Ursula Biemann

Ursula Biemann 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.

Recent exhibitions include: Zona B at Tapies Foundation, Barcelona; International Biennial Istanbul; Centre d'art Contemporain, Geneva; a retrospective at the film festivals FID Marseille and TEK Rome, Arnolfini, Bristol, and A Foundation Liverpool; group exhibitions at LACE, Los Angeles, Artist Space, New York, Kunstverein Hamburg; a retrospective at the Bildmuseet Umea in Sweden, the Gwangju and Shanghai Biennials, steirischer Herbst, Graz, and Flaherty Film Seminars, NY.

Ursula Biemann is a researcher at the Institute for Theory of Art and Design at HGK Zurich, and teaches seminars and workshops internationally.  She was appointed Doctor honoris causa in Humanities by the Swedish University Umea in 2008.