In a final editing of the filmed live performance, the video production of “Our World is Burning” is now available to be viewed via the following link to the film production.
Our World is Burning is an artwork, half performance and half film production, about the impacts of deforestation. The tree structure represents the support each tree provides our world. The forests are carbon sinks, soaking up the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and producing the oxygen we breath to live. The vines of paper strips convey facts that are woven into the very nature of the Earth and our unsustainable life style; what deforestation impacts, what forests and regions are being lost, what animals are going extinct, and even more facts.
In the performance, white gas is poured on the structure. Our dependency on oil and its byproducts is only speeding up the destruction of our planet by adding more carbon dioxide while the forests that soak up this poisonous gas are cut down. Or more accurately burned down.
It is undeniable that deforestation is terrible for our world but controversies remain. Agriculture, the biggest industry destroying the trees, continues to roll onwards as farmers the world over struggle between two choices, to starve or to burn. Their livelihood depends on farming the poor soil of the tropical forests. And to succeed, to make space for the crops and give the soil the nutrients needed for growing, the farms burn sections of the forest every few years when the old farmland stops producing.
Given the choice to starve or to burn, people will always chose survival and thus to burn the forests down for their livelihoods. Deforestation, bad as it is, is not as simple an issue to be solved over night. The cause of deforestation, poverty, must be addressed if the land, animals, and peoples are to thrive together.