BMW Tate Live Performance Room: Liu Ding “Almost Avant-Garde”. Online on 16 May 2013 at 20:00 GMT.

London. Liu Ding, Beijing-based artist and curator, will invite friends and colleagues to a party with a DJ mixing Baroque music and Chinese voices; 2-D reproductions of Tate artworks; and a spinning disco ball for a new work made for the BMW Tate Live Performance Room. “Almost Avant-Garde” was created especially for an online audience and will be performed live on 16 May. Everyone is invited to enter the online BMW Tate Live Performance Room via www.youtube.com/user/tate/tatelive

The recorded voices are taken from interviews Liu Ding conducted with Chinese artists and art critics active in the 1990s in which they describe their work, experiences, expectations and understanding of art. Liu Ding uses the work to reflect on the Chinese art community’s aspirations to be modern and contemporary. Translations will be projected onto the walls of the Performance Room.

BMW Tate Live Performance Room: Liu Ding “Almost Avant-Garde”

16 May 2013, 20:00 GMT

 Online at www.youtube.com/user/tate/tatelive

This innovative format offers international audiences an opportunity to experience entirely new live works at Tate and to join a discussion about the work online. Each performance is archived and available to view online after the live event. Previous artists in the series are Jérôme Bel, Pablo Bronstein, Emily Roysdon, Joan Jonas and Harrell Fletcher.

BMW Tate Live is a four-year partnership between BMW and Tate, which focuses on performance, interdisciplinary art and curating digital space. Now in its second year, new commissions for 2013 include those online for BMW Tate Live: Performance Room and live performances at Tate Modern for BMW Tate Live: Performance Events.

BMW Tate Live is curated by Catherine Wood, Curator, Contemporary Art and Performance, Tate and Capucine Perrot, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern.

BMW Tate Live Performance Room

Audiences are invited to enter the online BMW Tate Live Performance Room via www.youtube.com/user/tate/tatelive at 20.00 hrs in the UK and exactly the same moment across time zones on the specified dates - 15.00 hrs on the East Coast of America, 21.00 hrs in mainline Europe and 23.00 hrs in Russia. The global audience is encouraged to chat with other viewers via social media channels during the performance and to put questions to the artist or curator following it using their Twitter, Facebook or Google+ accounts. To get the latest updates follow @TateLive, using #BMWTateLive; Tate Facebook or Tate Google+.

BMW Tate Live
BMW Tate Live is a four year partnership between BMW and Tate that features innovative live performances and events including live web broadcast, in-gallery performance, seminars and workshops. BMW Tate Live aims to reach an international audience through new forms of art, addressing audiences changing needs, tastes and interests in art. The initiative creates a new space for collaboration and a programme that encompasses performance, film, sound, installation and learning – areas where artists can take greater risks and experiment freely. The programme investigates transformation in all its guises and aims to provoke debate on how art can affect intellectual, social and physical change. More information at www.tate.org.uk/bmwtatelive.

BMW’s Cultural Commitment
For over 40 years now, the BMW Group has initiated and engaged in more than 100 cultural partnerships worldwide. The focus of this long-term commitment to culture is modern and contemporary art, jazz and classical music as well as architecture and design. BMW has worked with artists such as Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Olafur Eliasson, Jeff Koons, Zubin Metha, Daniel Barenboim and Anna Netrebko and commissioned architects such as Karl Schwanzer, Zaha Hadid and Coop Himmelb(l)au. In London, BMW in partnership with the London Symphony Orchestra, hosts the BMW LSO Open Air Classics, a yearly live concert free of charge in Trafalgar Square, and supports Frieze Art Fair. 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. www.bmwgroup.com/culture and www.bmwgroup.com/culture/overview

The BMW Group
The BMW Group is the leading premium manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles in the world with its BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce brands. As a global company, the BMW Group operates 28 production and assembly facilities in 13 countries and has a global sales network in more than 140 countries. 

In 2012, the BMW Group sold about 1.85 million cars and more than 117,000 motorcycles worldwide. The profit before tax for the financial year 2012 was euro 7.82 billion on revenues amounting to euro 76.85 billion. At 31 December 2012, the BMW Group had a workforce of 105,876 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 eight years.

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Dr. Thomas Girst

BMW Group Corporate and Intergovernmental Affairs

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Jeanette Ward

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