Coming Summer 2023
Gone to Water / Ido al Agua is a VR documentary that addresses urban oil production and its community health impacts across South Los Angeles – Tongva Land. Gone to Water combines real-time 3D, visual effects, spatialized audio interviews, and multimedia works by local artists into a virtual space of protest alongside those most affected by environmental injustice.
Home to nearly 7,000 active and idle oil wells, Los Angeles County is the largest active urban oil drilling location in the United States. Over 3.8 million LA County residents live less than a quarter mile from an oil well, with Black and Latinx communities disproportionately impacted. Populations living close to urban oil drilling sites are often exposed to hazards via inhalation of contaminated air, the ingestion of contaminated water and food, and absorption of pollutants through the skin. Residents are being knowingly poisoned where they live.
Urban oil production systems have decimated biodiversity and left generational scars in South Los Angeles without accountability. With systemic racism at the root of this environmental injustice, it is a crisis not isolated to Los Angeles, but known to many across the globe.
Gone to Water amplifies the urgent call to action that community groups throughout LA are fighting for–we must transition away from gas and oil infrastructure and adopt a sustainable energy system that prioritizes the health and safety of residents living on the front lines of environmental injustice as well as the land that sustains us.
Gone to Water is a Love Death Design production, created in collaboration with Communities for a Better Environment, People not Pozos, Puvunga Wetlands Protectors, Terrawatts, with contributions from many activists, residents, artists, and students from the Watts, Wilmington, and University Park communities.
