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The Urban Landscape - screening seriesMain MenuLandscape Theorysome general thoughtsThe City SymphonyOrganism (Hilary Harris, 1975, 19m) Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1983, 85m)Rivers and DamsThe River (Pare Lorentz, 1938, 31 min) Up the Yangtzee (Yung Chang, 2008, 90 min)LaborWorkers Leaving the Factory (Harun Farocki, 1995, 36m) Maquilapolis (Sergio De La Torre & Vicky Funari, 2006, 69m) Workers leaving the GooglePlex (Andrew Norman Wilson, 2011, 11m)PollutionRed Desert (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964)Space & PlacePowers of Ten (Ray & Charles Eames, 1977, 9m) Space is the Place (John Corney, 1972, 85m)NostalgiaThe Royal Road (Jenni Olson, 2015, 64m)The Urban CommonsStyle Wars: The Original Hip Hop Documentary (Tony Silver, USA, 1983, 70m)SurveillanceHow Not to be Seen (Monty Python, 1970, 3min) How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .Mov File (Hito Steyerl, 2013, 15 min) Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzman, 2011, 90m)Topiary Landbergcfb350d468ec5c2054ab0b7ea98b3e2b63e3e296
Oil
1media/petropolis-smokestack.jpgmedia/petropolis-smokestack.jpgterm2015-11-13T01:12:25-08:00Topiary Landbergcfb350d468ec5c2054ab0b7ea98b3e2b63e3e296708726Oil: A symphony in Motion (Artkino, 1933, 8m) Petropolis (Mettler, 2009, 42m) Deep Weather (Ursula Biemann, 2013, 10m)image_header2123502024-03-20T13:55:49-07:00Topiary Landbergcfb350d468ec5c2054ab0b7ea98b3e2b63e3e296Program Notes:
In this program, three short films represent petroleum’s vast power. In the first film, Oil: A Symphony in Motion (1933), oil is personified as the force which has magically arrived to fuel our modern technological age. This silent short, by the Los Angeles film collective “Artkino,” is a vision of machine-age euphoria. By contrast, Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives of the Tar Sands (2009), provides a mute but critical counterpoint—an omniscient, aerial vision of the terrifying scale of environmental devastation wrought by the rapacious extractivism of the Canadian tar sands.
In the final film, Deep Weather, by Swiss artist Ursula Biemann, a nearly identical aerial view of the tar sands juxtaposed to footage of a community of Bangledeshi people engaged in the sisyphean task of building up their shoreline with hundreds of sandbags in an attempt to protect against impending sea-level rise. Biemann describesDeep Weather as a film connecting two narratives, one about oil, the other about water, which she describes as "the two primordial liquids that form the undercurrents of all narrations as they activate profound changes in planetary ecology." In making this parallel, Deep Weather implicates the activities of the Canadian tar sands in the dramatic realities faced by this far away community in South Asia.
Much as been written about aerial views as a kind of “god’s eye” or objective view that places the viewer at a remove from the landscape. Yet, in both Mettler’s and Biemann’s visions, the aerial serves to implicate us in the image while also keeping us at a remove from the site. These films highlight the question of whether these kinds of machine/aerial views and viewpoints are necessary for us to understand the scale of environmental transformation that is taking place today?
Ursula Biemann is an artist, writer, and video essayist whose work is research oriented and involves fieldwork in remote locations where she investigates climate change and the ecologies of oil and water.
Peter Mettler is a Swiss-Canadian film director and cinematographer, best known for his cinematography on the Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky film Manufactured Landscapes (2006).
Artkino was an amateur film collective based in Los Angeles. Despite the appearance that Oil: A Symphony in Motion was produced by the oil industry, it is likely that the film was actually created as an experimental film. Considering the importance of the car for the development of LA, it is possible that the work was responding to the nascent car culture developing around them.
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1media/992px-Paul_Strand,_Wall_Street,_New_York_City,_1915.jpgmedia/THE-RIVER-1-copy.jpgterm2016-01-04T19:35:28-08:00Topiary Landbergcfb350d468ec5c2054ab0b7ea98b3e2b63e3e296Landscape TheoryTopiary Landberg23some general thoughtsimage_header2228832024-03-20T13:19:13-07:00Topiary Landbergcfb350d468ec5c2054ab0b7ea98b3e2b63e3e296
12016-05-04T11:27:08-07:00Topiary Landbergcfb350d468ec5c2054ab0b7ea98b3e2b63e3e296Table of ContentsTopiary Landberg3plain2017-10-31T08:47:52-07:00Topiary Landbergcfb350d468ec5c2054ab0b7ea98b3e2b63e3e296
