The River Remembers: Slow Violence in Genevieve Robertson’s Still Running Water
Environmental destruction is often imagined through the language of catastrophe: fire, flood, collapse. These images are immediate and dramatic, but much ecological damage does not unfold in such visible ways. It happens gradually, through infrastructures, policies and forms of development that become so familiar they almost disappear. A river may be redirected, flooded or transformed into a source of energy and still appear beautiful. Nevertheless, its surface may remain calm, even when it carries histories of displacement, submerged forests and altered ecosystems. It is within this space between beauty and damage, visibility and concealment, that Genevieve Robertson’s Still Running Water begins its inquiry. Made between 2017 and 2019, the twelve-minute single-channel video follows the Columbia River from source to mouth, bearing witness to fourteen hydroelectric dams, reservoirs, flooded forests and buried townsites (Figure 1). This essay approaches Still Running Water through Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence, a form of harm that unfolds gradually, often invisibly and across extended temporal and spatial scales. Rather than asking, how ecological damage can be represented as a dramatic event, the essay asks: how does Genevieve Robertson’s Still Running Water transform the slow violence of hydroelectric intervention into an aesthetic experience of duration, concealment and ecological memory? I argue that the work gives form to slow violence by rejecting spectacle and cultivating a mode of sustained ecological attention. At the same time, it complicates Nixon’s concept by presenting the Columbia River not only as a damaged environment, but as an active presence that carries movement, memory and resistance.
Figure 1. Genevieve Robertson, Still Running Water, 2017–2019. Video stills from the twelve-minute single-channel work following the Columbia River from source to mouth, showing reservoirs, altered riverbanks, hydroelectric infrastructure and traces of flooded landscapes.
Stills reproduced from The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge: Shoring, Blackwood Gallery, May 2019, PDF, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55a3e169e4b0356b591411b2/t/5e057ebc1679023906047ac1/1577418432444/SDUK_04-Shoring.pdf.
To begin with, Maja and Reuben Fowkes’s Art and Climate Change offers an important framework for understanding Still Running Water as more than a poetic landscape video. In their discussion of ecocritical art, climate-related artworks are presented as practices that cross disciplinary borders and expose the political, geological and technological systems behind environmental crisis. This is especially relevant to Robertson’s work, because the Columbia River is not shown as untouched nature, but as a river already shaped by hydroelectric infrastructure, energy production and histories of flooding and displacement. By including Robertson’s Still Running Water within a broader discussion of art and climate change, Maja and Reuben Fowkes helps to position the work as part of an artistic tendency that does not simply represent damaged environments, but investigates, how damage is produced, normalized and hidden. The video’s attention to dams, reservoirs, buried townsites and altered water systems, therefore, connects to a larger ecocritical concern with the Anthropocene and the geosphere: the recognition that human systems have become material forces capable of reshaping rivers, landscapes and geological processes. In this sense, Still Running Water does not present the Columbia River as scenery, but as a site, where natural processes and political infrastructures have become inseparable.
While Maja and Reuben Fowkes helps situate Still Running Water within the broader field of ecocritical art, Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence offers a more precise lens for understanding, how Robertson’s video represents environmental harm. In Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Nixon challenges the idea that violence is always immediate, spectacular or event-like. He defines slow violence as “a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space”. This is especially relevant to ecological crisis, where destruction is not always seen in the form of a sudden disaster. It may appear through altered landscapes, displaced communities, damaged ecosystems or infrastructures that slowly transform the conditions of life. Nixon’s concept, therefore, raises an important problem for visual art: how can an artwork give form to violence that is gradual, hidden and embedded within everyday landscapes? For Nixon, the difficulty is not only political, but also representational: slow violence is hard to make visible, because it lacks the dramatic form of an event. Nevertheless, Robertson’s video responds to this problem by replacing spectacle with duration, repetition and observation. Furthermore, Timothy Morton’s concept of hyperobjects also helps to clarify, why ecological harm is difficult to grasp: environmental crisis exceeds immediate human perception, because it is distributed across vast scales of time and space. Yet Nixon remains more precise for this essay, because slow violence emphasizes not only scale, but also political unevenness and delayed harm.
Robertson’s video follows the Columbia River through a sequence of quiet, static shots, allowing the viewer to encounter the river as a landscape, marked by accumulated intervention. This is visible, for instance, in the shots of hydroelectric structures, such as Wells Dam, John Day Dam, Duncan Dam and McNary Dam (Figure 2). These dams do not appear as scenes of sudden catastrophe, rather, they are stable, monumental and almost normalized within the landscape. Their apparent stability is precisely what makes them important to Robertson’s visual argument: the dams seem ordinary, almost permanent, yet they embody a continuous transformation of the river’s movement, depth and ecological rhythm. Through Nixon’s concept, their stillness becomes unsettling, because they are not neutral pieces of infrastructure, but material signs of a long process of ecological control. They interrupt the river’s movement, reorganize its flow and transform water into energy. Moreover, Jason W. Moore’s concept of the Capitalocene is useful here, because it shifts attention from humanity in general to the economic systems that organize nature as a resource. In this sense, the Columbia River is not simply altered by humans, but by a system that transforms water, movement and landscape into energy and value. This adds a more economic dimension to Nixon’s slow violence: the river’s alteration is not accidental, but part of a larger logic, in which natural processes are reorganized for production. The dams, therefore, show how ecological harm can be made to appear rational, useful and even progressive, while its long-term costs are displaced onto rivers, habitats and communities. In this sense, the dams are not only objects within the landscape, but mechanisms that actively reshape the river’s temporality.
Figure 2. Wells Dam, WA | Video Still | 2017
Figure 2. John Day Dam, WA | Video Still | 2017
Figure 2. Duncan Dam and Reservoir, BC | Video Still | 2017
Figure 2. McNarry Dam, WA | Video Still | 2017
What is more, the reservoirs in the video make slow violence even more difficult to see. A reservoir can appear calm, open and even beautiful, but it is also a landscape, produced by flooding and containment. Robertson’s attention to sites, such as Upper Arrow Reservoir and Duncan Dam and Reservoir shows, how ecological violence can become visually absorbed into the surface of water (Figure 3). Because the reservoir covers the evidence of its own making, it turns destruction into an image of calmness. What was once forest, land or settlement is no longer directly visible, it survives only as submerged history. The viewer may first see reflection, stillness or spaciousness, but these images carry histories of drowned forests, disrupted habitats and displaced settlements. This is where Nixon’s theory becomes especially useful: slow violence often hides beneath surfaces that do not immediately look violent. Robertson does not resolve this contradiction. Instead, she allows the calmness of the reservoir to remain visually present, making the viewer confront the uneasy relationship between the beauty and damage.
Figure 3. Upper Arrow Reservoir, BC | Video Still | 2017
Figure 3. Duncan Dam and Reservoir, BC | Video Still | 2017
A particularly important example is the site identified as Burton Townsite at Arrow Lakes Reservoir (Figure 4). The word “townsite” already suggests absence: a place, where a settlement once existed, but no longer appears in the same way. The term does not describe a visible, living town, but the trace of one: a place, whose social and material life has been interrupted by the creation of the reservoir. In the context of Still Running Water, this absence becomes part of the river’s memory. The video does not need to show a dramatic image of destruction, because the violence has already taken place and has been folded into the landscape. What remains is water, quietness and the knowledge that something has been submerged. This is a strong example of slow violence, because it reveals harm as an aftermath, rather than an event. The buried townsite, therefore, reveals that environmental transformation is never only ecological, because it is also social, historical and emotional. The river does not merely carry water, but also the traces of lives, places and memories that have been displaced from visibility.
Figure 4. Burton Townsite, Arrow Lakes Reservoir, BC | Video Still | 2017
Robertson’s underwater imagery adds another layer to this reading. If the surface of the river can appear calm, the underwater view suggests that the most important histories may lie beneath ordinary visibility (Figure 5). This image works almost as a metaphor for Nixon’s concept itself. Slow violence is not always immediately available to the eye. It must be traced through hidden layers, delayed effects and submerged evidence. By moving below the surface, Robertson’s video invites the viewer to imagine the river as a depth, rather than a simple landscape view. Stacy Alaimo’s idea of bodily nature could deepen this argument, because it challenges the separation between bodies and environments. Robertson’s underwater imagery similarly invites the viewer to imagine the river not as distant scenery, but as a material body shaped by intervention. This is useful for reading the underwater image, because it shifts attention from the river as something looked at from a distance to the river as a material environment, in which histories of intervention are physically held. So, here the river becomes a body that holds traces of intervention, even when those traces are not fully visible.
Figure 5. Video Still from Underwater | 2017
At the same time, Still Running Water does not simply illustrate Nixon’s theory. It also complicates it. Nixon’s concept helps to explain, how environmental harm can be gradual and hidden, but Robertson’s video also insists on the river’s continuing movement and presence. Water continues to move through the frame, even when shaped by dams and reservoirs. This means that the Columbia River is not presented only as a passive victim of infrastructure. It appears as an active presence that carries memory, movement and resistance. The artwork, therefore, expands Nixon’s idea of slow violence by showing not only how harm accumulates, but also how a damaged environment continues to live, flow and exceed the systems that attempt to contain it.
The video’s duration and sound further strengthen this sense of slow ecological attention. Because Still Running Water unfolds through a sequence of static shots, the viewer is not allowed to consume the river quickly as scenery. Instead, the work asks for a slower mode of looking, one that becomes attentive to movement, surface, atmosphere and interruption. The sound by Nick Kuepfer contributes to this experience by giving the river a sensory presence beyond the visual frame. Rather than functioning as background, sound helps create an immersive relation to the river as a living environment. It suggests continuity, depth and pressure, reminding the viewer that ecological violence is not only seen, but also felt through rhythm, atmosphere and duration.
Nevertheless, Robertson’s video also unsettles the traditional pleasure of landscape viewing. Landscape has often been associated with distance, visual possession and aesthetic enjoyment, as if the viewer could look at land from a safe and detached position. Still Running Water challenges this position by presenting landscapes that are beautiful, but not innocent. Firstly, a reservoir may appear calm, reflective and almost serene, yet its surface conceals histories of flooding, displacement and ecological alteration. Furthermore, a dam may appear monumental, stable or even orderly, yet it marks the regulation of a living river system. The work, therefore, makes beauty ethically uneasy: what attracts the eye also asks to be questioned. So, Robertson does not allow the viewer to consume the river as scenery.
What is more, the title Still Running Water contains the central tension of the work. “Still” suggests quietness, pause or immobility, while “running water” suggests movement and continuation. The river is still running, but it is not untouched: its flow has been interrupted, redirected and reorganized by hydroelectric infrastructure. This double meaning mirrors the visual experience of the video itself, where calm, almost motionless images still contain movement, intervention and loss. The title, therefore, refuses a simple opposition between nature and technology, suggesting a river that is both - living and wounded.
This tension between damage and continued movement also helps clarify what Robertson’s video adds to Nixon’s concept of slow violence. The strength of Nixon’s concept is that it makes visible the political and temporal difficulty of environmental harm. It helps explain why the damage in Still Running Water is not immediately recognizable as violence: it is gradual, infrastructural and absorbed into the ordinary appearance of the river. However, the concept also has a limitation. If the work is read only through slow violence, the Columbia River risks appearing mainly as a victim of human intervention. Robertson’s video complicates this by giving the river a sense of endurance, presence. This is important, because the artwork does not only ask the viewer to recognize damage, but also to encounter the river as an active and continuing material force. Its movement through the frame suggests that ecological systems are not passive backgrounds to human action, even when they have been deeply altered by it. The river continues to flow, reflect and resist complete containment. In this sense, the artwork does not reject Nixon’s concept, but expands it by showing, how ecological harm coexists with endurance and more-than-human agency.
In conclusion, Genevieve Robertson’s Still Running Water transforms the slow violence of hydroelectric intervention into an aesthetic experience of duration, concealment and ecological memory. Through static shots of dams, reservoirs, submerged sites and moving water, the video refuses the visual language of catastrophe and instead makes the viewer attend to harm that is gradual, hidden and accumulated. In this sense, Robertson gives visual form to what Rob Nixon describes as slow violence: destruction dispersed across time and space, often concealed beneath ordinary appearances. Yet the work also complicates Nixon’s concept by presenting the Columbia River not only as damaged, but as still active and resistant. Finally, Still Running Water asks to look slowly enough to perceive, what has been submerged, interrupted and made difficult to see.
Images source: Genevieve Robertson, Still Running Water, artist website, https://www.genevieverobertson.com/work-avenue/still-running-water-s5h8l. Access to the full video should be requested directly from the artist.
Primary academic text about concept/theory/perspective:
Nixon, Rob. “Introduction.” In Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, 1–44. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
Secondary academic text about concept/theory/perspective:
Moore, Jason W. “The Capitalocene, Part I: On the Nature and Origins of Our Ecological Crisis.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 44, no. 3 (2017): 594–630. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2016.1235036.
Morton, Timothy. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.
Primary source:
Robertson, Genevieve. Still Running Water. 2017–2019. Single-channel video, 12 minutes, Columbia River, from source to mouth, Canada and the United States; access to the full video is available by contacting the artist directly.
Robertson, Genevieve. “Still Running Water.” Artist website. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.genevieverobertson.com/work-avenue/still-running-water-s5h8l.
Secondary source about the artwork:
Blackwood Gallery. “Still Running Water.” The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge: Shoring. May 2019. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.blackwoodgallery.ca/publications/sduk/shoring/still-running-water.
Blackwood Gallery. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge: Shoring. May 2019. PDF. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55a3e169e4b0356b591411b2/t/5e057ebc1679023906047ac1/1577418432444/SDUK_04-Shoring.pdf.
Other sources:
Alaimo, Stacy. “Bodily Natures.” In Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self, 1–27. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.
Blackwood Gallery. “Still Running Water.” The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge: Shoring. May 2019. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.blackwoodgallery.ca/publications/sduk/shoring/still-running-water.
Constellation Records. “Nick Kuepfer.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://constellation-records.myshopify.com/pages/artist/nick-kuepfer.
Fowkes, Maja, and Reuben Fowkes. Art and Climate Change. London: Thames & Hudson, 2022.
Fowkes, Maja, and Reuben Fowkes. “Riverine Ecologies.” In Art and Climate Change. London: Thames & Hudson, 2022.
Lazaro, Philippe. “Causes, Effects and Solutions to Environmental Degradation.” Plant With Purpose. March 15, 2023. https://plantwithpurpose.org/stories/causes-effects-and-solutions-to-environmental-degradation/.
Nixon, Rob. Interview by Mia Funk and Phil Kehoe. The Creative Process. October 20, 2025. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.creativeprocess.info/writers-featured2/rob-nixon-kehoe-mia-funk-hsmx7-jmw77.
Northwest Power and Conservation Council. “Columbia River: Description, Creation, and Discovery.” Columbia River History Project. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.nwcouncil.org/reports/columbia-river-history/columbiariver/.
Robertson, Genevieve. River Drawings, River Notes. MA thesis, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, 2016. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55a3e169e4b0356b591411b2/t/57917fbfd482e9b93f182488/1469153245845/Genevieve+Robertson_Final+Thesis+with+Images.pdf.
Woodend, Dorothy. “‘Spill’: A New Exhibit Examines Humanity’s Abuse of Water.” The Tyee, September 6, 2019. https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2019/09/06/Spill-Exhibit-Examines-Humanity-Abuse-Of-Water/.
Woodend, Dorothy. “Spill.” Galleries West, September 23, 2019. https://www.gallerieswest.ca/magazine/stories/spill/.
