Volkswagen Sponsors The Museum of Modern Art's Presentation of Eight-Night Live Performance Exhibition by Kraftwerk

HERNDON, Va., Feb. 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Volkswagen Group of America today announced it will sponsor The Museum of Modern Art's eight-night live performance exhibition, featuring 3-D visualization and a selection of original compositions by electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk. The sponsorship of Kraftwerk – Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, is part of a multi-year partnership between Volkswagen, MoMA and MoMA PS1 that began in May 2011 to foster and inspire innovative thinking through important exhibitions and education programs.

The performances will take place in MoMA's Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, from April 10 –17, 2012. Each of the eight consecutive evening performances will feature one of Kraftwerk's eight albums, showcasing the group's historical contributions and contemporary influences on sound and image culture. The albums will be performed in chronological order: Autobahn (1974), Radio-Activity (1975), Trans Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), Computer World (1981), Techno Pop (1986), The Mix (1991) and Tour de France (2003).

Organized by Klaus Biesenbach, director, MoMA PS1, and chief curator at large, MoMA, with the assistance of Eliza Ryan, curatorial assistant, MoMA PS1, the exhibition will mark the museum's first ever live, time-based retrospective.

Volkswagen's involvement with Kraftwerk provides yet another platform for the company to inspire its audiences with unique sounds and celebrate music and culture. Most recently, it collaborated with Rolling Stone to shower fans with live performances by a variety of artists at a major event.

"The originality and creativity that Kraftwerk brings to its performances are well-aligned with the core values of the Volkswagen brand, and we are excited to support this exhibition at MoMA as part of our ongoing partnership," said Jonathan Browning, president and CEO, Volkswagen Group of America. "We are looking forward to continuing our collaboration in 2012 to help MoMA achieve its long-term objectives and bring a variety of new exhibitions and programs to the public."

Pioneers in connecting new media with popular music, Kraftwerk will highlight an interpretation of contemporary music's most innovative material.

The elaborate staging of Kraftwerk – Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 will combine sound and images to present nearly 40 years of musical and technical innovation, with new improvisations, 3D projections, animation, and performances by members of the group.

Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider began the Kraftwerk project in Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1970, setting up the pioneering Kling Klang studio, where all of Kraftwerk's albums were conceived and composed.  By the mid-1970s, they achieved international recognition for their revolutionary electro sound paintings and their musical experimentation with tapes and synthesizers. The compositions also featured beautiful distant melodies, multi-lingual vocals, robotic rhythms, custom-made sequencers and vocoders, and computer-speech technology. Their use of robots, among other innovations in live performance, illustrates Kraftwerk's belief in the respective contributions of people and machines in making music. The artists' physical surroundings—both natural and man-made—have heavily influenced both the sonic direction and graphic identity of their eight concept albums, which draw on elements such as the noises of transit or industry to create their repetitive mechanical melodies. 

In recent years, starting with their performance at the Venice Biennale in 2005, Kraftwerk has been invited into the visual arts context, festivals, and museums, most recently performing at the museum Lenbachhaus Kunstbau in Munich. In contrast to all former presentations, where Kraftwerk videos, visuals, or the "robots" were presented in a museum context but performances were staged as concerts, MoMA is realizing a groundbreaking new display: the first synthetic retrospective to present simultaneously and in one location the complex layers of music, sound, videos, sets, and performance as a total work of art in MoMA's Marron atrium.

Tickets are $25.00 and will go on sale to the public on Wednesday, February 22, at 12:00 p.m., only at MoMAKraftwerkTickets.showclix.com. There is a two-ticket limit per person for the entire series. Tickets will be distributed exclusively via will call, and photo ID is required. Doors open 30 minutes prior to the performance.

About the Volkswagen, MoMA, and MoMA PS1 Partnership
The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, and Volkswagen began a multi-year partnership in 2011 that supports exhibitions and education at MoMA and at MoMA PS1. The major components of the partnership are the support for an international contemporary art exhibition at MoMA PS1 in 2013, and the expansion of MoMA's online course offerings beginning in March 2012. It also includes sponsorship of a series of installations in MoMA's Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden and new initiatives to take place in 2012.

This unprecedented partnership supports MoMA and MoMA PS1's leadership role in contemporary art and culture, and their goal of reaching a diverse and global audience. As part of the partnership with Volkswagen, Klaus Biesenbach, director of MoMA PS1 and chief curator at large at MoMA, is currently engaged in extensive research to scout artists working in multiple mediums throughout the world. A major exhibition filling MoMA PS1's entire gallery space, and utilizing the new MoMA PS1 Performance Dome, will open in 2013, highlighting artists who are reacting to the pressing questions of the 21st century with its interrelated ecological, economical, spiritual, ethnographic, political, and social challenges. 

About Volkswagen of America, Inc.
Founded in 1955, Volkswagen of America, Inc. is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia. It is a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG, headquartered in Wolfsburg, Germany. Volkswagen's operations in the United States include research and development, parts and vehicle processing, parts distribution centers, sales, marketing and service offices, financial service centers, and its state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Volkswagen is one of the world's largest producers of passenger cars and Europe's largest automaker. Volkswagen sells the Beetle, Eos, Golf, GTI, Jetta, Jetta SportWagen, Passat, CC, Tiguan, Touareg and Routan vehicles through approximately 600 independent U.S. dealers.

SOURCE Volkswagen of America, Inc.