Jessie Martin
(Research Assistant/Doctoral Candidate, ‘Practicing Place’ Research Training Group)
The Transalpine Pipeline (TAL) has carried crude oil from the port of Trieste, through the Italian and Austrian Alps towards Ingolstadt, since 1967. This lecture uses ethnographic, artistic methods, including situated photography along the route, archival documents, financial reports and journalistic sources, to examine and rearticulate how the pipeline was imagined and materialised as a fixed trade route for oil. This is contextualised within histories of the pipeline’s pathway as a trade route. The questions are asked, how does fixing the relation of oil into the Alps alter and expand its ecologies? How are Alpine landscapes reconstituted on world energy markets through the pipeline’s placement?
