Devenir Universidad
(Becoming University), 2018 – 2023, Two-channel video installation 2021, 37 min.
Ursula Biemann in cooperation with the Indigenous Inga People of Colombia
Faced with the critical urgency of maintaining the health and biodiversity of the land and the knowledge that has co-evolved with it, Ursula Biemann has been working in the last few years in collaboration with the Indigenous Inga People of Colombia to co-create an Indigenous university in the Andean Amazon.
Devenir Universidad is an artistic project commissioned by the Museu de arte de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, which aims to stimulate and document the Inga-led process of conceptualizing higher education in their territory. In this pluriversity, traditional and scientific knowledge systems are brought into dialogue with the goal of reversing the cultural loss and epistemic damage caused by colonial and extractive regimes. The bicultural project involves research, knowledge production and educational programs, exploring multiple ways of knowing, thinking and relating to their territory.
In these video interviews, key figures from the Inga community propose different kinds of learning while the accompanying soundtrack, featuring recordings made by community members themselves, generates a sonic and energetic field in the exhibition space. This vocal territory is informed by countless conversations with the Inga elders, the shamans and their daughters, women healers, sabedores and social leaders. The videographies are part of the audiovisual archive of the future Indigenous university.
Ursula Biemann is an artist, author, and video essayist. (Zurich, 1955)
Her practice is research-oriented and involves fieldwork in diverse geographic regions – from Greenland to Amazonia – where she investigates climate change and the political ecologies of forests, oil, and water. In her videos, books, and installations, she examines the dynamics of extractive processes while also proposing alternative forms of ecological and epistemological interconnectedness.
Biemann recently had solo exhibitions at MAMAC in Nice, at MUAC, the Museum for Contemporary Art in Mexico City and MQ Freiraum in Vienna. She published the online monograph “Becoming Earth” on twelve years of her ecological video works and writing and the book “Forest Mind – On the Interconnection of All Life” with Spector Books (2012).
Ursula Biemann’s relationship with Shedhalle began in the 1990s, during her time as managing director, when she curated the exhibitions Aussendienst (1995), Kültür (1996), and the global media project Just Watch (1997).
