Materialist feminism for the twenty-first century: The video essays of Ursula Biemann

The essay offers a critical analysis of three video essays by Swiss artist and theorist Ursula Biemann taking as their subject women's 'place' in the global capitalist economy. In their engagement with various forms of spatial politics, the video essays pay particular attention to labour relations, migration and the impact of advanced technology, This paper argues that, by effecting a turn from 'patriarchy' to 'global capitalism', Biemann's approach at the dawn of the twenty-first century constitutes a major shift in a politically aware contemporary practice cutting across art, theory and activism. In re-introducing and updating the 'forgotten' project for a materialist feminist method in the arts, this practice signals the end of liberal (post)feminism' and the emergence of the feminism of the 'empire' - a term borrowed from Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Negri's Empire (2000). The present account attempts to critically situate this body of work in relation to current trends in art but also political theory while also elucidating its complex ancestry encompassing earlier debates on realism and the moving image in art, film and beyond. Key terms in this analysis include the 'instrumentality of the author', 'the multitude of femininity' and 'the spectacle of reality'.