Anne E Stoner | Collection of Work
Anne E. Stoner (b. 1999) is an interdisciplinary artist and social ethnographer focusing in sonic practice.
Her work brings about and coalesces studies in bodily complexities and disability studies, human geographical theories and psychogeographies, contemporary methodologies in ethnographic archiving and queer anthropology, new possibilities within technology and studies within human movement and routine, to create a practice with an empathetic methodology that challenges visual standards within 21st century artmaking. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, including venues such as the Tang Museum, New York State, the Morley Gallery, London and Senate House, London. Anne’s sound and writing can be read and listened to in Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, Global Performance Studies Journal, and the Struer Tracks Sound Biennial Almanac.
Anne holds an undergraduate MA(h) from the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh College of Art and an MA from Northwestern University. In 2023 she began working toward an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Email: anneestoner@gmail.com
CV
Linktree The Power, The Shiver, The Anthropocene: An Exhibition on the Great Texas Freeze
In collaboration with Ashley McCullough
An Amnesty International 2024 report on the US Petrochemical Industry’s toxic pollution called Texas’ Houston Ship Channel a “sacrifice zone.”
“The smell of money” reeks in the air of the Houston Ship Channel, the second largest petrochemical complex in the world. Many residents recognize the smell not as that of money, but as that of oil, gas, and air pollution. The Houston Ship Channel, an oil and gas metroplex stretching from Baytown to Galveston, makes Houston one of the most polluted cities in the United States, while simultaneously making the most money per capita from oil and gas. Billboards for personal injury lawyers stretch across the multi-lane highways. Residents spend their lives drilling for oil to feed the international reliance on petrochemical resources, a reliance that not only fuels the modern descent into climate change, but also caused a catastrophic energy crisis across the state.
This exhibition presents the cyclical relationship between petrochemical pollution, public health, federal oversight, and the ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc.) electricity grid. In February, 2021, these factors converged to cause one of the worst energy crises in US history during Winter Storm Uri, known also as the Great Texas Freeze. This storm event lasted over eight days, leaving 80 million people without power and killing an estimated 246 to 700, many of whom were already medically vulnerable.
While the public likely remembers news coverage stating that “infrastructure failure” was the cause of this event, this exhibition reflects on the political and financial underpinnings behind this tragedy. Mainly, the exhibition examines the autarchical choice of Texas politicians to separate the ERCOT power grid from the North American interconnected network of electricity, making them unable to utilize shared power in times of emergency. This choice to isolate the grid from interstate power connections to avoid federal regulation left the state, its power grid, and its inhabitants to survive the storm alone, amidst a frozen and failing energy system dominated by fossil fuel-based resources. Throughout the course of the storm, the ERCOT grid produced 35 million additional pounds of air pollution.
This exhibition presents the sonification and visualization of six historical data metrics of the ERCOT grid over the course of Storm Uri in distorted time; one hour here is equal to nine days of the Freeze.
Each data metric is represented in paired light and sound. In light, each historical data stream is visualized by the dimming and brightening of individual DMX-controlled lightbulbs. In sound, the data is sonified through the manipulation of petrochemical field recordings from complexes throughout the Houston Ship Channel. Simply put, as the storm descends into blackout, so descends the exhibition space.