LONDON.- Nocturnal Creatures brings together performance, video, sculpture and sound in the heart of the East End for a new late-night contemporary arts festival on Saturday 21 July.

Cultural and historic venues within walking distance of the Whitechapel Gallery are transformed for one night by spectacular artworks and performance. Local galleries open their doors late into the night. In association with Sculpture in the City, artist tours and new audio compositions will celebrate the rich history of the local area.

Free to attend and accessible to all, highlights of the programme include:

• An immersive audio-visual environment created by Tom Lock (b.1981, UK) to be staged with our headline sponsor, Broadgate

• At Whitechapel Gallery, hourly performances of Alexis Teplin’s (b.1976, USA) mesmerising Arch (The Politics of Fragmentation) and Andrea LukaZimmerman’s (b.1976, USA) series of readings from 1968

• Artist-led tours of artworks installed across the surrounding area for the 8th edition of Sculpture in the City including Amanda Lwin, Shaun C Badham and Jyll Bradley

• The premiere of audio compositions created in response to East End sites, Sculpture in the City x Musicity to include Sarathy Korwar, Midori Komachi, Bambooman and Angele David-Guillou

• A multi-media experience bringing together performance and film accompanied by an intense, beat-driven live soundtrack by Larry Achiampong (b.1984, UK) at the White Chapel Building  An installation by Rachel Pimm (b.1984, Zimbabwe) hosted at the Grade II* listed Whitechapel Bell Foundry on Whitechapel Road

• An international project, Plantón Móvil, with Peruvian artist Lucia Monge; a ‘walking forest’ of plants and people moving together, giving shrubs, flowers and trees the opportunity to ‘walk’ down the streets and to claim their place in our public space

For its inaugural year the Nocturnal Creatures festival coincides with Whitechapel Gallery’s triennial summer exhibition The London Open 2018. Also featuring the exhibition, multimedia artist Tom Lock will transform a new building in nearby Broadgate with his monumental audio-visual work Within (2018). Bespoke, organic visuals will move across multiple projection screens to a soundtrack of live experimental music from Rudi Schmidt. Song and spoken word from Manuela Barczewski add further layers to create an environment that merges the sinister and playful, melancholic to euphoric. The work is inspired by Octavia E. Butler’s science-fiction novel Lilith’s Brood (1987), which poses an ethical question voiced by aliens: in the face of the human race’s impeding selfdestruction, is hybridity the means for survival? The performance will create a space to consider how we relate to one another within London’s rigid urban spaces. It is situated within Broadgate, London's largest pedestrianised neighbourhood. Its bars, restaurants, businesses, public art and year-round events calendar make up one of the city's most diverse and vibrant communities.

In the Whitechapel Gallery’s main exhibition space, Alexis Teplin will present hourly performances of Arch (The Politics of Fragmentation) (2016), a mesmerising work performed by three actors in three acts. Teplin, a painter whose practice expands beyond the limits of the frame, situates the action in front of her large-scale painting. Referencing Indian street theatre, 1960s Hollywood film and the traditions of Russian abstract theatre, the actors recite scripts composed of Teplin’s own writings, interwoven with fragments collected from an eclectic array of sources including news reports and the works of Doris Lessing.

Nocturnal Creatures takes place in association with Sculpture in the City, the City of London’s annual public art programme which situates 18 works from internationally renowned artists amongst City of London architectural landmarks close to the Whitechapel Gallery. Sculpture in the City will host expert tours with participating artists.

This year, the project welcomes works by established international artists including Marina Abramović, Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin and Sean Scully, and also gives the platform to younger emerging artists, presenting Shaun C Badham’s I’M STAYING, a neon work situated in Leadenhall Market, and Amanda Lwin’s new commission A Worldwide Web of Somewheres, a textile map of the City of London. Amanda Lwin, Shaun C Badham, Jyll Bradley and more of the participating artists will lead tours drawing on their experience of the area and consider, amongst other themes, current and social issues linked to the works on display and how they are inspired by the locality.

Launching to coincide with Nocturnal Creatures, Sculpture in the City x Musicity, supported by Brookfield Properties, will enliven local sites with sound. Attendees of the festival will experience for the first time newly commissioned audio tracks. Created in response to the area’s landmarks and historic venues, they link music and architecture and provide a new way of seeing and hearing the area. Covering different corners of the City, Musicity adds to the digital transformation of Sculpture in the City and will animate self-guided tours. Musicity sites range from Principal Place in the north to Aldgate Tower close the Whitechapel Gallery and will include new site-specific work by Sarathy Korwar, Midori Komachi, Bambooman and Angele David-Guillou. The music mix will range from modern classical and electronic to 80s inspired electro-pop and globally inspired soundscapes.

Elsewhere, artist Jaspar Joseph-Lester and writer Simon King will lead a semifictionalised walk from Walkative, which looks for elements of Los Angeles in the East End. Walkative is a research project that explores how walking can trigger processes of making, thinking and researching.

Iwona Blazwick, Whitechapel Gallery Director, said: “Demand for accessible, nighttime arts and culture in London is ever-increasing. Last year, we participated in the momentous Art Night, and we were truly inspired. So we’re hugely excited to be launching a new, free, late-night arts festival for the East End. A celebration of London’s creativity and resilient contemporary art scene, it will be a coming-together of practitioners, new spaces and audiences. Come and join us.”