Ursula Biemann

Ursula Biemann

70 (1955-01-01)
Zürich, Switzerland

Ursula Biemann is a Swiss video artist, curator, educator, and art theorist.

Most Known for...

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Black Sea Files N/A (1)

Black Sea Files is a territorial research on the Caspian oil geography: the world’s oldest oil extraction zone. A giant new subterranean pipeline traversing the Caucasus will soon pump Caspian Crude to the West. The line connecting the resource fringe with the terminal of the global high-tech oil circulation system, runs through the video like a central thread. However, the trajectory followed by the narrative is by no means a linear one. Circumventing the main players in the region, the video sheds light on a multitude of secondary sceneries. Oil workers, farmers, refugees and prostitutes who live along the pipeline come into profile and contribute to a wider human geography that displaces the singular and powerful signifying practices of oil corporations and oil politicians.
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Subatlantic 2015

Appealing concurrently in this video essay to various meanings of the term “Subatlantic”—a climatic phase beginning 2500 years ago, as well as the submerged regions of the Atlantic—Biemann immerses her camera deep in oceanic waters to ponder upon the entanglements of geological time with that of human history. As the voice-over speaks the accounts of a she-scientist traversing the pan-generational timescales of the Subatlantic, we navigate between the palpable evidence of the dramatic human-induced ecological alterations to the world and those that are simply beyond our comprehension.
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Remote Sensing 2003

Remote Sensing is a two-year project resulting in a split-screen digital video tracing the topographies of the global sex trade in relation to satellite media and other geographic information technologies that visualise globality. The video unravels the multi-layered meaning of a geography in which the mobility and migration of women is linked to illicit economies and the implementation of new technologies.