BMW ART MAKERS: new support for emerging artists and women photographers. BMW is patron of Rencontres d'Arles for 13 consecutive years.

Munich/Arles. BMW presents the first edition of BMW ART MAKERS in cooperation with Rencontres d'Arles, the leading festival for photography: winning duo of the program artist Arash Hanaei and curator Morad Montazami exhibit their project “Suburban Hauntology”.

Supporting a duo formed by an emerging artist and a curator, offering them research and production support and visibility to professionals and the general public, is at the heart of the BMW ART MAKERS program, which presents this year: “Suburban Hauntology” by the artist Arash Hanaei and the curator Morad Montazami, first winning duo of BMW ART MAKERS.

The installation “Suburban Hauntology” proposes to rethink our relationship to forms of utopian architecture from the 1960-70s, and the peripheral ecosystems of the suburbs that welcome them, by immersing them in the virtual world of the Metaverse and augmented reality. According to the duo, it is “an innovative installation project, looking at poetics and politics of spectatorship and its emancipation in an era of image capture, big data and algorithmic warfare”.

This work is made up of still and moving computer images, evoking the digital culture through which architectural ghosts pass of suburban architecture from the 1960-70s, that we no longer watch, but which is part of our unconscious. Destined to be destroyed, this architecture is gradually being erased from the suburban memory in favor of a post-internet memory proposing new modalities and "forms of life". Moreover, the Metaverse claims an "augmented" archaeology of the forms of the past, it thus finds a speculative double, a ghost mirror of its standardized landscapes in the suburban space; and the suburbs find in the Metaverse a time machine, the unexpected, perhaps indecipherable extension of its vanished utopias.

The project will be exhibited for the first time at Rencontres d’Arles,
Cloître Saint-Trophime, place de la République, Arles
From July 4 to September 25, 2022.
With the support of BenQ France - UHDLQ953ST laser projector

Official visit for press with Christoph Wiesner, Director of Les Rencontres d’Arles: Thursday July 7,2022 at 3pm

About BMW ART MAKERS
BMW ART MAKERS is a program supporting experimental and visual art to see differently. Dedicated to emerging creation in the field of visual arts and contemporary image-making, the BMW ART MAKERS program offers a grant to an artist-curator duo – €10.000 to the artist and €8.000 to the curator - as well as a budget for research and production, leading to the completion of a visual art project.

Two brains are better than one. This partnership draws on the strength of a strong, like-minded duo to generate the trust and competitive spirit required for completing a major project from the initial idea to the end work. The curator is just as important as the artist in terms of implementing an artistic project and ensuring a concrete piece of work results from it.  Alongside the artist, the curator will perform the role of artistic director, scenographer, and designer, ensuring that the project is completed to the artistic standards, time frame and budget specified in the call for applications.

“The human-machine relationship, creativity and innovation, support and commitment are all key BMW Group values. In these unpredictable times, the BMW ART MAKERS program speaks for itself: this artist-curator duo opens an emotional conversation with our society and takes an alternative look through experimentation. We can't wait to see the implementation of Arash Hanaei and Morad Montazami’s project on the post-urban and post-internet era this summer in Arles”, says Maryse Bataillard, Head of Corporate Communication and CSR, BMW Group France, BMW Group France.

Arash Hanaei and Morad Montazami state: “As winners of the 2022 BMW ART MAKERS program, we are honored by the trust placed in us to successfully create an innovative installation that proposes poetry and a visual policy that considers the spectator’s emancipation, in an era of image 'capture’, big data and algorithmic warfare, we are excited to present it in Arles”.

BMW is committed to female talents by supporting the Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro - Arles since its creation.

Diversity, and of course women, are the key to success, to the enrichment of society, to innovative and committed visions. Through their inventions, technical innovations, audacity and impressive successes behind the wheel, women have made a significant contribution to automotive fascination throughout history. Partner since the creation of the prize in 2016, BMW Group is committed to bringing them back to light in the automotive industry as well as in all the creative and societal fields it supports, including photography.