Serpentine has revealed details of Park Nights 2023, its experimental, interdisciplinary, live programme sited within the annual architectural commission, the 22nd Serpentine Pavilion designed by Lina Ghotmeh.
Bringing together multi-disciplinary artists, and featuring rave music, performance installation, poetry and dance, the exciting live programme will invite audiences to engage, reflect, and connect. Park Nights runs from August to October.
PARK NIGHTS 2023
· Friday 25th August, 8pm, The Living and the Dead Ensemble
· Friday 15th September, 8pm, Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro
· Friday 29th September, 8pm, Bambii
· Friday 6th October, 8pm, Christelle Oyiri
· Friday 13th October, details to be announced soon
Friday 25th August 2023, 8pm
The Ensemble will present a rendition of their performance installation The Wake. Night has fallen on a world on fire. Demonstrations, earthquakes, forest fires, fire are everywhere. The Wake is a performance that reweaves a fragmented geography, a call, a burning manifesto for a possible future.
The Living and the Dead Ensemble are a group of artists, performers and poets from Haiti, France and the United Kingdom. They initially came together in Haiti 2017 to produce the Haitian Creole translation and performance of the play Monsieur Toussaint by Édouard Glissant. With texts, performances, films and installations, The Ensemble explores different ways of telling the history and the present from a Caribbean perspective.
Friday 15th September, 8pm
In September, visual artist, writer, and psychologist Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro will present a new performance and installation which explores ritual, dance and celebration in both Afro-Brazilian and Western cultures. Bringing together collaborators from different backgrounds, Vitorino Brasileiro will explore dance as a connective and healing practice that allows us to consider the relationships between interspecific spirituality and different forms of life.
Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro is currently featured in Third World: The Bottom Dimension, an exhibition, a video game and web3 tokens powered by Tezos at Serpentine North. The project is conceptualised by Brazilian artist Gabriel Massan in collaboration with invited interdisciplinary artists Novíssimo Edgar, and vocalist and music producer LYZZA.
Presented at Serpentine North from 23 June to 22 October 2023, the exhibition extends the ideas that have driven the creation and development of the mirroring video game. It offers audiences an opportunity to play the game in a communal setting around site-specific set design, sculptures, sound and films.
Friday 29th September, 8pm
As part of Park Nights 2023, Serpentine is pleased to present an evening of music with internationally acclaimed Producer and DJ Bambii.?
Bambii is Toronto-based and known for her genre-spanning sets which embrace the spirit of dance and rave culture and open new paths for the free exploration of music.
Whether online or on dancefloors, her music celebrates Black diasporic dance music’s ever-expanding reach, and the relationships it forges between individuals, cultures and spaces. She has spent the last few years touring the world as a solo artist as well as joining forces with well-known musicians, including Mykki Blanco, Kelela and BbyMutha. Her newest EP Infinity Club, released on 4 August 2023, features contributions from artists Lady Lykez, Aluna, Sydanie, Lamsi, and Ragz Originale.
Friday 6th October, 8pm, Christelle Oyiri
In October, Christelle Oyiri / CRYSTALLMESS will present a live iteration of her upcoming record with invited collaborators and musical guests.
Christelle Oyiri is a Paris-based artist and filmmaker. She is also known as DJ and electronic music producer CRYSTALLMESS and has performed around the world under this moniker. Oyiri engages with issues related to the collective memory of both forgotten and well-known mythologies, be they ancient or ultra-modern.
PARK NIGHTS Serpentine Pavilion, August – October PRICE: £10, £7 BUY
ABOUT
Each year, Park Nights presents a series of new performance commissions in Serpentine’s annual architectural commission, the Serpentine Pavilion which becomes the stage for a series of interdisciplinary artistic engagements on selected evenings this summer and autumn.
Since 2002, Park Nights has presented new works across art, music, film, theatre, dance, literature, philosophy, fashion, and technology. Each year’s commissions respond to the Pavilion and offer audiences unique ways to experience architecture and performance. The programme has supported many artists in the early stages of their careers, as well as pioneering writers and thinkers from around the world.
Previous programming has featured artists Etel Adnan, Eleanor Antin, Meriem Bennani, Black Quantum Futurism, Shawanda Corbett, Rhea Dillon, John Glacier, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Joseph Grigely, Dorothy Iannone, Arthur Jafa, Klein, Alexander Kluge, Linton Kwesi-Johnson, Lina Lapelyte, Mica Levi, Carrie Mae Weems, Oscar Murillo, Fred Moten together with Eileen Myles, Precious Okoyomon, Sondra Perry, Adam Phillips, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Pedro Reyes, TELFAR, Leslie Thornton, Wolfgang Tillmans, Kamasi Washington, Ai Weiwei, among many others.
Serpentine Park Nights 2023 is curated by Claude Adjil, Curator at Large, with Liz Stumpf, Assistant Curator.
Serpentine Pavilion The 22nd Pavilion is designed by French Lebanese Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh,and on view until 29th October 2023 with Goldman Sachs supporting the annual project for the 9th consecutive year.
Inspired by the architect’s Mediterranean heritage and fervent discussions around the table over current affairs, politics, personal lives, and dreams, the Pavilion is titled À table – a French call to sit down together at a table to listen, engage and participate in dialogue while sharing a meal. As such, the interior of the Pavilion features a concentric table along the perimeter, inviting us to convene, sit down, think, share and celebrate exchanges that enable new relationships to form.
Artists
The Living and the Dead Ensemble are a group of artists, performers, and poets from Haiti, France, and the United Kingdom: Mackenson Bijou, Rossi Jacques Casimir, Dieuvela Cherestal, James Desiris, Louis Henderson, Léonard Jean Baptiste, Cynthia Maignan, Sophonie Maignan, Olivier Marboeuf, Mimétik Nèg (James Peter Etienne), Sachernka Anacassis. They produce texts, performances, films, and installations.
Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro is the author of the 2022 book Quando o sol aqui não mais brilhar: a falência da negritude (When the Sun No Longer Shines Here: The Collapse of Blackness), and she has participated in solo and group exhibitions across Brazil and internationally. Her most recent solo exhibition Remember When We Talked About Our Reunion took place at Mendes Woods DM, New York. Vitorino Brasileiro is one of the artists to participate in the 2023 Bienal de São Paulo. @castielvitorino
Bambii is a Toronto-based DJ and producer known for her genre-spanning sets which embrace the spirit of dance and rave culture and open up new paths for the free exploration of music. Whether online or on dancefloors, her music celebrates Black diasporic dance music’s ever-expanding reach, and the relationships it forges between individuals, cultures, and spaces. @bam_bii
Christelle Oyiri is an artist and filmmaker. She is also known as DJ and electronic music producer CRYSTALLMESS and has performed around the world under this moniker. Over the past years, her work has appeared at Gladstone Gallery New York, Lafayette Anticipations, Haus der Kunst, and Tramway Glasgow amongst other venues. Oyiri engages with issues related to the collective memory of both forgotten and well-known mythologies, be they ancient or ultra-modern. She lives and works in Paris. @crystallmess
