Analyze | Disaster STS Network

Artist Steve Rowell

tschuetz

Annotation of

Petro-landscapes and Political Imagination: Interview with Steve Rowell

In response to

What types of organizations have they worked with to address environmental injustice, what roles have they played and what have been memorable challenges?

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.