STEVE ROWELL

American, b. 1969

Midstream at Twilight, 2016

Single-channel video (color, sound)
20:00 min.
Courtesy the artist

Steve Rowell’s Midstream at Twilight traces pipelines and transit pathways of a material called petroleum coke (or petcoke), a particularly destructive and insidious form of petroleum that has since been barred from production in the United States—in part due to the artist’s film. The work begins in Alberta, Canada, and, using drone footage, moves south into the Midwestern United States and then to Los Angeles, from where petcoke was shipped for sale to China and other nations. Rowell opens the film with a definition of twilight: “a period or state of obscurity, ambiguity, or gradual decline,” and has described the film as depicting “a fossil fuel industry in decline.”