Remote Sensing (2001)

Date: 2001
Material/Technique: Digital Betacam, color, stereo, 4:3
Sammlung: ZKM
Copyright: © Ursula Biemann

»Remote Sensing« roams through the territories of the global sex trade moving us from orbit into women's lives from Eastern Europe to East Asia. As Biemann explores the lifeworlds of sex workers, she invents a feminist media topography, layering her video perspectives of sexual laborers and their personal data within remote satellite imagery of the earth. »Remote Sensing« exposes what it means to sense the world remotely and charts the ambivalences surrounding the media technologies used to track, monitor and sense women's bodies from a distance. Biemann navigates a unique path through critical dialogues on the global sex trade, feminist geography and media activism and her video will become a natural resource for anyone interested in these areas.

Ursula Biemann

Born 1955 in Zurich (CH); studied art and critical theory in New York, 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; 1997 collaborative art project »Kültür« on Istanbul's post-urban zones and female migration, Biennial Istanbul; 1995-1998 Curatorial projects for Shedhalle Zurich; Senior Researcher at the Zurich University of the Arts.

Text and Biography: www.geobodies.org