Station
Station from Owens and Crawley on Vimeo.
Much of our work explores the natural environment, ecological concerns, our relationship to the land, and the politics that are inextricably intertwined. This installation romanticizes our ever-demanding need for oil. Our need is so great that wars have been waged in other nations and our own waterways have been continually decimated. While the impact on our environment has been widely documented, new extraction techniques (fracking, for instance) are being found to be even more disruptive to area ecosystems while the technology for renewable forms of energy are readily accessible, if only challenging to implement, in a market so heavily reliant on the oil industry.
The initial focus was on the lone oil derricks you see from time to time quaintly, diligently bobbing up and down along our Hoosier landscape. The sound component you hear throughout the room is generated from derricks right down the road. The main visual component in this installation is the dark lush black fabric lapping as though fluid water or, better yet, oil. The installation is designed to evoke emotions of serenity and maybe even a bit of a romantic notion. This is a far, far stretch from the reality of the damage done to our environment on many levels by our fetishization of fossil fuels over the past 150 years.
The initial focus was on the lone oil derricks you see from time to time quaintly, diligently bobbing up and down along our Hoosier landscape. The sound component you hear throughout the room is generated from derricks right down the road. The main visual component in this installation is the dark lush black fabric lapping as though fluid water or, better yet, oil. The installation is designed to evoke emotions of serenity and maybe even a bit of a romantic notion. This is a far, far stretch from the reality of the damage done to our environment on many levels by our fetishization of fossil fuels over the past 150 years.