ART CITIES:London-Park Nights 2018

Megan Rooney, SUN DOWN MOON UP, Serpentine Galleries ArchivePark Nights is the Seprentine’s experimental, interdisciplinary live platform, sited with the Galleries annual architectural commission, the Serpentine Pavilion, designed this year by award-winning architect Frida Escobedo. On select summer Fridays, Park Nights 2018 presents eight commissions by international practitioners in the fields of art, music, performance, theatre and fashion. Each site-specific work responds to Escobedo’s design, which draws on Mexican and British elements to create a reflective, imaginative space for live encounters.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Serpentine Galleries Archive

Park Nights 2018, begins on July 13: Dorothy Iannone presents “Movie People Perpetual Performance” that traces unconditional love and the sacrifice of happiness. The performance is based on her ongoing “Movie People” project, featuring a series of wooden cut-out characters that originated in the 1960s. Assembling all her Movie People together for the first time, Iannone accompanies them with stories of unconditional loves and lovers who sacrifice their own happiness or even their own lives for the sake of their beloved. ON July 20: Meriem Bennani, with musician and composer Flavien Berger, devises a live virtual dance battle, integrating motion-capture technology, 3D animation and a digital avatar. This freestyle dance-off traces the artist’s interlaced focus on the vernacular and traditional representation of North-African culture and globalised popular culture. On July 27: Drawing from seminal works of social science fiction and reflective, speculative encounters of looking and wanting, Victoria Sin ​presents a character’s journey through fictional locations, exploring transformational narratives in the often unsettling experience of the physical within the social body. On August 3: Following the release of his anticipated second album, “Heaven and Earth”, celebrated saxophonist, composer and producer Kamasi Washington and his band come together for a dynamic, improvisational performance that opens the door to a music experience. On August 10: Founded in 2005, unisex fashion line TELFAR was ignored by the mainstream fashion press for a decade due to its non-racial/non-gendered vision of fashion. Since winning the 2017 Vogue/CFDA fashion fund, TELFAR has been developing a mode of presentation based on musical collaborations that emphasise what is collectively owned and essentially human in style and music. TELFAR is working with South African band FAKA on an all vocal performance featuring a choir and a preview of their SS19 collection. On  September 7: Yaeji performs an original work exploring the connectivity of her musical influences with UK dance and electronic music through deconstructed and recontextualised compositions. The audience will be blindfolded and accompanied by an immersive sound system. September 14: Megan Rooney uses the Pavilion as a site for storytelling, filling it with movement, words and sound. “SUN DOWN MOON UP” a performance about a group of female magpies that invade Mount Athos, explores metaphors of nature, the human subject and the boundaries of a forbidden space. September 21: “Manufacturing Mischief” is a puppet-play by Pedro Reyes in which the protagonist, Noam Chomsky, finds an antagonist in the toxic individualism of Ayn Rand. Other characters include Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, who are blind to the human costs of their techno utopias.

Info: Curator: Hans Ulrich Obrist, Claude Adjil and Lucia Pietroiusti, Assistant Curator: Kostas Stasinopoulos, Serpentine Pavilion, Kensington Gardens, London, Days: 13, 20 & 27/7/18, 3 & 10/8/18, 7, 14 & 21/9/18, Hour: 21:00, www.serpentinegalleries.org

Meriem Bennani, Screen capture from the Dance Battle Live MoCap game, Courtesy: the artist and SIGNAL-New York
Meriem Bennani, Screen capture from the Dance Battle Live MoCap game, Courtesy: the artist and SIGNAL-New York

 

 

Dorothy Iannone, All, 1967, © Photo Marc Domage, Courtesy Air de Paris-Paris
Dorothy Iannone, All, 1967, © Photo Marc Domage, Courtesy Air de Paris-Paris

 

 

Dorothy Iannone, Courting Alexander, 1990. © Photo Jochen Littkemann courtesy Air de Paris-Paris
Dorothy Iannone, Courting Alexander, 1990. © Photo Jochen Littkemann courtesy Air de Paris-Paris

 

 

Left: Dorothy Iannone, I Was Thinking of You III, 1975/2006, © Photo Marc Domage, Courtesy Air de Paris-Paris. Right: Dorothy Iannone, Ms Liberty, 1977/2007, © Photo Marc Domage. Private Collection, Courtesy Air de Paris-Paris
Left: Dorothy Iannone, I Was Thinking of You III, 1975/2006, © Photo Marc Domage, Courtesy Air de Paris-Paris. Right: Dorothy Iannone, Ms Liberty, 1977/2007, © Photo Marc Domage. Private Collection, Courtesy Air de Paris-Paris

 

 

Left: Dorothy Iannone, I Begin To Feel Free, 1970, © Photo Jochen Littkemann, Courtesy Air de Paris-Paris. Right: Dorothy Iannone, Mother and Child, 1980, © All rights reserved, Private Collection, Courtesy Air de Paris-Paris
Left: Dorothy Iannone, I Begin To Feel Free, 1970, © Photo Jochen Littkemann, Courtesy Air de Paris-Paris. Right: Dorothy Iannone, Mother and Child, 1980, © All rights reserved, Private Collection, Courtesy Air de Paris-Paris

 

 

Meriem Bennani, Gradual Kingdom (still), 2015, Courtesy the artist and SIGNAL-New York
Meriem Bennani, Gradual Kingdom (still), 2015, Courtesy the artist and SIGNAL-New York

 

 

Left: Pedro Reyes, View of the making of “Baby Marx,” Mexico City-Mexico, 2008, Photo: Emilio Valdés. Right: Kamasi Washington, Serpentine Galleries Archive
Left: Pedro Reyes, View of the making of “Baby Marx,” Mexico City-Mexico, 2008, Photo: Emilio Valdés. Right: Kamasi Washington, Serpentine Galleries Archive

 

 

Pedro Reyes, Installation view at Lisson Gallery, New York, NY, 2017, Courtesy of Lisson Gallery
Pedro Reyes, Installation view at Lisson Gallery, New York, NY, 2017, Courtesy of Lisson Gallery

 

 

Victoria Sin, She must be used to it, she is so goddamn beautiful, 2017, Courtesy the artist
Victoria Sin, She must be used to it, she is so goddamn beautiful, 2017, Courtesy the artist

 

 

Victoria Sin performing in collaboration with Auto Italia South East at Open Codes, 2017, ZKM-Karlsruhe, Courtesy ZKM. Photo: Felix Grünschloß
Victoria Sin performing in collaboration with Auto Italia South East at Open Codes, 2017, ZKM-Karlsruhe, Courtesy ZKM. Photo: Felix Grünschloß