Hollywood star, Zac Efron,will accept his Dreamy Award onscreen during an evening event in the Serpentine Gallery’s Park Nights series of live events held in the Gallery’s Pavilion, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei. Artist Ed Fornieles, for his Park Night, hosts The Dreamy Awards to recognise the individuals and organisations helping to shape our current cultural and technological landscape. The Dreamy winners will represent the worlds of music, television, politics, business, technology and film, including Hollywood heart-throbs.
Fornieles’ performance, a special commission for the Serpentine Gallery, will exaggerate the format of a conventional awards ceremony to create a surreal and immersive participatory experience. Following a pre-event briefing with the artist, participants will be encouraged to assume a new identity for the evening and to embody and enact their new identities throughout the ceremony. Chosen characters range from princess to tech legend; from political spin-doctor to superstar DJ.
The Dreamy Awards maintains the artist’s interest in the construction of character. This focus is made manifest in Fornieles’ previous work, including Dorm Daze (2011) www.facebooksitcom.com, a Facebook sitcom he directed based on the contemporary American college moment as it exists on social media. Fornieles believes that the awards ceremony will foster an environment where people feel able and willing to perform a character that acts and communicates differently to them. The interconnectedness of this fictional network will be revealed on the night through suggested interactions and directed plot lines. Celebrity guests will mingle with the artist’s extended collaborative network and members of the public, creating a situation where social equality is forged through the shared experience of adopting a new character. This inclusive atmosphere, and people’s choice of character, will reveal both the artist’s and the audience’s contemporary fantasies.
A film of the event will be cut and made into an artwork that will appear on The Space www.thespace.org, a new free digital arts initiative developed by Arts Council England in partnership with the BBC.
Further Park Nights events
Oscar Murillo
Friday 14 September, 8pm
This Park Night will present a new performance commission by artist Oscar Murillo. His practice carries an all-encompassing, relational attitude to aspects of production where elements are given equal status: materials, the practice itself, the studio, labour and the artist’s personal references. A sense of community, inclusion and cross-pollution permeates Murillo’s practice.
Serpentine Gallery Memory Marathon
Saturday and Sunday 13–14 October
A two-day event inspired by the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2012, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei, this year’s Marathon will explore memory, archaeological excavation and historical recordings through overlaps and interactions between artistic practice and scientific enquiry. Tickets will be available in September. Please visitwww.serpentinegallery.org