01There's a light artwork above the bar
Built together with Boris Acket. It's fully programmable and works with three shades of white light: from cold and sharp to warm and low. It isn't mood lighting but an instrument: the bar looks different at four in the afternoon than at two in the morning, and that isn't an accident.
02Who came up with ‘hyper-dimensional’?
Not us. Amsterdam Dance Event put it on our venue page when we first took part officially in 2021: a new hyper-dimensional space in industrial Houthavens, Amsterdam West. It stuck because it is accurate: the room is something different every week without anything being rebuilt.
03It started as a listening bar
The opening plan from the summer of 2021 put it plainly: a listening bar with a Friday and Saturday programme running until around three, where artists were asked to play their own record collection and dancing was explicitly not the point. That idea comes from the Japanese jazz kissa of the late 1920s, cafés where, for the price of a coffee, you could listen to a record collection on equipment you would never own at home. There is a good deal of dancing here these days, but the starting point never changed: the sound first, everything else after.
04Not home, not the office
The room was designed as a third place: something between home and work, where you can walk in without a plan or a dress code. That same set-up is what makes it so usable when you take it for an evening. Apart from the bar nothing is fixed, so the room becomes whatever you need that evening and something else again the next morning.
05The marble bar
The bar is cut from Emperador marble and runs the full length of the room, in a warm grey industrial space left otherwise bare. That combination is the whole idea in miniature: the expensive material and the rough material side by side, neither of them hidden.
06Borisov is a comet, and not the first one
In 2017, 1I/ʻOumuamua became the first object ever observed passing through our solar system from outside it. Nobody knew quite what it was. Our previous bar on Asterweg in Amsterdam Noord was named after it. Two years later the Crimean amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov found the second: 2I/Borisov. So by the time we started here, the name was already waiting.
07Who's behind it
Borisov was started by Remi Versteeg and Stijn de Weerd of the architecture practice Beyond Space, together with Skip Tammer, Jesse and Floris Lugtmeijer of Jongens van de Bar. Day-to-day it's now run by Merrick Nowak and Freddie Morris. Requests go through info@borisov.amsterdam, but you can also email Merrick or Freddie directly.
08Giegling played here, four days after it was announced
ADE 2021, Sunday 17 October. Giegling were due to play Amsterdam but had announced no venue. The flyer went online four days ahead with no address on it. It happened here, under the name Borisov Takeover. Leafar Legov, Molly, Lawrence, Edward, Maayan Nidam, Isolée and Map.ache all played live, alongside The Ghostbusters and DJ Dustin b2b Konstantin. A second room ran ambient all day. Doors at ten in the morning, because back then they had to be.
09The Saturday of ADE is always free
Since 2019, DOGMA and the Rotterdam label Nous’klaer Audio have run the Saturday here every ADE, and every year it is free. In 2021 that meant twelve hours straight, from Oceanic at midday to Oberman b2b Spekki Webu at eleven at night, with upsammy in between. Dutch music press later put it plainly: for a line-up like that you would normally pay proper money, but at Borisov you get it for nothing. We intend to keep it that way.
10We opened, and then everything closed
Borisov opened in October 2021. Two months later the country shut down again and we stayed closed until February. That was not a pleasant start, and it cost us something: the original idea of a listening bar, where the sound and not the night is the subject, never properly got going. What did come out of it is this place, with that same sound system, only carrying more kinds of evenings.
11The night stood up, and so did we
12 February 2022. Nightlife had been shut for months: everything had to close at ten in the evening, and before that only seated. That Saturday clubs across the country opened at the same time in protest, under the name De Nacht Staat Op, the night stands up. We joined. Everything open from midday, with Loradeniz, Ofra, Betonkust and Mayo from nine until three in the morning. The poster put it briefly: Borisov is standing up. Are you?
12We once made paella for the whole terrace
In August 2022 Frederieke Bloem did a Spanish pop-up here: long tables outside, yellow parasols, blue oil drums full of plants in between, and a paella a metre across over the fire. She has since grown into her own catering company. She started small here, on the car park.
13A chef who now runs his own place cooked here
On 8 and 9 July 2022 Niels van Zijl did a pop-up here: five courses, the marble bar as the pass, the whole dinner sent out along its full length. Tomato with strawberry, fuet and crispy chilli oil to open, juniper yoghurt ice with spruce tips to close. He came from De Librije and Kadeau, was named New Chef on the Block by Gault&Millau that year, and later opened Heimat on Biltstraat in Utrecht. Nights like that are exactly what the room is for.
14December is for Christmas dinners
Every year December fills up with private Christmas dinners: companies, families, groups of friends. The room goes onto long tables, the kitchen runs a set menu and the bar stays open as long as it stays good. If you want a date, ask early. December is usually full by October.
15Boris stands outside
On 8 April 2022 a sculpture came out of a van that we have simply called Boris ever since: a life-size cast after the Farnese Hercules, lion skin and club included. It took ten people to get him off the pallet. He did not stand there alone at first: a female figure stood beside him until it was destroyed a few years ago. Boris is still there, and he is not going anywhere. His colleagues are drawn on the wall inside, so it adds up.
16The drawing on the wall
A large line drawing by Alfons Hooikaas, who also made the entire identity. It refers to the plaque that went into space with Pioneer 10 in 1972: a man and a woman, drawn in case anyone ever ran into them. On our wall there are five of them.
17The building was here first
Rigakade 10 sits in the Houthavens, among the industrial units. A warm grey industrial space with southwest-facing windows and a marble bar running its full length.
