SERPENTINE PRESENTS PARK NIGHTS 2025
Serpentine presents the UK premiere of Malcolm-x Betts and Nile Harris’ latest collaboration for this year’s Park Nights.
At Serpentine Pavilion designed by Marina Tabassum
12 and 13 September 2025, 8pm
Limited tickets, please register your interest [email protected]
Sererpentine is delighted to announce the UK premiere of Temporary Boyfriend for this year’s Park Nights, hosted in the Serpentine Pavilion designed by Marina Tabassum on 12th and 13th September 2025. Temporary Boyfriend will explore the nuanced poetics of Malcolm-x Betts’ and Nile Harris’ longstanding collaboration.
Temporary Boyfriend draws from past performances in each other’s works, including Niggas at Sundown at New York Live Arts and this house is not a home at Abrons Arts Center. Harris and Betts render the friction and intrigue at the pith of their connection in this improvisatory duet. As the pair traverses the architecture of Marina Tabassum’s 2025 Serpentine Pavilion, they journey across various touchpoints of relationality between Black gay men. From the kinship of ancestors lost to the AIDS epidemic, to contemporary manifestations of ephemeral gay brotherhood, Temporary Boyfriend is an intimate portrait of the aesthetics of proximity and estrangement.
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.
