Art Basel and BMW announced Samson Young as the first BMW Art Journey winner. The BMW Art Journey will allow Young to embark on a creative journey across five continents. Young will undertake a worldwide tour of iconic bells, documenting them and creating works of visual art and music composition in response to them. Samson Young was one of three shortlisted artists selected from this year's Discoveries sector at Art Basel's show in Hong Kong. Samson Young's project for the inaugural BMW Art Journey, titled ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls: A Journey Into the Sonic History of Conflict', builds on the Hong Kong-based artist's longstanding fascination with military technology and his training as a composer. In this project, he turns his attention to bells, which bring together these two related areas of interest. Cannons and bells are made of essentially the same materials. In times of war, bells would be melted down to create cannons, and when peace returned, bells would be recast from surplus weapons. For Young's 2015 BMW Art Journey he will focus on bells that give form to the idea of ‘conflict' in a variety of ways.
His journey will take him to bells and research institutions in Myanmar, Kenya, Austria, Cologne, Morocco, Sicily, South Korea, Australia and several cities in the United Kingdom and United States, where the artist will notate and record the sounds of exceptional and historically resonant bells, generating an archive of bell recordings, a series of ‘bell sound sketches', a set of new bronze bells, and an original musical composition for bell-ringers and orchestra.
Art Basel and BMW will collaborate with the awarded artist to document the journey and share it with the public through print publications, online and social media. On June 16, the first preview day of Art Basel's show in Basel, Samson Young will be available for interviews.
