At over 800 miles in length, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) is one of the world's largest oil lines. Its unique above-ground structure exists in stark counterpoint to the natural environment surrounding it. Since its completion in 1977, TAPS has helped transfer almost 16 billion barrels of oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, Alaska. Topophilia is an experimental documentary that follows the pipeline from beginning to end and uses the conduit's linearity and unwavering repetition as a fixed point from which to measure movement and stasis. The film seeks to present the pipeline and its surroundings harmoniously as a continuous, giant building; a structure that simultaneously projects modern necessities and the resulting consequences; and an architectural space that not only reorders the landscape and ideas of our place within it, but also offers an unmistakable juxtaposition between the endgame of industrial revolution—and the environment where this scenario eventually plays itself out.

Peter Bo Rappmund is a Texas-based artist whose practice relies on understanding both empirical and metaphysical properties of natural and built environments. He has exhibited his work at a variety of venues including: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Anthology Film Archives; George Eastman House; the National Maritime Museum, London; Rencontres, Paris and Berlin; REDCAT; the Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Locarno, New York, Vienna, Ann Arbor, and Hong Kong International Film Festivals. Bo Rappmund held a solo exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum in 2012, and most recently finished principle photography on Thom Andersen's Reconversão, a film about Portuguese architect Souto de Moura. A graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder and CalArts, Bo Rappmund holds an MFA in music composition and film/video.