles upon this article written by Colby Mugrabi and her blog Mini Muse.

I just fell in love with that and felt that it was something that the world needed.

He becomes fascinated with Luna Luna, the concept, can't believe it's real.

So fascinating that he tries to get in touch with Andre.

Eventually they have a real dialog and he's supposed to go fly to Vienna and Covid happens.

I talked to Future, Drake's manager, and Drake and get them on board, and we all kind of come together to figure out bringing this back to life.

It was a massive feat.

So, you know, we transferred 44 shipping containers from Texas to L.A., we started to unpack everything.

And, this warehouse and, everything was really nicely packed, but it didn't exactly come with detailed instructions.

So our team had to take an inventory of all of the 44 containers and start to organize it.

Everything was purchased sight unseen.

So we didn't even know the state of what it would be when we opened it.

And thank God we got extremely lucky.

And all of the artworks were in impeccable shape.

Once all of the works are reassembled, you got into: "Okay, how do we get them to mechanically run again?"

And something like the Basquiat Ferris wheel or the Kenny Scharf wave swinger... The Ferris wheel is from the 1930s, the wave swingers is from the 40's... And so we're talking about works that are almost 100 years old.

One of my favorite works is Andre Heller's wedding chapel.

Just based on what it represented at that time in 1987.

The Berlin Wall is still up and Germany is split.

It's not a place that people could openly have same sex or biracial marriages.

And Andre created the wedding chapel as a place that people get married to whomever or whatever they want.

And it's amazing to still see people come enjoy themselves, get married to, you know, friends, family, loved ones and just have a great time.

Daniel Sperry, who did the Crap Chancellery, which is based off of Nazi architecture, with piles of [censored] in front of it.

It's both funny, satirical, joyful.

There's so many emotions that it can come from Luna Luna.

We have a new commission that we're really excited about for this iteration in New York.

It's by a duo called Poncilí Creación.

They've developed this set of building blocks where kids, adults, all our guests are able to collaborate and create these unique, fantastical characters.

They've also developed a cast of characters that roam around the experience and interact with guests, that were inspired by the original performers that animated Luna Luna in Hamburg in 1987.

For us as a kid comes here, doesn't really have interest in art, and all of a sudden to use all the different ways that art could show up, whether it's, you know, the beautiful archway by Sonia Delaunay or something more experiential, like Roy Lichtenstein's glass labyrinth, Andre was ahead of his time.

He realized that if I give people things that I know they already enjoy and love, and I don't think there's many kids who don't enjoy fairs, amusement parks, things of that nature, and then I marry them with the best artists in the world.

I really look at Luna Luna as this incredible Trojan horse where you think they're coming to go to this Luna Park where you're going to experience just rides games, but it really turns into this incredible showcase of what art can be.

And there's all these different sides to it.

You could be having fun and smiling, and the next thing you know, you get a little scared and it turns the corner.

So we're excited to try to bring that back today and allow people new generation to experience that.

Let me offer you an entertainment experience, an immersive experience, and then let me introduce you to these great artists.

It really is, I think, potentially a gateway drug for so many people who wouldn't necessarily end up in a gallery or museum to potentially go down the path of of being interested in the arts.

I look at Luna Luna as a platform for incredible artists to create, play, like it's just mirroring those two things.

That could be a ride, that can be an attraction, that can be an immersive experience, that can be merchandise.

Really, we just want to take the best artist in the world and give them that opportunity and create things that are extremely accessible to kind of the widest audience.

We hope that people walk away and start to just think a little bit differently about what the possibilities of the world are.

It's incredible what can be done when you empower artists and allow them to create.

And I think Luna Luna is an incredible showcase of that.

There's different ways of experiencing art, especially in the broader sense, right?

So literature, music, theater, film.

The relation sometimes these boundaries between art and architecture and painters and sculptors, singers, they are constructed and we should sometimes feel a bit freer to break them down.

Château Lacoste began with a wine estate.

Here, the land is the king, the queen, since it has been a wine estate for a very long time.

The base is the vine, it's the fruit of the earth, it's to make wine.

The property has a long, long history.

You know, there's Roman ruins and old chapel onsite that Ando restored, there's a 17th century country house, Bastille, as you would say, As Patty would say, Patty, our boss, we're just custodians of this land, It's not... It didn't start with us.

It's been here a long time, with a rich history.

The artistic and architectural part was built and brought in as we went along to create this estate, this exceptional wine, architectural and artistic estate.

And all this between 2002 and now, it's been 20 years.

It's the vision of the owner who worked on this integration, which is quite unique in the world, because there are so many very nice estates.

And then, there are museums that are very beautiful and beautiful hotels.

But it's very unique to have everything in one place.

The history of the architecture was really the creation of the cellar, so the vine production cellar was entrusted to the architect Jean Nouvel.

It goes back to 2005.

And at that time, in 2005, almost 20 years ago in France, we were quite a precursor in entrusting the construction of an agricultural building to one of the greatest architects in the world.

And I think that was a real architectural starting point.

It's very unique to have architects of such great renown, to have buildings almost facing each other.

It's unique, it doesn't happen anywhere else.

There are the classic monumental works, plus the whole exhibition part as well.

The most majestic is the Art Center, which is now the artistic lung of the heart of the estate.

It's an exceptional place in which we managed to integrate a work by Alexander Calder and Louise Bourgeois, who are uniquely integrated on the water.

There's an interesting dialog between the nature, art and architecture is a big element, having architecture in all these places.

So Ando has done really five projects.

He did the entrance.

And then the art center we call it, or the Welcome Center.

Four Cubes to Contemplate Our Environment is a wooden timber pavilion that he designed and built to house an artwork by him, which is four glass cubes inviting people to reflect and for points that are important for the future of the environment.

And finally, he did two little origami benches, which are moments to pause and reflect and meditate in the nature on the walk here.

You have Oscar Niemeyer.

We were very lucky.

We have his signature curves for, mostly glazed exhibition space.

And then you have Renzo Piano, which is another exhibition space.

It's very unusual.

I mean, these are unconventional exhibition spaces, if you like.

Renzo Piano, you go down this corridor and then it opens up at an angle, with two glazed elevations.

The nature is all around you, and you're below the vines.

So it's all in line with the vines.

It's quite a very elegant, beautiful space.

I often tell the story of Renzo Piano with Lord Rodgers, Richard Rodgers.

We are also lucky to have another exceptional pavilion to present works.

And when we think that these two cooperated for the creation of the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, we can say today that it is the only other place in the world where the two of them, on a personal level, cohabit in a place where they are also somewhere gathered.

And it's true that it's history repeating itself and that's what makes Château Lacoste unique.

To my understanding, the biggest inspiration is the place.

Provence itself is quite a magical place and is quite well known.

And it's very romantic area, region, of the world a strong history of art and culture and food, nature, the views and the light.

It is quite extraordinary.

So this is something that the artist architects respond to.

It's often repeated that the the guys looking after the vines, are the most important and the best artists here because they in the heat of the summer and the cold winter, they are making sure that they're setting the environment for all these projects is beautifully maintained.

Each of the architectural and artistic works is not purchased and installed.

They are createdon site by the architects, by the artists who come and discover the place, who inhabit it, who understand it and who give birth to their work in the place they choose.

It becomes a completely adjoining part of the estate.

These are not art works that we put down like that.

And you can feel that, because everything coexists very well together.

This is Bob Dylan's rail cut.

So Bob Dylan is obviously very well known for other art forms, writing, poetry, singing.

But he is quite a serious artist since maybe 30 years of painting and drawing.

But he started to make these kind of assemblage pieces of welded Americana industrial materials from American history, alongside railings and more decorative elements.

In other works, they tend to be gates.

Once he realized the extent of the place, I think his idea became more ambitious.

And eventually he acquired this old, 1920s train wagon.

So the image of the train as a metaphor is an analogy, but also an American history of adventure.

I mean, it relates to the nature of these welded assembly pieces, which is very much from an era of American industrialization and adventure.

And so he brought this here to Provence and sited it opposite the vines of this amazing view, and invited people in to discover the the rail car.

People visit different times year, and then people have it in their mind that, South France, Provence, you go in the summer and then they come back another time of year and wow, so nice in the spring, the winter, the light is very clear in the winter.

And there's the oaks and the vines and some leaves or leaves.

So the visibility is very different.

You see projects through the trees that you might not necessarily see in the summer, because the leaves block the view.

The nature is a big part of that.

There's no barriers.

I think that the phenomenon of appropriation of art has a very different dimension between a museum.

In exceptional tourist cities like Florence, where you wait an hour before entering a magnificent room, but with a thousand people around... Do we have enough serenity?

Do we have the right mindset?

It's more difficult.

Here, it's an immersion.

It's 200 hectares of nature, in a truly exceptional environment, where you decide to experience art at your own pace, at your own speed.

It's what we want.

In a museum, it's difficult because you have to respect a certain sense.

Here, we go left, right, in front, behind, we come back, we do as we want.

In fact, it's an open-air museum that has a more important dimension unfortunately since Covid, when we couldn't go to museums, because they were closed.

Here, it was open, because we're outside.

Interactive element, is very important here.

And that, a lot of people say you can't touch sculptures, you don't touch the art.

They were inviting people to push it, move it and interact with it.

Is this idea of discovery, new adventure, not to create a park and such.

We really wanted art to be totally accessible.

The most important thing here is to see the children, running, playing, climbing on the works of art, touching them, playing with them.

And that, they realize, and that speaks a lot to children.

I think it's an exceptional initiation.

We work a lot with local schools in the region.

We invite them.

So it's only children who live in the region and we see them come back on weekends with their parents, because the children discover the place and say to their parents: "It's great."

And it's the children who come because they know theyir parents are going to like it.

We may have less of that in a traditional museum.

The approach is very different.

The impetus is more joy, pleasure, relaxant.

And there's no obligation to read a lot of texts and find out this, that and the other.

The only obligation is to walk around and open your mind to the projects and the interventions that people have made.

So the act of walking, I mean, it's meditative, it's relaxing.

It's, it's a wonderful experience.

I think it touches people.

You know, I think people is it creates wonderful memories.

When I first learned about the project in 2019, at that time, there was a lot of big stunts being done by brands.

You know, your brand slightly logos on hot air balloons and flying them around.

And, you know, in my mind they were visually interesting, but they lacked depth and, you know, even lacked an element of experience for people like you could see it, but you couldn't really interact with it.

Where I think Luna Luna is this, incredible middle ground where you're able to look at these incredible artworks, where artists are doing something that they never done before.

But at the same time you're able to interact with them.

I hope people just take away the sentiment that things of this nature can be done, that you can have crazy dreams and actually go execute them, and that this idea can live on with this just being the foundation for what Luna Luna is.

And all the lifestyle there is around, which we have created around this place, allows people to feel good.

It's quite hedonistic.

We live, we see, we taste, we enjoy, we breathe, we hear.

It's completely multi-sensory and I think the experience and integration is totally different.

The goal is to take the 1987 Forgotten Fantasy exhibition go across the world one time.

Hopefully once that is finished we'll be able to find a permanent home for the original works.

Whether that be our own museum or partnering with another institution.

And at the same time creating different experiences, whether that be in a new amusement park, attractions at, institutions, or just great entertainment experiences and merchandise.