Tate Modern
Tate and BMW today announced a dynamic performance programme for BMW Tate Live 2013. Now in its second year, BMW Tate Live is a major four-year partnership between BMW and Tate, which focuses on performance and interdisciplinary art in the gallery and online. Joan Jonas, Liu Ding and Charles Atlas are among the artists commissioned to contribute this year with the first event of 2013, Suzanne Lacy Silver Action, taking place on 3 February.
BMW Tate Live 2013 includes performance commissions across two strands of live programming:
- BMW Tate Live: Performance Events, free and ticketed live performances within The Tanks and other spaces at Tate Modern; and
- BMW Tate Live: Performance Room, a pioneering programme of live performances commissioned and conceived exclusively for online viewing and simultaneously seen by international audiences across world time zones.
The programme explores the diverse ways in which artists approach live performance in the 21st century whether in the gallery or online. Throughout the programme, artists will work with the local community, animate key moments in art history, and collaborate across dance, film and other art forms. Integral to the programme are BMW Tate Live: Thought Workshops, a series of participatory discussions and a keynote address.
A short film introducing BMW Tate Live 2013 is available here: www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/blogs/bmw-tate-live-2013-programme-announced
BMW Tate Live 2013 Programme
BMW Tate Live Performance Events: Suzanne Lacy Silver Action
3 February 2013, 12.00 – 17.00 GMT
Hundreds of women over the age of sixty will converge in The Tanks at Tate Modern to participate in Silver Action, a live and unscripted performance conceived by artist Suzanne Lacy. UK-based women who took part in significant activist movements and protests from the 1950s to 80s will share their personal stories in a series of workshops, culminating in a day-long public performance on 3 February. The work aims to highlight women’s role in shaping society, with a focus on older women who have enabled this historically.
BMW Tate Live Performance Room: Joan Jonas
28 February 2013, 20.00 GMT
Online at www.youtube.com/user/tate/tatelive
Joan Jonas, pioneer of the use of film and video in performance, will, for the first time, make work especially for an online audience. Referencing previous works such as Vertical Roll 1972, in which she performed directly to the camera in her studio, and drawing on mythology, Jonas will create a live tableau using sculptural props, costumes, masks, music, her voice and her students.
BMW Tate Live Performance Events: Charles Atlas
20–26 March 2013
Charles Atlas is known for his innovative film and video work made with choreographers, dancers and performers from Michael Clark and Merce Cunningham to Marina Abramovic and Leigh Bowery. Atlas will collaborate with Argentinean dancer and choreographer Cecilia Bengolea and New York-based performance artist Johanna Constantine on a week-long series of live performances within a multi-projection installation.
BMW Tate Live Performance Room: Liu Ding (Little Movements)
16 May 2013, 20.00 BST
Online at www.youtube.com/user/tate/tatelive
Liu Ding launched Liu Ding’s Store in 2008, a continuing project using the economic model of a shop as a platform for discussion on the creation of value in the art world. For Performance Room, the artist will examine the relationship between the Chinese avant garde and the Western history of modernism with music and life-size cardboard reproductions of artworks.
BMW Tate Live Performance Room: artist to be announced
13 June 2013, 20.00 BST and 19 September 2013, 20.00 BST
Online at www.youtube.com/user/tate/tatelive
Details will be made available at www.tate.org.uk/bmwtatelive
BMW Tate Live Performance Room: Ragnar Kjartansson
24 October 2013, 20.00 BST
Online at www.youtube.com/user/tate/tatelive
Ragnar Kjartansson experiments with visual arts, music, theatre and opera. He explores with humour the potential of repetition in performance, acting in most of his works.
BMW Tate Live Performance Events: Isidoro Valcárcel Medina 18 Pictures and 18 Stories
September 2013 (Dates to be announced)
For 18 Pictures and 18 Stories, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina invites three guests to tell a story about a photograph that he has taken. The artist answers questions from the guests and audience remotely. Tate Modern is the eighth and last occurrence in this series and coincides with the publication of a book. The project was initiated by Corpus, a collaborative network for commissioning performance led by CAC Bretigny, If I Can’t Dance, Playground and Tate Modern.
BMW Tate Live Performance Events: Laboratoire Agit-Art
November 2013 (Dates to be announced)
The Laboratoire Agit-Art is a collective of artists, dramatists, performers, poets and filmmakers fromSenegal. Since the 1970s, they have challenged dogmatic perceptions of African identity and rejected the production of art for the market through spontaneous actions, debate and exhibitions. Tate will explore the legacy of their conversational mode of live art for BMW Tate Live.
BMW Tate Live Performance Room: Daniel Linehan
12 December 2013, 20.00 GMT
Online at www.youtube.com/user/tate/tatelive
Dancer and choreographer Daniel Linehan considers the boundaries and commonalities between dance and non-dance forms using recorded and projected video images. He plays with texts, movements, images, songs and videos to create text- and dance-based performances.
Linehan is currently New Wave Associate 2012–14 at Sadler’s Wells, London.
BMW Tate Live Thought Workshops
22 June, 28 September, 8 November (Keynote), 9 November
The BMW Tate Live 2013 programme includes BMW Tate Live: Thought Workshops, a series of discussion workshops and keynote address on performance. Participation is by application.
BMW Tate Live is curated by Catherine Wood, Curator, Contemporary Art and Performance, Tate and Capucine Perrot, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern.
Quote sheet
Chris Dercon, Director of Tate Modern said:
Following an incredibly successful start to our partnership in 2012, I am delighted that BMW Tate Live is growing for 2013. BMW Tate Live: Performance Room has shown the appetite people have to mix live art and technology and this is something that we will continue. Adding to this activity will be BMW Tate Live: Performance Events in and around Tate Modern and BMW Tate Live: Thought Workshops, a series of workshops to debate, discuss and dissect the way art supports emotional, intellectual and societal transformation. Art encourages us to make bold decisions – by and for ourselves as well as with others.
Frank-Peter Arndt, Member of the Board of Management, BMW AG said:
BMW Tate Live embodies the great innovative energy of our partnership with one of the most renowned cultural institutions worldwide. The platform for performance and interdisciplinary art, both online as well as in the galleries, represents an entirely new concept in the museum world. We are delighted to be able to engage with Tate Modern as an active partner in its claim to reach a new audience and to rethink the museum’s mission for the 21st century in an unconventional way. Together with our engagement for Frieze Art Fair and the open-air concerts by the London Symphony Orchestra performed free of charge inTrafalgar Square, BMW Tate Live is yet another great initiative in the British capital with international appeal.