"Black Sea Files": A presentation with Ursula Biemann October 22, 2009

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. "Black Sea Files" (2005) is a video geography of the giant Caspian pipeline from Baku to Ceylon and the global high-tech oil circulation system and shows how oil circulation affects people who have been expelled from the territory, the environment, and geopolitics at large.

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 also appointed as a Doctor honoris causa in Humanities by the Swedish University of Umea in 2008.

The Ex-Files series includes lectures and visual presentations situated at the intersection of artistic and scholarly approaches to understanding new dimensions of globalization. The globalized exploitation of natural resources, the circulation of goods, people, and information, and various attempts to block or channel these flows are the focal point of this series of events. They will draw our attention to nation states' human rights infringements and the creation of places and passages where national rules are abrogated, as well as to endeavors involving space. These uncanny trespassing and immunization strategies and maneuvers, constituting and depending on trade zones, war zones and, literally, exterritorial space, tend to be kept unremarked and hidden. Additional sponsorship provided by the Consulate General of Switzerland in Chicago.

Official Website: http://www.geobodies.org/