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Artist Steve Rowell's use of sound and drones

tschuetz

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

tschuetz

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

Engaged scholars as knowledge curators

tschuetz

In her article, Scharenberg (2023) provides methodological reflections on politically engaged or militant social science research. In one section, she discusses the challenge that social movements act as knowledge producers in their own right, often working independent from or outside of academic institutions (2023, 15). This raises questions about what social scientiss add to the mix. I've had similar questions working with and alongside activists in the global anti-plastics movement. Building on Casa-Cortes, Osterweil, and Powell (2013), Scharenberg points out that one response for scholars is to act as "editors" or "curators" of collective knowledge. This argument resonates with the way that I and other collaborators have thought about the engaged ethnographic archive projects:

Activist ethnographers thus become editors of collective knowledges rather than the sole producers of scientific theory. Like a literary editor, the ethnographer works from a position, which does not create knowledges from scratch, but collects the perspectives of others and assembles them with reference to the given context. In this view, objectivity might be achieved, to borrow an expression from Haraway, by assembling “partial views and halting voices” into what she calls a “collective subject position” (1988: 590). Alternatively, we might think of the editor-ethnographer as Berger’s “clerk of the records” (Scheper-Hughes, 1995: 419) who compiles the history of a group of people. Scheper-Hughes understands this position as a kind of witness. (Scharenberg 2023, 16). 

How do research alliances run parallel to activist alliances?

zoefriese

During my thesis project, Tim has served as a collaborator and mentor while he studied data use among activists opposing Formosa Plastics Group (FPG). In addition to connecting me with activists and interview candidates, he also introduced me to a small network of American and Taiwanese students in Taiwan and the United States studying FPG. This community can share resources and knowledge to further our individual studies. Could this academic network serve as a parallel to the transnational activist alliances I am studying? Are the strengths and barriers of research alliances reminiscent of the strengths and barriers of activist alliances?

9. How has this data resource been critiqued or acknowledged to be limited?

annlejan7

There are missing data points within the dataset (attributed to non-reported information). This dataset has also been acknowledged to be limited in its prioritization of government data, which could have political limitations that may skew the degree of severity for disasters reported. 

8. What can be demonstrated or interpreted with this data set?

annlejan7

This dataset can be used to demonstrate the geographic distribution of disasters in Vietnam over time. This database recognizes multiple dimensions of disaster, including natural (typhoons, hurricanes), technological (a chemical spill, a factory explosion), and more

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complex disasters such as famine.

6. How has this data resource been used in research and advocacy?

annlejan7

This resource has been used in a publication written by Hoang et al., 2018 on the economic cost of the Formosa Toxic Waste Disaster in Central Vietnam. It is specifically used within the journal article to highlight the forms in which disasters can take place within a nation, and the rising cases of industrial disasters that have afflicted vulnerable communities within the last decade. This characterization sets the stage and context for the Formosa disaster, and integrates it within a wider conversation about the effects of intensified industrialization on the environment. 

5. What steps does a user need to take to produce analytically sharp or provocative data visualizations with this data resource?

annlejan7

These datasets all involve  a strong spatial component. The presentation of such data could best be done via GIS Software, with their integration within a story map to demonstrate the importance of environmental stewardship to natural environments as well as the people who depend on such resources for their livelihoods.  For example, EPI data can be incorporated with EM-DAT’s disaster data to better understand the relationship between  a country’s EPI performance and the amount of technological disasters it observes. A country’s EPI score on Fish Stock Status can be compared with how much the nation’s GDP relies on fisheries to draw attention to discrepancies between stewardship and a country’s reliance on this resource. This process will require a user to be familiar with GIS Software and spatial plotting of data points (as the datasets themselves have not been integrated into ArcGIS), and using this software to integrate information together into meaningful maps.

4. What data visualizations illustrate how this data set can be leveraged to characterize environmental injustice?

annlejan7

[Source: EM-DAT Public] This graphic shows the prevalence of technological disasters [includes toxic spills, industrial explosions, etc.] by country. This can be used to characterize, on a transnational level, where potential industrial harms are centralized or concentrated. While it does not characterize more insidious harms, such as air pollution, it can be a direct and easy to understand measure of environmental harm distribution across the globe. 

Additionally, data is available as excel sheets, which allows users to produce their own graphics on the prevalence of disasters within a particular nation over a desired time interval.