BMW presents Frieze Sounds at the Frieze Art Fair New York. The program features three new specially commissioned audio works that will be played in the BMW VIP shuttle service cars.

New York. Frieze Art Fair New York and BMW will once again present Frieze Sounds, a program of sound works that are showcased in the BMW 7 Series shuttle service at the fair. For this unique event three specially commissioned audio works were created by the artists Trisha Baga, Charles Atlas and New Humans, as well as Haroon Mirza. Frieze Sounds is programmed and curated by Cecilia Alemani. 

“Each of the participants has taken a different approach to this brief: Trisha Baga will estrange everyday noise; Charles Atlas and New Humans will use their own voices whereas Haroon Mirza will employ the noise of the fair itself. I look forward to each of them,” Alemani said prior to the event. 

“These special commissioned works selected by Frieze heighten the VIP shuttle service and can extend the fair visit to even include the drive home,” said Ludwig Willisch, President and CEO, BMW of North America. 

Since 2004, BMW has powered the Frieze Art Fair VIP shuttle service in London and expanded with Frieze Art to New York last year. 

BMW maintains long-term and sustainable partnerships with the most important and prestigious art fairs around the world. Art Basel, Art Basel Miami Beach, Frieze Art Fair and Frieze Masters in London, Frieze New York, Paris Photo, and the Gallery Weekend Berlin are only a few examples. Together with the partners, new formats are developed that place art fairs and their visitors to an even greater extent in the focus of an exchange of ideas and thoughts. 

With more than 100 cooperations worldwide, BMW Group cultural commitment has been an essential part of corporate communications for over 40 years now. Unrestricted freedom of creative potential is of the utmost importance, as it is equally as crucial for the field of art as it is for groundbreaking innovations within a business enterprise. The BMW Group places the main focus of its cultural commitment on modern and contemporary art, jazz and classical music as well as architecture and design.

The BMW 7 Series, where the audio works will be played, is the company’s flagship sedan and is the ultimate in performance and luxury. The BMW 7 Series not only sets a new dynamic benchmark for luxury cars, it also raises the bar in its class when it comes to ride comfort as the car offers a first-class environment for the driver as well as for rear passengers. The engine delivers 445 horsepower and accelerates from 0 to 60 miles in 4.7 seconds.  

Information on the artists  

Trisha Baga (b. 1985, Venice, Florida, USA)
Trisha Baga is known for intricate installations that combine psychedelic projections, sculptural assemblages, and arrangements of found youtube videos combined with audio recordings. For Frieze Sounds, she will present Hercules Radio, a sound work that remixes sounds from disparate sources including Hollywood movie scores, everyday noises, ominous weather channel forecasts and voiceovers in several different languages. In this work, the artist highlights the tonal quality of language, rather than its content, composing the soundtrack for an imaginary journey that takes the listener through an array of fluid identities and incongruous locations.

Charles Atlas (b. 1958 St. Louis, Missouri, USA) and New Humans (Mika Tajima b. 1975, Los Angeles, California, USA/Howie Chen b. 1976, Cincinnati, Ohio)
Charles Atlas and New Humans have previously collaborated on a number of projects at the intersection of sound, installation and performance, including film productions as performance, sculptural installations, music events and live video presentations. For Frieze Sounds, Atlas and New Humans extend their collaboration into a new aural experience, utilizing electronically fractured vocals by Atlas and Tajima. A poem-like babble of unrelated words, the work articulates the flow of global materials, information and people extracted from distant places made readily accessible and mundane – the soundtrack and backdrop for urban island life.

Haroon Mirza (b. 1977, London, UK)
Haroon Mirza has been investigating the generative power of sound and noise in a series of architectural installations and kinetic sculptures that play with our perceptions of space. For Frieze Sounds, Mirza will work closely with the fair environment and the sounds generated by the visitors of the fair. Microphones installed inside the fair’s tent will absorb background noises and the sounds of people moving through the booths, bringing the listener to focus on that universe of unheard voices that pervade public spaces.

Frieze Art New York
Frieze New York 2013 takes place May 10–13, 2013 and presents over 180 of the world’s leading galleries. Designed by Brooklyn-based architects SO – IL, Frieze New York is housed in a bespoke temporary structure located in the unique setting of Randall’s Island Park, Manhattan, overlooking the East River. Frieze New York is sponsored by Deutsche Bank. For further information, please visit: http://friezenewyork.com 

For more information on BMW and Culture, please visit http://www.bmwgroup.com/culture and http://www.bmwgroup.com/culture/overview.

BMW Group In America
BMW of North America, LLC has been present in the United States since 1975.  Rolls-Royce Motor Cars NA, LLC began distributing vehicles in 2003.  The BMW Group in the United States has grown to include marketing, sales, and financial service organizations for the BMW brand of motor vehicles, including motorcycles, the MINI brand, and the Rolls-Royce brand of Motor Cars; DesignworksUSA, a strategic design consultancy in California; a technology office in Silicon Valley and various other operations throughout the country.  BMW Manufacturing Co., LLC in South Carolina is part of BMW Group’s global manufacturing network and is the exclusive manufacturing plant for all X5 and X3 Sports Activity Vehicles and X6 Sports Activity Coupes. The BMW Group sales organization is represented in the U.S. through networks of 338 BMW passenger car and BMW Sports Activity Vehicle centers, 139 BMW motorcycle retailers, 117 MINI passenger car dealers, and 34 Rolls-Royce Motor Car dealers.  BMW (US) Holding Corp., the BMW Group’s sales headquarters for North America, is located in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.

Information about BMW Group products is available to consumers via the Internet at:  www.bmwgroupna.com 

Journalist note: Information about BMW Group and its products in the USA is available to journalists on-line at www.bmwgroupusanews.com and www.press.bmwna.com.   

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.

Further information: 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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For questions please contact:

Almut Stollberg

BMW Group Corporate and Governmental Affairs

Spokesperson Cultural Engagement

Telephone: +49 89 382 38770, Fax: +49 89 382 10881

Stacy Morris

BMW of North America

Corporate Communications Manager - Marketing & Culture

Telephone: +1 201-370-5134

Stacy.Morris@bmwna.com

Media Website: www.press.bmwgroup.com

E-mail: presse@bmw.de