BMW Tate Live: Performance Room 2012 starts with Jérôme Bel on March 22. Worldwide audience invited to participate online.

London. On March 22, 2012, French choreographer and dancer Jérôme Bel will open the BMW Tate Live Performance Room 2012 – a pioneering programme of live online performances reaching international audiences across world time zones that will only be able to view the performance at the internet. People from all over the world 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.

Jérôme Bel will create a new work that emphasizes and plays with the Performance Room format. Bel’s work explores the relationship between choreography and popular culture; and dancer and spectator, often using humor as a device to break the usual formality of a theatre setting.

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.

BMW Tate Live:

BMW Tate Live is a 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. After Jérôme Bel artists Pablo Bronstein, Harrell Fletcher, Joan Jonas and Emily Roysdon will also present works in the coming months. 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 Performance Rooms Performance 2012 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 except for 22 March

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.