1

Ursula Biemann : Contained Mobility

Ursula Biemann’ s video installation, Contained Mobility, was commissioned by

the third Liverpool Biennial in 2004 as part of International 04. The organisers
intended to position artworks in specific places and at the same time to make
them resonate in the wider art world .1 The logic of value for money for
publicly funded projects implies performance indicators like number of visitors,
media coverage and impact on the economy of a city which sees itself as post-
industrial, post-colonial and post-port. On the other hand, culture should be
viewed as bringing more than merely quantitative effects in terms of return on
investment2 and also as having qualitative effects by improving social cohesion
and education.3 I would argue that Biemann’s work was successful in terms of
quality while the correlation with Liverpool was perhaps less evident at first
sight. The story about the Odyssey of a refugee ended provisionally in
Liverpool with his status pending. In terms of visible impact on the spectator,
there seems to have been a general problem of low attendance at all venues of
the Biennial even at Tate .

A first reading of Biemann’s Contained mobility can be placed in the immediate

context of European Integration and the contradiction between the free movement of
goods and the barriers at the external borders of the Schengen space to hinder the
circulation of persons. European integration itself is a mini-globalisation with the
underlying idea that free circulation of goods, services and capital lead to more
competition with in the end survival of the fittest. Free movement of persons and
labour is however limited to the Schengen space4. This partial integration of Europe
is also as Castells rightly points out a reaction against globalisation with barriers to
trade and tight external frontiers.5 Furthermore the universal right of asylum
accorded by the Geneva Convention is made redundant by the agreement of
Schengen, the latter being based on citizenship, frontier patrolling outside and
surveillance within its borders. This contradiction is translated into the artwork by
synchronizing a double screen video projection with one screen showing a smooth
flow of movement referring to the goods against an interrupted sequencing of still
images referring to the persons. (Figure 1)

1
Lewis Biggs ‘Owned and Possessed’ Liverpool Biennial, International 04, exhibition catalogue,
Liverpool , 2004 p.8 .While the site specificity of Liverpool was primordial, the general impact on the
artworld seemed to have been less successful. I would like to quote as an example the German art
magazine Kunstforum which remarked critically that the marketing of the city of Liverpool seemed
more important than art itself. Thomas Wulffen , Liverpool Biennale in Kunstforum International,
Volume 173, November/ December 2004, p.386
2
Dokumenta Kassel has a potential return of € 7 for every Euro invested. Paul Domela ‘The Bounce
Factor in Liverpool Biennial, International 04, exhibition catalogue, Liverpool , 2004 p.67
3
Some like Sabine Breitwieser, one of the four researchers of the Biennial, saw certain problems with
the framework of the Biennial as such and its complicated partnership arrangements. The heart of the
problem lies in the sheer cost of producing the work which makes artists depend more and more on
specific commissions.
4
The Schengen Space comprises Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece,
Iceland, Italy, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden .
5
Manuel Castells , End of millennium , Blackwell Publishers, Oxford 1998, p.348
 2

Seen on the right screen, which also contains the image of the man, is the story of
Anatol Zimmermann, born in a USSR prison under Stalin since his mother had the
‘wrong’ (German) nationality. After de-Stalinization he goes to university, earns a
PhD , marries, has children, a job. The accident of Chernobyl and later the implosion
of the Soviet Union disturb this stability. He becomes a political activist, is persecuted
and goes to jail in his own country and after his release wanders across the continent
of Europe in search of a better life. This Odyssey of illegal border crossings, capture
by authorities, placement in camps, bureaucratic procedures with an provisional end
in Liverpool where his status is pending, is being conveyed to the viewer in the style
of a police report, a factual narrative of a scrolled yellow text on black .( Figure 2)

A second, perceptual and conceptual reading would endeavour to attach meaning to

individual iconographic, formal and technical elements used in Biemann’s video;
taking as a point of departure the statement of the artist about

the ongoing struggle between disciplinary mobility and the desire for self-
determination…The shipping container becomes a suitable symbol for these
contradictory terms as it denotes a quality of confinement and enclosure while
implying at the same time a systematized world-wide mobility. 6

In economic terms, containerisation is a rationalized, largely automated mode of

transportation which by reducing transportation cost enables industries to dislocate
their facilities further away from their markets into countries with cheaper labour costs
and less stringent social standards. 7 Containers have been used as a critical
metonym by different artists. One of the first works was Large Triumphal Arch by the
Belgian architect Luc Deleu which was shown in Neuchatel, Switzerland in 1983. In
an ironic way Deleu uses containers like huge Lego elements alluding to the Arc de
Triomphe in Paris. (Figure 3). In Fish Story Allan Sekula contrasts in one image
the outer view of containers with the unlimitedness of the sea (Figure 4)8 . By
showing a panoramic view Sekula creates a transcendental romanticising image of
seafaring as opposed to the grim working conditions on the boat itself. 9 In
Contained mobility the container alludes to the free flow of goods if read together
with the image of oil stock facilities in the harbour on the second screen. The viewer
can also look into the inside which becomes a fictional “home” for somebody on the
move. Read together with the narrative scrolled onto the image, the container seems
to be an unreal, ironic place of domesticity complete with bed, cooking facility, desk
and bucket serving as a toilet.10 The artist explains that

Anatol comes to signify the itinerant body, probing protocols of access in just
about every country in Europe. He moves through non–civil places, waits for

6
Contained mobility in www.geobodies.org
7
Allan Sekula , Fish story ,Witte de With, Centrum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Rotterdam 1995, p.49.
Dislocation to countries with cheaper labour becomes not only an issue of exploitation of cheap labour
on the new production site but also one of destruction of jobs in the original place of production.
8
ibid. p.57
9
Steve Edwards:’ Photography out of Conceptual Art’ in Gill Perry and Paul Wood (eds) Themes in
Contemporary Art, Yale University Press, London 2004, p.169
10
The artist refers to her research for the work .She discovered a news story about an illegal
passenger who used a container to be shipped to Canada but got intercepted by the police. Liverpool
Biennial, International 04, exhibition catalogue ,Liverpool ,2004, p.28
 3

status in off-social spaces, and lives in a condition of permanent non-

belonging. 11

The spectator’s gaze into the inside of the container, perceived through a
surveillance camera, evokes a collapse of the borders between public and private
life. (Figure 5). Surveillance technology leads to a curtailing of civil liberties in the
name of security and is part of what Deleuze calls a ‘control society.’ Unlike
disciplinary societies whose characteristic modus operandi is the organisation of
major sites of confinement like family, school, workplace, prisons, hospital or the
internment camps, the control society’s key mode of operation are mobility on the
one side and access control on the other hand.12 The code replaces the key. The
logic of access has a long tradition in border controls and immigration rules and and
in legislation governing citizenship. The Spanish artist Santiago Sierra conceived the
Spanish Pavilion at the last Biennial in Venice in such a way that it was only
accessible to visitors with a Spanish Passport. As he explained in an Interview with
Kunstforum:
Ich denke, die meisten, die zur Biennale kommen haben nie am eigenen Leibe
verspuert, politisch ausgeschlossen zu sein. Ich wollte mit dem Spanischen
Pavillion kein Bild schaffen, sondern eine Erfahrung.13

However control is not absolute for the very reasons of the system itself since it has
blind spots. They become manifest to the viewer when Anatol disappears from the
screen as a result of the angle at which the picture is taken. Thus blind spots become
a metaphor for the system’s loopholes which Anatol tries to exploit. 14.On the other
hand, surveillance cameras may –beyond the invasion on privacy - also constitute an
“ontological guarantee of existence” (Zizek) which implies that ‘ I exist only insofar
as I am looked at’. 15 While Zizek relates this mainly to the entertainment industry and
to aspects of voyeurism it becomes an essential part of the work of artists and
journalists. It is not clear whether Anatol has installed the camera himself or whether
he is being observed without knowing –but without the camera we would not know
about him.
Another pictorial element of Contained Mobility are digital landscapes and at one
moment Anatol takes up a Yoga position and his figure dissolves in the air. He might
resort to meditation in order to escape the confinement and precariousness of his
situation. Perceiving things in a different, unreal way could also be an expression of a
feeling of the stressful relationship and problematic sense of the self in relation to
places.16 This interpretation would have the viewer perceive the mental state of the
11
www.geobodies and e-mail to the author
12
Gilles Deleuze: Postscript on Control Societies , Thomas Y. Levin, Ursula Frohne, and Peter Weibel
(eds) Ctrl [space] : rhetorics of surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother , Karlsruhe,
Germany : ZKMeditors, Center for Art and Media , MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2002 pp.317-321
13
‘I believe that most visitors of the Venice Biennial never have had the personal experience of being
excluded for political reasons. With the Spanish pavilion I did not want to create an image but an
experience’. In Doris von Drathen: Gespraech mit Santiago Sierra in Kunstforum International,
Volume 166, August-October 2003 pp.238-239
14
Christian Katti: Systematically Observing Surveillance ’in Thomas Y. Levin, Ursula Frohne, and
Peter Weibel (editors) Ctrl [space] : rhetorics of surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother , Karlsruhe,
Germany : ZKMeditors, Center for Art and Media ; MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2002 p.53
15
Slavoj Zizek: Big Brother, or, the, Triumph of the Gaze over the Eye in ibid.p.225
16
In The House (2002) Eija-Liisa Ahtila shows the complete breakdown of perceptive logic by making
a woman fly through the house. This work is based on conversations with women who have overcome
psychosis. Dokumenta 11, exhibition short guide p.12
 4

stressful condition of a human being alone and uprooted. Rather than reading the
creation of irreality of the landscape through digital imaging as a personal,
psychoanalytical experience I would argue that the artist employs a distancing
strategy in the Brechtian sense of alienation. 17 This reading would also be coherent
with the use of the textual narrative which replaces the storyteller in a play thus
creating another element of distancing .

Single elements of pictorial form, like adjacent screens, the iconography of the
container, the technique of the surveillance camera and the digital landscape as well
as the textual narrative are woven together by means of a “video essay”. In the book
‘Stuff it, the video essay in a digital world’ Biemann explains the purpose of the video
essay as a “a distinctive aesthetic strategy” with an aim to advance artistic and critical
discourse in the digital age. 18 She incorporates some elements of Adorno’s thinking
into the more formal aspects of her work.19 According to Adorno luck and play are
essential elements of the essay and its objectivity is based on the experience of the
individual. 20 Similarly, Biemann playfully shifts the screens from left to right and back
and engages in the story of one single person in order to make a far-reaching
critique of the actual system of immigration into Europe.

…..der Gedanke schreitet nicht einsinnig fort, sondern die Momente

verflechten sich teppichhaft. Von der Dichte dieser Verflechtung haengt die
Fruchtbarkeit von Gedanken ab. 21

In my reading of these poetic words, Adorno refers not only to the formal elements of
the essay but also to the potential of creating and conveying to the reader/viewer
multi-layered thinking in language and imaging as a reaction against a simple, one-
dimensional, logical world. 22 The video essay allows to visualize the complexity of
transitional situations and is at the same time discourse for critique. By applying the
very same means control society uses, namely the surveillance camera, the artist
criticises the system. While the subject matter is the almost desperate survival
strategy of an individual against dominant power structures embodied in border and

17
In Brechtian theatre there are often elements (like a chorus, a storyteller) which intend to distance
the viewer (‘Verfremdungseffekt’/alienation).Walter Benjamin quotes Brecht :’Something must in fact
be built up, something artificial posed’; in ‘A small history of photography’ in One Way Street and Other
Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter,Verso, London 1979 p.255
18
Ursula Biemann (editor) Stuff it, the video essay in the digital age, Voldemeer Zurich, Springer,
Vienna, 2003 p.8
19
However, I would argue that the thrust of Adorno’s defence of the essay is a critique against the
established “Germanic “ system of thinking with an impermeable border between the arts on the one
hand and science on the other and the latter’s claim for absolute truth and completeness. In this
context the essay might be understood as a critical tool against a system.
20
‘The measure of such objectivity is that the verification of assertion is not through repeated testing
but rather individual human experience, maintained through hope and disillusionment’. Adorno: Der
Essay als Form in ‘Noten zur Literatur’ , Suhrkamp,Frankfurt 1974, translated in Rolf Tiedemann
(editor) Notes to Literature, Columbia University Press, New York 1991 p.8
21
‘A thought does not step forward in one sense, but moments interweave like a carpet. The fertility of
thoughts depends on the density of such weaving.’ Adorno: Der Essay als Form in ‘Noten zur Literatur’
Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1974,p 21; my own translation
22
Adorno had to resign himself to the fact that society was one dimensional. Eike Gebhardt in Andrew
Arato and Eike Gebhardt (editors), The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, Continuum, New
York,2002 ,p.220
 5

immigration controls the formal artistic strategy remains distant yet dense. Such
density is achieved by using techniques of new digital imaging and editing which
allow artists to stack video and audio tracks on top of one another, with multiple
images, running text and a complex sound mix competing for the attention of the
audience. However, as I could observe at the Liverpool Biennial, even the most
compressed videos do not manage to capture the attention of the viewer for longer
than two or three minutes, an attention span much shorter than the twenty-one
minutes’ duration of the artwork.

Making and viewing art can become a way of thinking that is non-linear and not self-
reflective but a communicative action. Biemann’s visual strategy, a broader view of
her other work, the theory which has influenced her and a reading of her own
theoretical writing bring me as a viewer with my own personal experience to another
reading of Contained mobility in a far broader context. 23Such an interpretation would
link the objective historic conditions of the new Europe (after the implosion of the
Soviet Union, the emergence of a number of new states and the creation of new
borders24 while some borders within the European Union disappeared) to the
consequences of Diaspora and migration on the individual.(Figure 6)
Ethnic migration, and political refugees already accompanied the fall of the Ottoman
Empire, the emergence of the Soviet Union after the fall of the Tsarist empire and
the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Peace treaties changed borders and
posited at best minority rights for residents in ‘new’ homelands. In countries like
Czechoslovakia and Rumania up to 30% of the population were constituted by
minorities. 25 The rise of Nazism brought the Holocaust , a wave of emigration of
intellectuals, members of other political orientations, whose options of where to go
became more and more limited as the Germans advanced, with many of them
ending in concentration camps. The Germans themselves organised ’ Umsiedlungen’
and brought foreign workers to their territory. And while people fled first from the
German troops, at the end of the war they fled from the Red Army . A further wave of
political refugees accompanied the installation of Communist regimes in Eastern
Europe , the uprising in Hungary 1956 and the end of the Prague spring in 1968, to
name just a few key events. More recently the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the
ensuing war on the Balkan caused streams of ethnic migration (and death camps
again) while the implosion of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Eastern bloc
contributed to a further wave of economic refugees . In brief, European History of the
Twentieth Century history is marked by an almost continuous stream of refugees. It is
amazing that in spite of this history and streams of ‘Gastarbeiter’ (Foreign workers
who took up low paid jobs nationals would refuse since the 1970s) the political
debate in German speaking countries, particularly in Biemann’s native Switzerland
and in Austria still focuses on foreigners as opposed to ‘Einheimische’. 26 In my own
country, Austria, the housing of asylum seekers with a status pending or in other
words the location of temporary camps in such a way that they don’t ‘disturb’ the local
population is one of the hottest issues of local politics. Recently proposed legislation
would curtail further refugees’ rights of appeal in asylum procedures with a view to

23
My father and my grandparents were refugees.
24
on the territory of the former Soviet Union , the former Yugoslavia and the former CSSR
25
Today the Baltic republics of Latvia and Estonia comprise a Russian minority in the order of 30 % of
their population. Even if they were born on Latvia or Estonia they have no passport nor other citizen’s
rights unless they pass a language examination .
26
literally those who have a home
 6

appease the ultra right whose political platform is one of unrestricted and outright
xenophobia and who nevertheless participate in government27.
Biemann‘s whole work as an artist, a curator and a theorist seeks to subvert models
of polarized thinking without resorting to victimization. Anatol is by no means a
colonized or a disadvantaged member of the Lumpenproletariat but a highly
educated, smartly dressed human being using technology cunningly to find loopholes
in the system of Schengenland.

In earlier work, Biemann has mainly dealt with the situation of women, in for instance
Performing the Border where she addresses the situation of the female work force in
assembly plants located in ‘free zones’ on the post NAFTA border between the US
and Mexico.28 One aspect of this work is the examination of women’s roles as the
main breadwinner of the family and how this influences traditional family and gender
roles. Gender roles are rewritten with women as consumers in bars catering to
female desires and as objects of desire by earning extra money through prostitution.

As to the situation in her own country Biemann, as art theorist29 comes to the
conclusion
…..’dass der sture Fokus auf Rasse und Differenz den komplexen kulturellen und
sozialen Bedingungen der heutigen Diaspora Gesellschaft nicht gerecht werden. Er
reproduziert nur die binaeren Oppositionen (wir/sie), die schon dem kolonialen
Konzept zugrunde liegen’30.

Biemann curated the exhibition Geography and the Politics of Mobility in Vienna in
2003. The main idea was to look no longer at ‘dislocated subjectivities due to global
migration or the participation in the virtual world but rather at the way places are
being constructed through them’. Biemann also underlines that actually we witness ‘a
discursive shift from the diasporic identity as a subject with a history to a geographic
discourse. 31
In cultural theory “otherness” is socially constructed, firstly and foremost by a tradition
of thought, imagery and vocabulary of a dominant power. In the French and English
context it is seen as the relation between the colonizer and the colonized, informed
by the work of Edward Said, among many others32. Already in the Sixties the French
sociologist Pierre Bourdieu conveyed the social and economic changes caused by
the war in Algeria through text and photography. Today the work of Bourdieu is
regarded as an important testimony relevant in a time where economic logic of

27
I should mention that there are active counter movements, in particular against the forced
repatriation of illegal (mostly non-European )immigrants. About the action group ‘kein Mensch ist
illegal/No one is illegal’ see Florian Schneider :’New rules for new actonomy’ in Democracy Unrealized
Platform 1 of Dokumenta 11, Hatje Cantz Ostfildern-Ruit, 2002 p.179-193 and www.makeworlds.org
28
Multinational corporations, ‘maquiladoras’ are exempt of respecting labour laws, from paying social
security and certain taxes and custom.
29
Biemann teaches at the Institute for Theory of Art and Design in Zurich
30
Text by Ursula Biemann in Been there and back to nowhere, Wenn sich Kunst und Migration
verschwestern .’ Focussing on race and difference does not reflect adequately the complex social and
cultural conditions of ‘Diaspora societies’.Race and difference reflect binary oppositions ( we/the other)
which are at the basis of a colonial understanding’ see www.geobodies.org.books.
31
Ursula Biemann (editor) Geography and the Politics of Mobility , exhibition catalogue,
Generali Foundation ,Vienna ,Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter Koenig, Koeln 2003 pp.14-20

32Edward W.Said: Orientalism, Penguin Books,2004

 7

globalisation requests a mobile and flexible workforce33.Bourdieu argues that the

resettlement politics of the colonizers caused a major change in attitude from a
person who before had strong ties with the community as an “organic and spiritual
“unit. He also notes that the cultural decay brought about by the encounter of
civilizations and by colonization is being Intensified by the resettlement.” Life in a
new environment brings a break of tradition which is definite since there is no
perspective of return34. Bourdieu also laments that

Die kollektive Melancholie ist Ausdruck von Verwirrung, Angst und Zeichen
fuer das Schwinden der frueheren Solidaritaeten. Das materielle Elend trifft
den Einzelnen in seinem Innersten, weil es den Zusammenbruch des
Wertesystems beschleunigt, das die Identifikation des Individuums mit der
ganzen Gruppe bedingte und ihn vor der Entdeckung seiner Einsamkeit
schuetzte.’35

However, Bourdieu ‘s account of uprootedness, while written and illustrated with

deep compassion, remains the nostalgic account of an outsider.36
In postcolonial theory Homi Bhabha looks at forms of hybridity and sees the
boundary as a place from which a liminal negotiation of cultural identity across
difference of race, class, gender and cultural traditions takes place. Communities and
political diaspora have articulated themselves as cultural differences produced in in-
between spaces. According to this theory new strategies of selfhood initiate new
signs of identity. 37 Visual examples of this negotiation of liminal spaces might be
the work of Chris Ofili and Yinka Shonibare, both of Nigerian origin and living in
London. However, I believe that such liminal spaces require a certain stability for
instance a settling down in a new environment. 38 Hence they do not account for the
situation of the migrant on the move facing the condition of acute uprootedness.

The situation of the actual European refugee is distinct in that a colonized status
coming close to the descriptions of Frantz Fanon would at worst be the historical
condition of insurgent Greek under the Ottoman Empire. 39 However, the’ pure
human in itself’ finds even today no autonomous space in the political order of the

33
Franz Schultheis in the introduction to Pierre Bourdieu : In Algerien Zeugnisse der Entwurzelung ,
Camera Austria, Graz 2003 p.16
34
ibid. p. 66
35
‘Collective melancholia is caused by confusion, anxiety and signs of vanishing former solidarities.
Material misery hits the individual in his innermost self since it accelerates the collapse of the value
system, which before had enabled identification of the individual with the group and had protected him
from the discovery of his loneliness’. Pierre Bourdieu : In Algerien Zeugnisse der Entwurzelung ,
Camera Austria, Graz 2003 p.180, translation my own.
36
One could argue that Bourdieu takes an ‘etic’ position which looks at non-western culture from the
perspective of his own culture. The differentiation into “etic” and “emic”attitude is made by Rex Butler
in the context of Australian aboriginal art. While emic would be a look from the point of view of tribal
participants; etic acknowledges that we can only look at the culture of the other through our own view.
See Rex Butler: ‘Emily Kame Kngwarreye and the undestructible Space of Justice’ in Gaiger/Wood Art
of the Twentieth century p.306.’ Emic’ accounts of uprootedness of immigrans were made by
Bourdieu’s friend and collaborator Abdelmalek Sayad in The suffering of the immigrant , Polity Press,
Cambridge 2004
37
Homi Bhabha ,The location of culture , Routledge , London 1994
38
The need for re-grounding and home-building has been researched from a feminist point of view in
Ahmed /Castaneda et al.( eds) Uprootings and Regroundings, Berg, New York 2003
39
I exclude the Nazi time
 8

nation state or in the context of the European Union40. The concept of so called
‘Universal’ Human rights is linked to citizenship or at least to some bond with a nation
state like permanent residency and is often further limited by the principle of non
interference into internal affairs.
Rights only exist within the organisation of the state.. While on the one hand a
growing number of refugees never become citizens of the state in which they reside,
on the other hand citizens of advanced industrial states no longer participate in
elections and become de facto permanent residents (albeit with all the rights and the
protection of citizens) and the gap between the citizen and the state become larger
and larger. Also we have experienced a complete dismantling of the welfare state
together with a renewed emphasis on its policing functions. To conclude: so called
universal rights are limited to citizens and one can see certain tendencies of the
nation state dissolving as a result of its relationship to people living on its territory
and as a result of its diminishing functions in the social order. These developments
are accompanied in many European countries by a rise of the right, to a large extent
but not exclusively by the expression of xenophobic reaction whose field of vision is
informed through processes of negative differentiation with propaganda aiming at the
otherness of the immigrant population.
In this situation some thinkers (such as Irit Rogoff,) tend toward a presentation of the
contradictory nature of the concept of cultural identity as such which in some
instances might dissolve altogether ‘since they are socially constructed and
performative rather than essentially attributed and therefore unstable entities41’.Trinh
Minh ha underlines that dominant culture demands that difference be remembered
and asserted in order to deal with it as fragments ( when several cultures are
involved)42. Biemann , whose thinking is influenced by Rogoff and Trinh Minh ha,
notes that we move away from conceptual and organisational categories like class
and gender towards an awareness of subject positions which include generation,
institutional location and geopolitical locale43
Where the artist’s strategy is most successful is in conveying the message that
people can no longer be nailed down by a definite status, and that the concept of
“otherness” when linked to stereotyping, can become extremely problematic. In a
different context the American artist Adrian Piper suggested that stereotyping , linked
to abstract thinking should be replaced by ‘concrete particularity’.44 Similarly,
Eagleton refers to Marx and the latter’s political ethic regarding sensuous particularity
as a form of release from the prison house of abstraction.45

Contained Mobility represents a discursive shift from the artist’s previous work . In
Performing the border Biemann’s main preoccupation was the condition of women as
a specific group in a specific situation, namely the female workforce in the assembly
plants on the Mexican-US border. Contained Mobility confronts the viewer with the
fate of one individual in order to reveal a political problem. One could argue that

40
Giorgio Agamben, Means without Ends, notes on politics, University of Minnesota
Press,Minneapolis 2000 p.19
41
Irit Rogoff: ‘Studying Visual Culture’ in Mirzoeff, Visual Culture Reader ,Routledge ,London,2004,
p.32
42
Trinh, T. Minh-Ha , Woman, native, other : writing postcoloniality and feminism , Indiana University
Press, Bloomington 1989 p.90
43 Ursula Biemann in an e-mail to the author
44
Performance: Strategy and Process, a solo exhibition by Adrian Piper, Talk and Screening,
November 6 ,2004 at Artsadmin,London
45
Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism, Blackwell,Oxford 1997 p.118
 9

Contained mobility is not only the story of the ‘universal refugee’ but also of one
single man’s struggle against anonymous controlling powers. This work is influenced
by the the writings of Giorgio Agamben. 46 Referring to the Roman period when law
had the power to separate citizens from naked life 47Agamben argues that while
naked life (or the pure human) is excluded from citizenship and exercising other
rights, political power nevertheless exercises control over it.
That there is no autonomous space in the political order of the nation-
state for something like the pure human in itself is evident at the very least
from the fact that, even in the best of cases, the status of refugee has always
been considered a temporary condition that ought to lead either to
naturalization or to repatriation. A stable statute for the human in itself is
inconceivable in the law of the nation -state.48

Biemann translates this temporary condition by explicitly and textually referring to a

‘container world which can only tolerate a condition of not-belonging and juridical non
– existence’ .49 Another reference to the legal situation is made in the concluding
phrase, ‘Everything new is born illegal’.

As mentioned in the first part of the essay, the video as a whole appears distant from
the viewer. However, there is one moment when the spectator comes closer to the
man on the screen. That is when Anatol speaks on the phone in a mixture of German
and Russian and the sound of his voice is accompanied by a close-up of his body. A
certain distance between the artwork and the viewer remains, since the latter does
not understand the conversation and hence does not feel empathy. However,
despite this emotional disengagement, the viewer is confronted intellectually with the
idea of a common or universal human nature. 50
In this way the artwork shifts from the specific issue of immigration to a more
universal discourse about rights of non - citizens and further to the concept of a
‘shared human nature’ which, according to Eagleton, supersedes the anti-
universalism of Postmodernism.51 Eagleton does not claim originality but refers to
Marx’s concept of a common or universal human nature, nor does he negate
postmodernism as such but seeks alternatives with a view of realizing a vision of a
just society.52 I would go further and argue that presently we are exposed to viewing
such a degree of inhumanity and violence on TV and PC screens - sometimes
captured by amateur videos and thus becoming even more credible as ‘reality’,

46
e-mail by Ursula Biemann to the author
47
‘naked life’ is the literal translation of ‘nuda vita’ which Agamben already uses in Homo Sacer,
footnote to the preface of Giorgio Agamben, Means without Ends, notes on politics, University of
Minnesota Press,Minneapolis 2000 p.142. In his writings Agamben also equals ‘naked life’ with
‘human being’ ibid.p.20
48
Giorgio Agamben, Means without Ends, notes on politics, University of Minnesota
Press,Minneapolis 2000 p.20
49
Prologue to Contained Mobility, the text spoken by the artist is reprinted in Liverpool Biennial ,
International 04, exhibition catalogue Liverpool , 2004 p.25
50
Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism, Blackwell,Oxford 1997 p.116f
51
‘Marx strongly believed in a common or universal human nature, but he considered individuation to
be an integral part of it.’ In Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism, Blackwell,Oxford 1997
p.116
52 ibid. preface p.9
 10

sometimes deliberately staged to create terror - that the depthlessness of

postmodernist culture and the image of the simulacrum seem no longer tenable. 53

As Okwui Enwezor points out ‘postcoloniality embodies the spectacular mediation

and representation of nearness as the dominant mode of understanding the present
condition of globalization”54. From such nearness of distant places and in the face of
the actual political situation arises in my opinion the (ethical) need that the artist
seeks to develop what I would call ‘strategies of encounter’ instead of engaging in
self-seeking and self-expression.
Juergen Habermas presents a theory of communicative action based on a (critical)
continuation of the discourse of modernity. 55 He criticizes Foucault’s concept of the
subject-centred reason and pleads instead for inter-subjective understanding and
reciprocal recognition. Human beings are part of a life world, as’ products of the
tradition in which they stand, the socializing groups to which they belong and the
socializing processes in which they grow up’. 56The strength of this theory lies in the
idea of an interpersonal relationship within which ‘ego relates to himself as a
participant in an interaction from the perspective of the other’.57 Its weakness is that it
is based on the assumptions that man is a rational being and that social structures
are intact.

Ursula Biemann’s work is successful in making the viewer conscious of the situation
of the refugee not just as a ‘pure human being’ in the sense of Agamben but also as
an individual who can no longer be ‘nailed down’ by a definite status. She leaves
binary oppositions (we/the other) behind and engages in a multilayered visual
strategy to open to the spectator the potential of a broad reading of her work in the
context of today’s world. She considers herself mainly as a mediator between the
inside and outside of the cultural context. 58 Her work is by no means self -reflective
but she actively develops communicative strategies as an artist, as a curator and as
a theorist.

53 ‘depthlessness’ and ‘simulacrum’ are terms used by Frederic Jameson to characterise some traits
of postmodernist culture .see Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Verso New
York, 1991 p.6
54 Okwui Enwezor, ‘The Black Box’ in Documenta 11, Exhibition Catalogue, Hatje Cantz,
Ostfildern- Ruit 2002,p.44
55 Thomas McCarthy :Introduction to Jürgen Habermas, The philosophical discourse of modernity ,
Blackwell , Oxford 1987,p.7
56
Jürgen Habermas,The philosophical discourse of modernity , Blackwell , Oxford 1987 p.299
57
ibid. p.297
58
Ursula Biemann: ‘Been there and back to nowhere, wenn sich Kunst und Migration verschwestern’
in www.geobodies.org
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Adorno, Der Essay als Form in ‘Noten zur Literatur’ , Suhrkamp,Frankfurt 1974,,
translated in Rolf Ti nn (editor) Notes to Literature, Columbia University Press, New
York 1991

Ahmed /Castaneda et al.( editors) Uprootings and Regroundings, Berg, New York
2003

Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (editors), The Essential Frankfurt School
Reader,Continuum, New York,2002

Giorgio Agamben, Means without Ends, notes on politics, University of Minnesota

Press,Minneapolis 2000

Walter Benjamin, One Way Street and Other Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott and
Kingsley Shorter,Verso, London 1979

Homi Bhabha ,The location of culture , Routledge , London 1994

Ursula Biemann (editor) Stuff it, the video essay in the digital age, Voldemeer Zurich,
Springer, Vienna,2003

Ursula Biemann (editor) Geography and the Politics of Mobility , exhibition catalogue,
Generali Foundation ,Vienna ,Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter Koenig, Koeln 2003

Pierre Bourdieu : In Algerien Zeugnisse der Entwurzelung , Camera Austria, Graz

2003

Rex Butler, ‘Emily Kame Kngwarreye and the Undestructible Space of Justice’ in
Jason Gaiger and Paul Wood (editors) Art of the Twentieth Century, Yale University
Press, New Haven 2003

Manuel Castells , End of millennium , Blackwell Publishers, Oxford 1998

Jeffrey Deitch , Post human , Athens : Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art
Hamburg: Deichtorhallen ,Distributed Art Publishers, New York 1992

Democracy Unrealized Platform 1 of Dokumenta 11 Hatje Cantz Ostfildern-Ruit, 2002

Documenta 11, Exhibition Catalogue, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern- Ruit 2002

Dokumenta 11, Exhibition Short Guide, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern- Ruit 2002

Terry Eagleton, The Ilusions of Postmodernism, Blackwell,Oxford 1997

Terry Eagleton, After Theory, Penguin Books, London 2003

Coco Fusco, The bodies that were not ours and other writings, Routledge London
2001
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Frantz Fanon, The wretched of the Earth, translated by Constance

Farrington, Evergreen , 1991

Francis Fukuyama, Our posthuman future,Profile Books ,London, 2002

Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (editors) Art in theory, 1900-2000, an anthology of
changing ideas, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford 2003

Jürgen Habermas,The philosophical discourse of modernity , Blackwell , Oxford 1987

Stuart Hall ‘New Ethnicities’, in David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen eds, Stuart
Hall:Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, Routledge, London, 1996

David Harvey The condition of postmodernity : an enquiry into the origins of cultural
change Blackwell , Oxford 1989

Frederic Jameson Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,Verso

New York, 1991

Barbara Kruger and Phil Mariani (editors), Remaking history , Bay Press ,Seattle
1989

Miwon Kwon , One place after another : site-specific art and locational identity , MIT
Press, Cambridge, Mass 2002

Thomas Y. Levin, Ursula Frohne, and Peter Weibel (editors) Ctrl [space] : rhetorics of
surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother , Karlsruhe, Germany : ZKMeditors, Center
for Art and Media ; MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2002

Liverpool Biannial , International 04, exhibition catalogue Liverpool ,2004

Nicholas Mirzoeff (editor) The visual culture reader Routledge, London 1998

Lev Manovich ,The language of new media , MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass 2001

Gill Perry and Paul Wood (eds) Themes in Contemporary Art, Yale University Press,
London 2004

Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma, geography’s visual culture, Routledge, London 2000

Edward W.Said: Orientalism, Penguin Books,2003

Abdelmayek Sayad: The suffering of the immigrant , Polity Press, Cambridge 2004

Allan Sekula , Fish story, Witte de With, Centrum voor Hedendaagse

Kunst, Rotterdam ,1995

Trinh, T. Minh-Ha , Woman, native, other : writing postcoloniality and feminism ,

Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1989
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Doris von Drathen: Gespraech mit Santiago Sierra in Kunstforum International,

Volume 166, August-October 2003

Thomas Wulffen, ‘Liverpool Bienniale’ in Kunstforum International, Volume 173,

November- December 2004

Slavoj Zizek, ‘Multiculturalism ,Or,the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism’, in

New Left Review, 225,September-October 1997 ,pp.28-51

Websites
www.geobodies.org/art/artprojects/mobility.html

www.makeworlds.org

Other sources:

Slavoj Zizek ‘The reality of the virtual.’ Video presentation at ICA, October 28, 2004

Performance: Strategy and Process, a solo exhibition by Adrian Piper, Talk and
Screening, at Artsadmin, London, November 6 , 2004
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List of Illustrations

Fig.1 Ursula Biemann:Contained Mobility,synchronized double screen video

projection. Video still

Fig.2. Ursula Biemann:Contained Mobility,synchronized double screen video

projection. Video still of one screen

Fig 3. Luc Deleu: Large Triumphal Arch exhibited in Neuchatel, Switzerland 1983

Fig 4. Allan Sekula: Panorama-Mid Atlantic 1993 from Fish Story

Fig 5. Ursula Biemann:Contained Mobility,synchronized double screen video

projection. Video still of one screen

Fig 6. Map of Europe (2004)

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