BMW Tate Live: Performance Room 2012 artists’ commissions announced.Jérôme Bel, Pablo Bronstein, Harrell Fletcher, Joan Jonas and Emily Roysdon.

London. Tate and BMW reveal the first five international artists commissioned for the BMW Tate Live: Performance Room – a pioneering programme of live online performances reaching international audiences across world time zones.

Choreographer and dancer Jérôme Bel and artists Pablo Bronstein, Harrell Fletcher, Joan Jonas and Emily Roysdon each present works for the BMW Tate Live Performance Room. One performance will take place live each month within Tate Modern to be filmed as it happens for live online broadcast around the world. The performances will be followed by an online question and answer session with the artist or curator.

Press are invited to view the BMW Tate Live Performance Room trailer presented by Chris Dercon, Director, TaTe Modern at

www.tate.org.uk/bmwtatelive.

Audiences, who will only be able to view the performance at the internet, are invited to enter the online Performance Room via www.tate.org.uk/bmwtatelive

- at 20.00 hrs in the UK

- at 15.00 hrs on the East Coast of America

- at 21.00 hrs in mainline Europe

- at 23.00 hrs in Russia

The global audience are encouraged to chat with other viewers via social media channels, during the performance and to questions to the artist or curator following it using Tate’s  social media channels twitter.com/tate; facebook.com/tategallery; youtube.com/tate and the Twitter hashtag #BMWTateLive.

Thursday 22 March - Jérôme Bel : French choreographer and dancer Jérôme Bel will inaugurate the BMW Tate Live Performance Room with a new work that is a twist on his 1997 performance Shirtology and which will emphasise and play with the Performance Room format. The work will feature one performer and a collection of T-shirts that are changed and removed to display different messages. Bel’s work explores the relationship between choreography and popular culture; and dancer and spectator, often using humour as a device to break the usual formality of a theatre setting.

Thursday 26 April - Pablo Bronstein: Argentinean born, Pablo Bronstein, uses architectural design and drawing to engage with the grandiose and imperial past of the built environment. This preoccupation with form extends into his live work, for example, for the 2006 Tate Triennial he blended the regimented patterns of baroque dance with the minimalist choreography of the 1960s. He will work with up to 10 dancers to create a baroque trompe l'œil stage set that exaggerates the perspective within the Performance Room.

Thursday 31 May - Emily Roysdon: American artist and writer, Emily Roysdon, explores the intersection of choreography and political action through performance, photographic installations, print making, text, video, curating and collaborating. She recently developed the concept ‘ecstatic resistance’ to address the impossible and imaginary in politics.

Thursday 28 June - Harrell Fletcher: Fletcher’s work often takes the form of socially engaged collaborative and interdisciplinary projects including, with Miranda July, Learning To Love You More, an audience participatory website where visitors responded to assignments like “make an encouraging banner” or “make a neighbourhood field recording” with uploaded photos, film and text. For BMW Tate Live he will work with local amateur performers who ordinarily would not be seen by the Performance Room’s global audience.

July or September, tbc. – Joan Jonas: Since the 1960s, Jonas has been a major figure at the forefront of explorations in film and performance, transcending genres to develop an influential practice rooted in space, movement and gesture. Her early work featured herself as alter-ego, Organic Honey and she has often developed narratives based on fairytales and folklore.

BMW Tate Live:

BMW Tate Live is a major four-year partnership between BMW and Tate, which focuses on performance, interdisciplinary art and curating digital space. BMW Tate Live Performance Room is the inaugural strand of the partnership and features five commissions in 2012. This innovative format will offer audience internationally an opportunity to experience these works through an entirely new mode of presentation. Each performance will be archived and available to view online, accumulating into a series through the year.

BMW Tate Live is curated by Catherine Wood, Curator, Contemporary Art and Performance, Tate, and Kathy Noble, Curator of Interdisciplinary Projects, Tate.  

BMW Tate Live Performance Room:

Performance dates and time in the UK*

22 March, 20.00 GMT - BMW Tate Live Performance Room #1: Jérôme Bel

26 April, 20.00 BST - BMW Tate Live Performance Room #2: Pablo Bronstein

31 May, 20.00 BST - BMW Tate Live Performance Room #3: Emily Roysdon

28 June, 20.00 BST - BMW Tate Live Performance Room #4: Harrell Fletcher

TBC. 20.00 BST - BMW Tate Live Performance Room #5: Joan Jonas

*Times listed are for the UK. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) ends and British Summer Time (BST) begins on 25 March so UK event times listed are BST expect for 22 March

Quotes:

Chris Dercon, Director, Tate Modern:

“I am delighted that we will partner with BMW on this important new initiative. Not only is Tate’s programme and Collection becoming increasingly international, so is our audience, and we need to work to find new ways to present our programme to them on new channels. The development of technology has transformed people’s approach to art. Audiences today expect more interaction, participation and personalisation than ever before. BMW Tate Live will answer this need. BMW Tate Live will bring live art performance directly to people on the web, wherever they are in the world.”

Dr. Uwe Ellinghaus, Director Brand Steering, Brand Management BMW and Marketing Services:

“Tate and BMW is a match made in heaven. In 2011 the BMW Group is celebrating 40 years of international cultural commitment. By announcing an extensive cooperation with Tate Modern, BMW gives a clear signal: We will continue to engage in manifold cultural projects worldwide. The transnational program that has been brought into being with this trendsetting institution proves once more that for the BMW Group intercultural dialogue is not only desirable, but provides the basic concept for an internationally successful company. I am personally excited that we are intensifying this dialogue in London with BMW Tate Live and thus promoting it throughout the world.”

Catherine Wood, Curator, Contemporary Art and Performance, Tate: “The way in which the artists will use the format and the extent to which they will use the reciprocal capacities of technology in BMW Tate Live: Performance Rooms will be an exciting part of the experimental nature of the series. We are keen to see how artists might experiment with the intimacy and theatricality of this space while reflecting upon how virtual communications have become an integral part of our lives today. This project will hopefully extend our idea of what an exhibition space is and can be.”

About BMW’s Cultural Commitment

For more than 40 years now, the BMW Group has initiated and engaged in over 100 cultural cooperations worldwide. The company places the main focus of its long-term commitment on modern and contemporary art, jazz and classical music as well as architecture and design. In 1972, three large-scale paintings were created by the artist Gerhard Richter specifically for the foyer of the BMW Group's Munich headquarters. Since then, artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Olafur Eliasson, Jeff Koons, Zubin Metha, Daniel Barenboim and Anna Netrebko have co-operated with BMW. The company has also commissioned famous architects such as Karl Schwanzer, Zaha Hadid and Coop Himmelb(l)au to design important corporate buildings and plants. In 2011, the BMW Guggenheim Lab, a global initiative of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the Guggenheim Museum and the BMW Group celebrated its world premiere in New York. The BMW Group takes absolute creative freedom in all the cultural activities it is involved in for granted – as this is just as essential for groundbreaking artistic work as it is for major innovations in a successful business.

Information regarding the BMW Group’s cultural involvement: www.bmwgroup.com/culture 

The BMW Group

The BMW Group is one of the most successful manufacturers of automobiles and motorcycles in the world with its BMW, MINI, Husqvarna Motorcycles and Rolls-Royce brands. As a global company, the BMW Group operates 25 production and assembly facilities in 14 countries and has a global sales network in more than 140 countries.

In 2011, the BMW Group sold about1.67 million cars and more than 113,000 motorcycles worldwide. The profit before tax for the financial year 2010 was euro 4.8 billion on revenues amounting to euro 60.5 billion. At 31 December 2010, the BMW Group had a workforce of approximately 95,500 employees.

The success of the BMW Group has always been built on long-term thinking and responsible action. The company has therefore established ecological and social sustainability throughout the value chain, comprehensive product responsibility and a clear commitment to conserving resources as an integral part of its strategy. As a result of its efforts, the BMW Group has been ranked industry leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes for the last seven years.

www.bmwgroup.com

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For questions please contact:

Jeanette Ward, Senior Press Officer, Tate

Call: +44 (0)20 7887 4942, Email: pressoffice@tate.org.uk

Antonia Walther

BMW Group Corporate and Intergovernmental Affairs

Spokesperson Cultural Engagement

Telephone: +49 89-382-10422, Fax: +49 89-382-10881

Media Website: www.press.bmwgroup.com

Email: presse@bmw.de