Acoustic Ocean

Black Sea Files

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.

Crossroads at the Edge of Worlds

This video research is based on a trip to Morocco in July 2005, during which the director documented irregular migration transiting through Morocco, as well as their control. This geographical project focuses on the main migratory axes: Oujda, entry point for migrants in Morocco; Tangier, from where migrants can try to cross the strait or the fences of Ceuta; Rabat, organization space; and Laayoune, the closest point to the Canaries. The video questions the nature and meaning of these extraterritorial enclaves that structure the Moroccan territory.

Remote Sensing

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.

Subatlantic

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.

Performing the Border

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.

Europlex

The fourth in Ursula Biemann's critically acclaimed series of video essays that investigates migration across borders, EUROPLEX, a collaboration with Angela Sanders, tracks the daily, sometimes illicit, border crossings between Morocco and Spain- a rare intersection of the first and third worlds.

Sahara Chronicle

Sahara Chronicle encompasses an undefined number of short videos documenting the present sub-Saharan exodus towards Europe. Taking a close look at the modalities and logistics of the migration system in the Sahara, the project examines the politics of mobility, visibility and containment which lie at the heart of current global geopolitics. The material is gathered during three field trips to major gates and nodes of the trans-Saharan network in Morocco, Mauritania and Niger where migratory intensity is bundled. No voice-over narrative strings these stories together. Meaning has to be extracted from the interstices between the documents, from the stretch of the journey that is most invisible to the eye.

Baraka

A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.

The Last Trapper

Norman is not just an admirer of nature, he's a part of it. He survives the harshness of the climate and the wildlife by coexisting with it. With his wife Nebraska, they live almost entirely off the land, making money by selling their furs.

Alien

During its return to the earth, commercial spaceship Nostromo intercepts a distress signal from a distant planet. When a three-member team of the crew discovers a chamber containing thousands of eggs on the planet, a creature inside one of the eggs attacks an explorer. The entire crew is unaware of the impending nightmare set to descend upon them when the alien parasite planted inside its unfortunate host is birthed.

A-X-L

The life of a teenage boy is forever altered by a chance encounter with cutting edge military technology.