MRSYCHOTIC: THE ARCHITECT OF A NEW DANCE FLOOR.

2019: BEFORE THE LIGHTS TURNED ON :

Every generation leaves behind evidence of its existence. Sometimes it's found in literature. Sometimes it's found in cinema. Sometimes it's found in political movements. And sometimes, it's found somewhere much less expected: on a crowded dance floor at two in the morning.

For years, nightlife in Beirut has been one of the city's most complex cultural ecosystems. It has always reflected the country itself: fragmented, contradictory, vibrant, exhausted, beautiful, and constantly reinventing itself. Beirut has always danced, but the reasons behind that dance have changed from one generation to another. For example, Millennials inherited one version of the city, while Gen Z inherited another. A generation that grew up between economic collapse, political uncertainty, social transformation, digital hyperconnectivity, and one of the most devastating moments in Lebanon's modern history. And perhaps that's why this generation approaches nightlife differently. For Gen Z, a party is rarely just a party. It's a form of escape. It's a social experiment. It's a way of reclaiming space. And before MrSychotic became one of the names associated with Beirut's evolving nightlife scene, Peter Mhanna was already exploring these questions through another medium entirely: visual art.

BEFORE MRSYCHOTIC, THERE WAS AN ARTIST :

Peter's creative journey didn't begin behind a DJ booth. It began inside classrooms, studios, and through a camera lens.

After studying visual arts in college, he started developing highly experimental visual projects that reflected his personal aesthetic. Photography became one of his primary forms of expression. He created conceptual images, worked with models, and built narratives through visual composition. But his work was never simply about taking photographs. It was about creating worlds. His first major creative project, POPSYCHO, allowed him to explore the relationship between image and identity. Later, Sychonik expanded that exploration even further. The visual language became increasingly influenced by internet culture, digital identities, fictional characters, and hyperpop, but these weren't references Peter discovered later in his creative career. Pop culture had been part of his vocabulary long before he began calling himself an artist. From a young age, Peter was constantly consuming it, absorbing it, dissecting it, and allowing it to shape the way he understood the world. He was, in his own way, eating, breathing, and sleeping pop culture, music, television, fashion, characters, imagery, internet phenomena, the strange and the excessive, everything that could capture his attention and trigger his imagination. It became less something he consumed and more something he carried with him. As he grew older and began developing his own artistic language, all of those references naturally began resurfacing through his work. The characters he created, the way he photographed people, the aesthetics he constructed, everything that existed outside conventional culture all carried traces of that early fascination. He wasn't simply reproducing the culture he grew up consuming; he was taking it apart, remixing it, exaggerating it, and turning it into something of his own. This was also the moment when the “Sychotic” universe began taking shape. Looking back, it's impossible to separate these early visual experiments from the person he would eventually become. Because the DNA of MRSYCHOTIC was already there. The fascination with characters. The attraction toward everything unconventional. The desire to challenge traditional creative boundaries.The refusal to remain inside one category.

"I wanted to showcase all the characters I had created."

WHEN IMAGES BECOME IMMERSIVE :

A photograph freezes time. But people don't stand still. Music doesn't stand still. Communities don't stand still. This was the realization that changed everything.

In 2019, Peter organized his first event at Station Beirut, and this was really the moment where he began digging deeper into what a party could become for him. At the time, he wasn't thinking about building a nightlife career or becoming an event organizer; he was simply following the same instinct that had already pushed him toward photography and visual art, the need to take an idea out of his head and give it a physical form. Peter didn't know how to DJ yet, either. The music was initially handled by a friend who would DJ at his events, while the two of them would spend time together curating playlists, discovering tracks, and figuring out what kind of sound could accompany the worlds Peter was creating visually. The music was therefore already part of the creative process from the beginning, even before Peter eventually stepped behind the decks himself.

That first event became an experiment in bringing all of these interests together. He had been creating characters, photographing models, developing visual identities, and constructing very specific worlds through his work, and suddenly he had access to something a photograph couldn't provide: movement, sound, bodies, atmosphere, and unpredictability. A party gave him the ability to place people inside the world rather than simply asking them to look at it. He began learning what it meant to build an atmosphere, how music could change the way people experienced a space, how a venue could become an extension of a visual concept, and how the audience itself could become part of the artwork. What started as an extension of his visual practice slowly became its own creative language. He wasn't becoming an event organizer because he had planned to enter nightlife; he was discovering that nightlife itself could become another medium for his art.

2022: A CITY TRYING TO BREATHE AGAIN

If 2019 represented experimentation, 2022 represented reconstruction. Lebanon was attempting to rebuild itself. The country had changed; its people had changed. And this is why Peter's next creative chapter arrived at exactly the right moment. He wanted to create underground hyperpop parties. At first glance, it seemed almost impossible. Hyperpop wasn't a dominant genre in Beirut; it wasn't commercially safe. It wasn't universally understood. But maybe that was precisely the point. Hyperpop doesn't obey traditional structures. It blends genres. It rejects labels. It embraces chaos. And in many ways, hyperpop became the perfect soundtrack for a generation that had grown up surrounded by instability. The first events took place at Ballroom Blitz. Later, expanded into other venues in Beirut. The crowds became larger. The communities became stronger. And slowly, something new began emerging.

THIS IS NOT A CLUB

The most revealing moment during our conversation came when Peter described his events.

"I describe my parties as a giant house party."

Not a nightclub. Not a commercial venue. Not an industry product. A house party.

And that distinction changes everything. Because house parties operate according to entirely different social rules. They're intimate, familiar, and they're built around trust. You don't enter a house party expecting perfection. You enter expecting connection. And that's exactly what Licious offers.

Beirut's nightlife has often been heavily influenced by business. And that's understandable. Nightlife is an industry. But Peter wanted to create something that felt more human, more immersive, more authentic. He wanted people to feel understood.

"We want people to feel like we get them."

SIX HOURS OF FREEDOM

For Peter, a party should be about having fun. That, for him, is the foundation. Before the impact, before the cultural significance, before any larger interpretation of what a gathering can represent, there has to be joy. People should be able to come into a room, forget about everything outside of it for a few hours, dance to music they love, meet people, and simply exist. But in Lebanon, where the ability to exist freely is often shaped by social expectations, political realities, economic pressure, and deeply rooted ideas about who people are supposed to be, even that simple act of having fun can be described as cultural. Peter recognizes that the moment you intentionally create a space where people can express themselves without having to constantly measure or defend who they are, you're already making a statement.

This is where Peter's idea of the "giant house party" becomes more meaningful. A house party, in his understanding, isn't simply a different way of describing a nightclub. It represents a different social contract. You don't enter a house expecting to be evaluated. You enter because you were invited. You are allowed to move through the space in your own way. There is an intimacy to it, even when hundreds of people are present. Peter wanted to preserve that feeling as the parties grew, rather than allowing Licious to become another polished nightlife product where the audience is simply a consumer. The intention was to create an environment where people could recognize themselves in one another and, more importantly, recognize themselves in the space.

"We want people to feel like we get you."

That sentence feels particularly important when thinking about inclusion. Peter isn't describing a space where everyone is expected to behave identically in order to belong. He's describing the opposite: a space that has to be large enough, emotionally and culturally, to contain difference. Licious has moved between sounds, aesthetics, themes, and audiences rather than trying to define one fixed identity for itself. There can be something for the Gen Z crowd, something that speaks to millennials, something pop-driven, something more melodic, something chaotic, something nostalgic. That becomes particularly significant in a country like Lebanon, where nightlife can sometimes reproduce the same divisions that exist outside of it. Social circles can be closed, spaces can feel inaccessible, and certain environments can make people conscious of how they look, who they're with, what they're wearing, or how they're behaving. Peter's approach is almost deliberately opposite. He wants the party to feel alive because the people inside it are different, not because they have been made to fit into a particular image of what nightlife should look like. Acceptance isn't something printed on a poster; it has to be felt when you walk through the door. And that is why Peter describes the freedom inside these spaces with such urgency.

"We're very limited with our freedom. This is a place where everyone can find themselves."

This is also why Licious cannot be understood simply through the music it plays. Music may be what brings people through the door, but the culture created around it is what makes them stay. The sound can be hyperpop, experimental, nostalgic, or something completely unexpected, but underneath all of it is the same proposition: you are allowed to exist here. And in a country where so many young people are constantly negotiating their place within society, that proposition carries weight. Unlike the society outside, its rules can be rewritten. For six hours, people can inhabit identities that feel impossible elsewhere. They can become louder, softer, expressive, playful, strange. They can dance with someone they've never met, wear something they wouldn't dare wear during the day, disappear into a crowd, or stand directly in the center of it. They can experience a version of themselves that doesn't have to survive according to the usual rules. And perhaps that is the quiet revolution Peter has been building all along: not telling people who they should become, but giving them somewhere to become whoever they already are.

There is an enormous amount contained within that sentence. "Everyone" is the important word. The person who comes every weekend and the person who has never been to a party before. The extrovert and the person standing quietly at the edge of the room. Different generations, different identities, different backgrounds, different ways of moving through the world. For a few hours, these differences coexist without disappearing.

THE FUTURE OF THE DANCE FLOOR

When asked about the future, Peter doesn't immediately speak about larger venues, bigger crowds, or numbers. His answer returns to something much more fundamental: freedom. More freedom on the dance floor, more openness toward unfamiliar sounds, more room for experimentation, and more people willing to discover music outside what they already know. For him, growth doesn't seem to be measured by how large Licious can become, but by how much space it can continue to create for people. There is a certain resistance in that idea. In an industry that naturally pushes creative projects toward scale, visibility, and commercial success, Peter remains interested in what happens when growth doesn't come at the expense of intimacy.

"I hope we will see more freedom on the dance floor, and our parties will reach people who are open to our music."

That openness is particularly important to Peter because music has never been an afterthought within his work. It is part of the architecture. The way a party sounds determines how it moves, how people interact, what kind of energy develops inside the room, and ultimately what kind of community begins to form around it. His approach to music curation is therefore inseparable from his approach to people. And this is where Peter's journey comes full circle. He began by creating images, characters, and visual worlds. Then he began constructing physical environments around them. He eventually learned to DJ, turning sound into another material through which those worlds could exist. What began as experimentation gradually became a language of its own.

MRSYCHOTIC, then, isn't simply a persona. It is the accumulation of everything Peter has spent years exploring. The visual artist who learned to make images move. The obsessive consumer of pop culture who learned to transform his references rather than simply reproduce them. The creator who entered nightlife without initially intending to become part of it. The person who learned to DJ because the person who used to handle the music had left. The organizer who understood that a party could become more than an event.

And eventually, the person who realized that the most important thing he could build wasn't a party at all. It was a place.

A place where music could be unfamiliar without being intimidating. Where fashion could be excessive without being judged. Where identities could remain fluid. Where different generations could occupy the same room without having to become the same generation. Where people could come from completely different backgrounds and still recognize something familiar in one another. That is the most interesting part of Peter's trajectory. His work has never really been about creating something finished. It has always been about creating environments where something can happen.

Every person who enters alters the atmosphere. Every song changes the room. Every interaction creates something that could never have been planned beforehand. This unpredictability is part of what makes nightlife such a powerful artistic medium for Peter. He can construct the conditions, but he cannot completely control the outcome, which is why Licious feels so closely connected to the generation it emerged from.

Gen Z has grown up inside a culture of constant remixing. Images are remixed. Music is remixed. Identities are remixed. References from decades ago suddenly become relevant again. Something created yesterday can become outdated tomorrow, only to return months later in a completely different form. Peter's work exists naturally within that environment because he has always treated culture as something alive, something to consume, question, distort, rebuild, and give back.

The future of the dance floor, then, isn't necessarily about making it bigger, but making it more immersive, more experimental, accepting, and more unpredictable.

The value of a space like Licious is that it gives people somewhere to party and somewhere to practice freedom. And in Lebanon, where freedom can feel conditional, temporary, or unevenly distributed, practicing it together becomes meaningful.

Somewhere between the music, the lights, the sweat, the noise, the strange outfits, the friendships, and the six-hour escapes from reality, an entire generation has found a temporary home. The outside world hasn’t changed. For a few hours, they’ve simply created another one. Because sometimes revolutions don't happen in the streets. Sometimes, they happen on the dance floor.