Steve Rowell, Comfort in Hydrology

2019/2021, 13 minutes

A moving image work about a recent past and a speculative future of an unconstrained and mutable river,  between the headwaters in the frozen north and the delta in the subtropical south. Filmed on and above what is currently known as Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, and Louisiana during the Great Flood of 2019.

Archival footage: “Mississippi River Flood of 1927” Department of Defense, Signal Corps, 1936

Public domain / National Archives catalog no.:ARC 24699, NAIL 111-H-1194

Music: “Broken Levee Blues” Lonnie Johnson, 1928

Public domain / Okeh Phonograph Corporation catalog no. 8618

Locations along the Mississippi River:

  • Lake Itasca, Minnesota
  • Cairo, Illinois
  • New Madrid, Missouri
  • Plaquemine, Louisiana