Ursula Biemann
Saturday, 22 June 2013
Work from her oeuvre.
“Ursula Biemann (Switzerland) is an artist, theorist and curator who has in recent years produced a considerable body of work on migration, mobility, technology and gender. In a series of internationally exhibited video projects, as well as in several books ‘Been there and back to nowhere’ (2000), ‘Stuff It – The Video Essay in the Digital Age’ (2003) and her new monograph ‘MISSION REPORTS’ (2008) she has focused on the gendered dimension of migrant labour from smuggling on the Spanish-Moroccan border to migrant sex workers in the global context. Her experimental video essays connect a theoretical macro level with the micro perspective on political and cultural practices on the ground.
Insisting that location is spatially produced rather than pre-determined by governance, she made space and mobility her prime category of analysis in the curatorial project ‘Geography and the Politics of Mobility’ (2003) at the Generali Foundation in Vienna, ‘The Maghreb Conncection’ on migratory systems in North Africa, Cairo/Geneva (2006) or the art research projects ‘Black Sea Files’ on the Caspian oil politics at Kunstwerke Berlin (2005) and ‘Sahara Chronicle’ on trans-saharan mobility. The most recent video essay ‘X-Mission’ (2008) is an analysis of the Palestinian refugees camps as a zone of exception.
Biemann’s practice has long included discussions with academics and other practitioners, she has worked with anthropologists, cultural theorists, NGOmembers, architects, as well as scholars of sonic culture. Her video essays reach a wide and diverse audience through festival screenings, art exhibitions, activist conferences, networks and educational settings.” –Tate