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Art Basel and BMW are pleased to announce that Samson Young, Hong Kong sound artist and winner of the first BMW Art Journey, will present a new public artwork during Art Basel’s Hong Kong show this year. Titled ‘So You Are Old by the Time You Reach the Island’, the piece will take the form of a multi-media walk that will lead participants on a journey through the streets of the Admiralty and Wan Chai districts in Hong Kong. Offering a time and site-specific experience, the work weaves together institutional histories of place with fictional and personal narratives, all through films, audio tracks, on-site FM radio broadcasts, live actions, and installation elements dispersed along the route.

The multi-media walk adds a new chapter to ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, an ongoing project the artist developed on his BMW Art Journey in 2015. The artist’s journey centered on bells, both as sonorous objects and as ideological, political, and religious emblems of their respective communities. On a sixty-day trip around the globe, Samson Young researched and recorded numerous bells, compiling an extensive archive of bell recordings and a series of bell sound sketches on paper. The recordings and interviews collected over the journey will be a major aspect of the multi-media walk.

‘During my 2015 BMW Art Journey, I traveled to eleven countries on five continents, frequently alone,’ said the artist. ‘So now it is all the more exciting to add this new dimension to the journey, in the city I call my home, surrounded by friends, artistic collaborators, and visitors. In the past year, I have developed a deeper appreciation for the cultural and psychological meanings of travel, and I hope that though this experience, participants in the sound walk will share this understanding.’

By enabling the winning artist to go on their own journey of creative discovery, the BMW Art Journey functions as a mobile studio that can take artists almost anywhere in the world – to develop new ideas, discover new themes, and envision new creative projects. Additional information about ‘So You Are Old by the Time You Reach the Island’, Samson Young, and his BMW Art Journey can be found at bmw-art-journey.com.

The second shortlist of the BMW Art Journey will be announced at a special media briefing during Art Basel’s Hong Kong show on March 23 at the BMW Lounge. A jury
comprising Richard Armstrong (Director Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York), Claire Hsu (Director Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong), Matthias Mühling (Director Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich), Bose Krishnamachari (Director KochiMuziris Biennale, India) and Pauline J. Yao (Curator, Visual Art M+, Hong Kong) will 
select three artists from the Discoveries sector at Art Basel in Hong Kong, who will then go on to submit proposals for a journey to a destination of their choice, with the winner being announced in the early summer of 2016.