Park Nights 2025 presents Temporary Boyfriend – an improvisational duet that stages the nuanced poetics of collaboration between artists Malcolm-x Betts and Nile Harris.
Temporary Boyfriend brings together the shared performance language of Malcolm-x Betts and Nile Harris, developed through years of artistic exchange in works such as Niggas at Sundown (New York Live Arts) and this house is not a home (Abrons Arts Center). Staged within Marina Tabassum’s 2025 Serpentine Pavilion, this new iteration navigates the architectures of intimacy, proximity, and estrangement that shape their relationship.
Traversing the Pavilion as both a stage and a container, Harris and Betts explore shifting terrains between Black gay kinship—tracing echoes of ancestral memory, the grief and legacy of the AIDS epidemic, and the fleeting solidarities of contemporary queer brotherhood. With live musical accompaniment by GENG PTP and scenic and lighting design by Dyer Rhoads, Temporary Boyfriend offers a live meditation on the tension and tenderness that binds two bodies in constant negotiation.
Park Nights: Malcolm-x Betts and Nile Harris, Temporary boyfriend, At Serpentine Pavilion
12th and 13th September 2025, 8PM serpentinegalleries.org/park-nights
Temporary Boyfriend was originally commissioned by the Chocolate Factory Theater, Pink Fang, and Under the Radar Festival.
About the artists
Malcolm-x Betts is a New York-based visual artist and dancer who believes art is a transformative vehicle that brings people and communities together. His work investigates embodiment, liberation, Black imagination, and engages with the challenges imposed on the body. He is the resident curator at Judson Memorial Church and the founder of the curatorial platform ‘Black Aesthetics’, which is dedicated to enabling artistic freedom and making art accessible to all. As a dancer, he has performed in works by Snoogybox (Andy Kobilka), Nile Harris, Moriah Evans, and Alex Romania. His choreographic work has been presented and supported by venues including New York Live Arts; Movement Research; La MaMa Umbria; and Judson Common; amongst others.
Nile Harris is a performer and director of live art. Often employing improvisation, his collaborative practice humorously and critically unravels the systems of power and authority within societal and institutional frameworks. He is a collaborating artist with the Wooster Group, a Resident Artist at Pink Fang, and the director of Social Security, his NY-based theater company. Harris is currently touring his recent play ‘this house is not a home —featuring performance artist Crackhead Barney & dancer Malcolm-x Betts—which will be presented at Walker Arts Center this winter.
