A journey through the acoustic history of conflicts. Journeys and encounters with other countries and people play a decisive role in the creative process of many artists. The second volume commemorating the BMW Art Journey—a joint initiative by BMW and Art Basel that supports artists with travel grants, memorializes the first journey undertaken by a recipient of this unique award. Hong Kong-based artist and composer Samson Young traced the sounds and the complex histories of bells in a two-month-long journey that took him to eleven countries on five continents. The artist’s compositions, images, and texts give expression to the relationships of tensions between war and peace, solidarity and strife, and of the political dimension of sound.

Ed. András Szántó, BMW Group Munich

Publisher: Hatje Cantz, 2016 

Language: English

Softcover; 160 pages

7 x 9.5 in

ISBN: 978-3775741705

About the artist

Samson Young (b. 1979, Hong Kong)

Multi-disciplinary artist Samson Young works in sound, performance, video, and installation. He graduated with a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Princeton University in 2013. In 2017, he represented Hong Kong at the 57th Venice Biennale. Other solo projects include the De Appel, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh; SMART Museum, Chicago; Centre for Contemporary Chinese Art in Manchester; M+ Pavilion, Hong Kong; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Ryosoku-in at Kenninji Temple, Kyoto; and Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, among others. Selected group exhibitions include Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Gropius Bau, Berlin; Performa 19, New York; Biennale of Sydney; Shanghai Biennale; National Museum of Art, Osaka; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Ars Electronica, Linz; and documenta 14: documenta radio, among others. In 2020, he was awarded the inaugural Uli Sigg Prize. His works are in the collections of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; M+ Museum, Hong Kong; Mori Art Museum, Japan; and KADIST, Paris.