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A videotape by Ursula Biemann, 42 min. 1999
A video essay set in the Mexican-U.S. border town of Ciudad Juarez, where U.S. multinational corporations assemble electronic and digital equipment just across from El Paso, Texas, this imaginative, experimental work investigates the growing feminization of the global economy and its impact on Mexican women living and working in the area. Looking at the border as both a discursive and material space, the video explores the sexualization of the border region through labor division, prostitution, the expression of female desires in the entertainment industry, and sexual violence in the public sphere. Candid interviews with Mexican women factory and sex workers, as well as activists and journalists, are combined with scripted voiceover analysis, screen text, scenes and sounds recorded on site, and found footage to give new insights into the gendered conditions inscribed by the high-tech industry at its low-wage end.
Remote Sensing
A video essay by Ursula Biemann, 53 min. 2001
In Biemann's latest video, she traces the routes and reasons of women who travel across the globe for work in the sex industry. By using the latest images from NASA satellites, the film investigates the consequences of the U.S. military presence in South East Asia as well as European migration politics. This video-essay takes an earthly perspective on cross-border circuits, where women have emerged as key actors and expertly links new geographic technologies to the sexualization and displacement of women on a global scale. By revealing how technologies of marginalization affect women in their sexuality, "Remote Sensing" aspires to displace and resignify the feminine within sexual difference and cultural representation.
Ursula Biemann
(born in 1955) studied art and critical theory in Mexico and at the School of Visual Arts (BFA) and the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York (1988). Her art and curatorial practice focuses on gender and globalisation issues regarding migration, free trade zones, virtual communication and borders. Curatorial projects for Shedhalle Zürich 1995-1998. Curator of Stuff It, the video essay in the digital age, symposium at HGKZ Zürich and Gender & Geography exhibition at Generali Foundation Vienna 2003. Her videos are shown in international exhibitions and festivals. Lectures and teaches internationally and at HGKZ Zürich. She is associated with the Institute of Theory in Arts and Design of HGKZ in Zürich for research activities.
more info: www.geobodies.org
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Songül Boyraz/Peter Höll
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