CdM
    Aldo Gigli

    Aldo Gigli · Co-founder of the Mirano Continental · set designer and graphic artist

    When the Night Inspires Advertising

    Aldo Gigli's talent went far beyond nightlife. The owners of the Mirano Continental, Paul Sterck and Marco Rolland, had set up an agency, K comme Communication, shortened to KCC, where Aldo worked on sets as well as on communication. What the club had invented for its own nights, brands now came looking for.

    The mechanism was simple. The Mirano was an extremely fashionable venue with an ultra premium image, where the Brussels advertising world gathered at night. Perrier, Philip Morris, Nescafé and many others turned to the agency run by the people who knew how to draw that crowd. Marco Rolland, historically the artistic director of the Mirano, left that role to become artistic director of the agency: the beginning of a profession that had no common name yet, event communication strategy.

    In 1986-87, KCC staged a Swatch party at the Halles de Schaerbeek. Aldo treated the hall as a stage set: a giant dial built into the volume, numerals painted at the scale of the building, hand-painted backdrops in front of which performers mimed the hands of a watch. The brand is not placed on the event, it is its architecture.

    The same logic produced the Perrier car, an American sedan entirely covered with golden bottle caps, laid one by one by Nanard, who also worked at the Mirano in those years. It travelled to every Perrier event produced by the agency, and it was parked outside the entrance of the Mirano: it caused a sensation before people even walked through the door.

    In 1989, Aldo's lay-outs for the Brussels Film Festival show the method at its most accomplished: the forecourt at night, red carpet and beams in the sky, then the packed auditorium, screen, guest seats and audience drawn row by row. The drawing does not describe a set, it shows the evening already succeeding.

    This is where the threads meet. Marco Rolland had hired Carl De Moncharline because his first action, Barbare Changée, already disrupted established codes. Carl joined K comme Communication as assistant to the artistic director, before becoming artistic director of the Mirano himself, alongside his role at the agency.

    The Painted Dial, Swatch Party
    Colour photograph, vertical format. In front of a hand-painted backdrop, a watch dial with Roman numerals framed by trompe-l'oeil marble columns, ivy and blue sky, a performer in a black suit, round black glasses and yellow gloves mimes the hands, one arm raised, the other held horizontally. The painted set and the performer's body become one: the brand turns into a living picture.Swatch party, K comme Communication (KCC), 1986-87. Painted backdrop: Aldo Gigli.
    The Perrier Car, 1986-87
    Colour photograph, horizontal format. On a lawn, in front of a half-timbered villa covered with clipped ivy, a 1960s American sedan entirely clad in golden bottle caps, Belgian plate GMH 842. On either side, large green panels bearing the Perrier logo in white letters. Clad cap by cap, the car turns an ordinary body shell into a collector's advertising object.Perrier car made by Nanard, who also worked at the Mirano in the 1980s. Used at every Perrier event produced by K comme Communication (KCC), and displayed outside the entrance of the Mirano Continental.
    The Perrier Car, Body Detail
    Colour photograph, horizontal format, taken in front of a classical stone façade. The body, bonnet, wings, doors and roof, disappears beneath thousands of golden bottle caps laid one by one, in tight rows following the curves; only the chrome, the bumpers and the windows remain bare. Belgian plate BKN 196. Close up, the effect is part scale, part mosaic: craftsmanship applied to an advertising operation.Perrier car made by Nanard, K comme Communication (KCC), 1986-87.
    Brussels Film Festival Lay-out, the Exterior, 1989
    Lay-out by Aldo Gigli, marker and gouache on paper, horizontal format. Night view of a monumental forecourt: a red carpet crosses the esplanade up to the steps, the façades are bathed in light, beams sweep the midnight-blue sky and partner signs, Philip Morris, Perrier, Nescafé, punctuate the scene. The drawing sets the arrival of the audience before the event even exists.Original lay-out by Aldo Gigli for the Brussels Film Festival, K comme Communication (KCC), 1989.
    Brussels Film Festival Lay-out, the Auditorium, 1989
    Lay-out by Aldo Gigli, marker and gouache on paper, horizontal format. Interior view of a packed cinema: the screen and stage at the back, rows of spectators seen from behind, a guest seating area marked Philip Morris and, in the foreground, a figure in a blue jacket giving the scale. The drawing is made to convince as much as to build: the client sees a full house before the first screening.Original lay-out by Aldo Gigli for the Brussels Film Festival, K comme Communication (KCC), 1989.
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