Middle East Studies

Lecture + Film Screening | Ursula Biemann, 'Sahara Chronicle'

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

4:00pm – 6:00pm

Joukowsky Forum

Screening introduced by the artist, Ursula Biemann.

Transit migration through the Sahara is a large-scale collective experience that is best understood in its systemic dimension. Highly adjustable, these movements have generated prolific operational networks, systems of information and social organization among fellow migrants as well as interaction with local populations. The long-term video research Sahara Chronicle (2006-2009) works with a notion of geography both as social practice and organizing system. Diverting the attention from the present fascination with power geographies and repressive border regimes, her video investigations explore the counter-geographies constituted by undercover operating systems, innovative practices of resistance and migratory self-determination. Entering clandestine, off-track and virtual spaces, Ursula Biemann presents an art practice that visualizes a counter-geography of the Sahara, suggesting ways in which artists may inscribe themselves in these symbolic and material spaces.

The screening presents 7 of the 12 videos constituting the open anthology of Sahara Chronicle (50’)

This is the second in a three-part series:

Wednesday, April 5 

Arts
Arts & Social Change
Displacement
Workshops, Conferences, Seminars
Lectures
Films

About: Ursula Biemann (born 1955, Zurich, Switzerland) is an artist, writer, and video essayist. Her artistic practice is strongly research oriented and involves fieldwork in remote locations where she investigates climate change and the ecologies of oil and water. She works the findings into multi-layered videos by connecting the micropolitics on the ground with a theoretical macro level, proposing a reflexive exploration of planetary and videographic organization.