Each year, Park Nights presents a series of new performance commissions in Serpentine’s annual architectural commission, the Serpentine Pavilion.
Serpentine’s 2022 Pavilion, Black Chapel, designed by Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates with the architectural support of Adjaye Associates, became the stage for a series of interdisciplinary artistic engagements on select evenings from June-October 2022.
Since 2002, Park Nights has presented new works across art, music, film, theatre, dance, literature, philosophy, fashion, and technology. Each year’s commissions are conceived in response 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.
Park Nights 2022 began in June with a performance from internationally-renowned musician, composer, and innovator Roscoe Mitchell, presented in partnership with London Contemporary Music Festival and Wigmore Hall. For Park Nights, Mitchell performed with musicians Dudù Kouate and Simon Sieger. The programme continued in July with a performance from poet, musician, and activist Linton Kwesi Johnson. In September, artist and filmmaker Josiane M.H. Pozi presented a new commission conceived for Park Nights. The programme concluded in October with a performance by New York-based Standing on the Corner Art Ensemble, who produce musical, visual and experiential works that equate the hyper-local to the cosmological.
