Serpentine Park Nights 2014, Serpentine Pavilion, Kensington Gardens

Serpentine Park Nights 2014, Serpentine Pavilion, Kensington Gardens

Throughout the summer and autumn, the Serpentine Galleries will once again present Park Nights, an annual series of live art events, incorporating poetry, music, film, literature and performance. It takes place on selected Friday evenings in the Serpentine Pavilion 2014, which has been designed by architect Smiljan Radic.

This year, the Park Nights programme features three new artist commissions which respond to the setting of the Pavilion. Award-winning poet Heather Phillipson presents a live audio-sculptural event (3 October) that will insert voices, bodies and live and pre-recorded music throughout the structure and explore its visual and sonic aspects in a one-night-only poetic oddity.

Hannah Perry, an artist working mainly in installation, print and video who is currently studying at the Royal Academy of Arts, will present Horoscopes (Déjà vu) a site-specific performance film (12 September). Artist and composer Lina Lapelyte, meanwhile, has devised a new work for a specially selected, all-female choir with low voices (29 August). Arranging arias which were originally sung by castrato singers, as well as composing new material, Lapelyte reflects upon femininity and gender.

Staying with the musical theme, there will also be an evening of experimental sound with Haroon Mirza, Mark Fell and Okkyung Lee (22 August), Forget Amnesia will transform the Pavilion’s acoustic and spatial environment. Also on the programme is a homage to Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz (25 July) with actor Melvil Poupaud, who appeared in Ruiz’s 1983 film, City of Pirates, producer Paulo Branco and director Valeria Sarmiento.

Ed Atkins meanwhile recreates the convivial spirit of an ancient Greek-style symposium (11 July) in an evening of talks, readings, singing, screenings, performance, drinking, dreaming and thinking. There will be a talk by leading sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (19 September) the author of Liquid Modernity (2000), which redefined our understanding of agency, individuality and uncertainty in the 21st century.

The Park Nights series starts on Friday 27 June with a conversation with Pavilion architect Smiljan Radic, followed by a talk from Justin McGuirk about contemporary architecture in Latin America. Park Nights forms part of the Serpentine’s summer programme for its expanded campus in Kensington Gardens, including Marina Abramović: 512 Hours at the Serpentine Gallery, Ed Atkins at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, the Serpentine Pavilion, Rock on Top of Another Rock by Fischli/Weiss, the Bridge Commission Audio Walks and AGNES, the Serpentine’s first digital commission.

Park Nights, 27 June – 3 October, Fridays from 8pm. Serpentine Galleries Pavilion, Kensington Gardens, London. For more information visit www.serpentinegalleries.org. Tickets via ticketweb.co.uk.

Credits
1. Heather Phillipson, THE ORIGINAL EROGENOUS ZONE (2014). © Heather Phillipson

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Posted on 11 June 2014

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