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Artist Steve Rowell's use of sound and drones

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In the interview with Emily Roehl, artist Steve Rowell describes his style in contrast to the more "didactic" approach of land use and documentary photography. Instead, he has come to combine his visual works with sound installations that are meant to unsettle. These sounds are often generated based on air pollution data that he has collected (Roehl and Rowell, 2022, p. 137). Rowell further describes how changes in the development of aerial video and photography technology have shaped his work. In the past, Rowell would rent expensive camera equipment and attach them to a helicopter to generate fly-over images (Roehl and Rowell, 2022, p. 140). Though commercial drones have become available, Rowell says that he soon got dissatisfied with the "slick" images they produce. When using drones, Rowell relies on an angle that faces down or is close-up, creating feelings of uncanniness. These unusual perspectives are combined with split imagery and mirroring to achieve a specific effect: “There’s a value in giving the viewer/listener a chance to distrust the work in the same way there’s value in giving them room to question the work. The landscapes I feature are all altered. What landscape isn’t now? That’s the point.” (Roehl and Rowell, 2022, p. 140).

Artist Steve Rowell

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Steve Rowell is an educator and research artist, currently working on “long-term projects that use image, sound, and archival practice to interrogate the relationship between humans, industry, and the environment” (Roehl and Rowell, 2022, p. 136). Rowell has worked extensively with the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) in Los Angeles, including a comissioned project for which he photographed every petrochemical plant in Texas (ibid, p. 137). In subsequent projects, he has focused on tracing pipelines going from the Alberta Tar Sands to petrochemical communities in Long Beach, California and Port Arthur, Texas. Another recent project focuses on the industrial ecology of Houston's Buffalo Bayou. 

Beck, Nyah E. | Winter 2023 EiJ Annotations

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  1. How has CRPE adapted its strategies and approaches in response to changes in the political and social landscape, and what are the organization's priorities for the future?

  2. What advice would you give to individuals or organizations interested in working on environmental and social justice issues in low-income communities and communities of color, based on CRPE's experiences?

  3. How does CRPE measure the impact of its work, and what data or metrics does the organization use to track progress?

  4. Can you provide examples of some of CRPE's most significant successes in addressing environmental and social justice issues, and the strategies that were employed to achieve these successes?

Beck, Nyah E. | Winter 2023 EiJ Annotations

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CRPE seems to be proud that they are working within the San Joaquin Valley in one of the most polluted areas in the nation, “West of the Mississippi.” It also claims that by empowering locals with the necessary resources, they can amplify the already “robust vision for change” as well as “the willpower [of the community] to make it happen.”

Beck, Nyah E. | Winter 2023 EiJ Annotations

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They share the cases they are actively working on and provide further details and documentation of how those legal battles proceed. I feel as if the information itself is credible because of the validity of the organization's purpose and then the team of active lawyers working on each case.