Rolls-Royce Motor Cars PressClub · Article.
ROLLS-ROYCE ANNOUNCES SHORTLISTED ARTISTS FOR INAUGURAL MOVING-IMAGE DREAM COMMISSION
21.10.2020 Press Release
Muse, the Rolls-Royce Art Programme, today reveals the four moving-image artists, shortlisted for its inaugural flagship initiative, the Dream Commission. The Dream Commission is a biennial prize, awarded to inspire greatness and foster creativity in the media of moving-image.
Press Contact.
Malika Abdullaeva
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
Tel: +447815244874
send an e-mail
Author.
Emma Rickett
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
- Artists Sondra Perry, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Martine Syms and Zhou Tao are shortlisted for Muse, the Rolls-Royce Art Programme’s flagship Dream Commission
- Each artist has created a moving-image concept artwork, investigating the narrative of ‘Dreams’
- Dream Commission supports moving-image art by emerging and mid-career artists
- Final recipient of Dream Commission to be announced in Spring 2021
“Muse, the Rolls-Royce Art Programme, fosters creativity
through collaborations with artists who share our passion for
pushing technical and conceptual boundaries. We are delighted to
announce four shortlisted moving-image artists for the inaugural
Dream Commission, each of whom have outstanding reputations. The art
of moving-image is a creative and avant-garde genre and we are
pleased to be supporting this medium at this critical time for the
industry. To commission artists during a pandemic is an act of
determination and faith in the power of culture to inform and
transform our lives; a quality at Rolls-Royce that we fully
endorse.”
Torsten Müller -Ötvös, Chief Executive Officer, Rolls-Royce
Motor Cars
Muse, the Rolls-Royce Art Programme, today reveals the four
moving-image artists, shortlisted for its inaugural flagship
initiative, the Dream Commission. The Dream Commission
is a biennial prize, awarded to inspire greatness and foster
creativity in the media of moving-image. Artists Sondra Perry (USA),
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (Puerto Rico), Martine Syms (USA) and Zhou Tao
(China) were selected by an international Jury of leading art world
individuals, having been nominated by a panel of industry figureheads,
over the course of 2020.
Each artist has created a short-form moving-image artwork,
exploring the notion of ‘Dreams’. These works will act as a proof of
concept for consideration by the Jury, leading to one artist being
awarded the commission of creating a new moving image artwork in 2021.
New Jersey-based interdisciplinary artist Sondra Perry works
across the media of AI, animation, performance, and video, amongst
others. At the forefront of Perry’s work lies an exploration of the
themes of race, identity and technology. Perry’s short-form artwork,
Lineage for a Phantom Zone, is as a meditation on lineage,
longing, and memory using footage of her own and from online archives.
The artist commented; “the piece begins with me playing a
theremin, using the touchless liminal instrument to conjure a dream
space with multi-dimensional sound. Growing up, my grandmother had a
picture of herself on the land she was raised on in North Carolina
on her dresser. I think about that picture often and I wanted to
reflect on her history, that land, and my experience of it through
images. I collapse time, space, and two generations of family to
visualize a life dream that was mutated through imagination, images,
and video and passed down through my DNA”.
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz is an artist and film maker based in
Puerto Rico. Her approach to filmmaking resembles the careful approach
of an ethnographer; her films arising from long periods of research,
observation and documentation. For Santiago Munoz’s short-form artwork
The Source, she weaves together heterogenous snapshots of
people, places and experiences, evoking a sensorial response in the
viewer. Taking place against the backdrop of Puerto Rico, the artist
brings the rich history and culture of the country to light. She
commented, “It begins with an experience. My son is standing at
the source of the Río Caguitas. Something seems to stop. Is it the
ancient rock, the loud cold water pushing, the slowness above us,
the smell? An interval. Reading his translation of Proust to Haitian
Kreyòl, a project undertaken for its own sake and without readers in
mind, my colleague writer and translator Guy Regis Junior had said
the task had been both full of pleasure and sacrificial. From there,
there is an opening-up in the interval, in that time/space between
one language, history and sensorial world, and another”.
LA-based artist Martine Syms has earned wide recognition for a
practice that combines conceptual grit, humour and social commentary.
For her short-form moving image artwork, Kita’s World,
Martine introduces viewers into her personal mythology; equal parts
biological, psychological and sociological. The artist commented,
“My world is a strange combination of core material, broken
samples, seductive loops, and heavy theory. Kita’s World considers
the problem of the psychosomatic slip in the digital era.
Symptomatic of the contemporary condition, I was inspired by an
anecdote by a prominent theorist in which intimate technology
appears to read our minds. Everything has a subtext, ulterior
motives—but tech flattens everything out. It can speak our
unconscious; we unravel equally in realms both real and digital.
There is a dissolution of difference but no real plurality. I’m
using Kita, an homage to an avatar from my childhood, to think
through this tension”.
Guangzhou-based artist Zhou Tao works primarily in video,
drawing and photography. His moving-image artworks invite us to
experience the multiple trajectories of reality. For his short-form
moving image artwork Three Hundred Miles Southwest, Tao moves
the gaze of his lens from densely populated areas to a remote and
almost mythological setting. The artist commented, “Three hundred
miles from the dangerous peak to the southeast, those forgotten
areas not covered by the high-speed network are at the end of the
geography. Between a wolf seeker with mountains as a companion and
the 37th ‘remote style’ ecological model; between the giant reliefs
in the narrow valley and the legendary gate into the
four-dimensional; the engineering bases connected from one terminal
to another scattered among the mountains, presenting a future fable
that has long passed away of this mythological place”.
In June 2020, the Jury unanimously agreed upon the four
shortlisted artists, selected from a long-list of twenty-three
nominations. The Jury comprises: Isaac Julien CBE RA, a leading
moving-image artist; Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the
Serpentine Galleries in London; Katrina Sedgwick, Museum Director of
the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne; Terrie
Sultan, former Museum Director of the Parrish Art Museum in New York;
and Theodora Vischer, Senior Curator at Fondation Beyeler in Basel.
Jury statement: “The Dream Commission offers an opportunity
for artists to have a space to develop their aesthetics and to be
able to delve deeply into an area where they can have an autonomy to
make a work which can resonate. The quality of the long list that
was presented to us made this an incredibly engaging, but also
difficult selection process. The breadth of practice that was
selected for us to consider was extraordinary - the sophistication
of ideas and expression across this media was so inspiring.
We have succeeded in selecting a variety of artists from different
countries, cultures and different kinds of artistic thinking.”
After five years of supporting international artists in
creating new works, the Rolls-Royce Art Programme announced a new
vision in 2019 to become Muse¸ a platform with two biennial
initiatives, the Dream Commission and the Spirit of
Ecstasy Challenge. Rolls-Royce’s ambition for the Dream
Commission, founded in partnership with the Serpentine
Galleries, London and the Fondation Beyeler, Basel, is to establish
the marque as a relevant platform for advancing the medium of moving
image today. Celebrating the latest innovations in the field of moving
image art, Dream Commission works can be from any medium
within that category including experimental film, video, animation,
immersive and participatory installations, and content presented in
non-screen formats, such as augmented and virtual reality.
As the two-year process concludes, the cycle will begin again,
yielding a group of landmark works of moving-image art.
Rolls-Royce has launched a new Muse Instagram channel,
dedicated to sharing exclusive content relating to Muse and
the Dream Commission. To stay up-to-date follow @rollsroycemuse.
Discover Dream Commission content here.