Experiencing Interruptions?

To Those Who Create the Future

To Those Who Create the Future involves the impact of lithium mining, a key material in the clean energy debate. This includes economies based on extraction, the ongoing impact of colonialism, the role of Silicon Valley, and the spread of politicized ideas online.

The project was filmed during 2024 on location in the world’s largest lithium mine in Chile’s Atacama Desert, the otherworldly, lithium-rich Salton Sea in California, and oil fields across the Mojave desert.

Whitcraft's art reflects lithium mining's impact on the earth—distorting landscapes, mirroring the land's physical alteration from lithium extraction, and visually recording the environmental impact—prompting reflection on human activity and nature.

  • Davey Whitcraft
    Director
  • Project Type:
    Experimental
  • Runtime:
    9 minutes 41 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 1, 2025
  • Production Budget:
    1,700 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    Chile
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Davey Whitcraft

Whitcraft is based in Berlin and Los Angeles and holds a PhD in Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought from EGS, Saas-Fee, Switzerland and an MFA from UCLA, Los Angeles.

His work has been included in museums internationally such as Los Angeles MOCA, SFMOMA, LA Architecture + Design Museum, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, Godwin-Ternbach Museum NY, Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia and gallery exhibitions including Themes+Projects, Minnesota Street Projects San Francisco, Subliminal Projects Los Angeles, Rietveld Art Academy Amsterdam, Netherlands, One-Off Moving Image Festival Copenhagen Denmark, Yami-ichi Brussels, Belgium, London West Gallery and the Leap Second Festival, Norway.

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Director Statement

Davey Whitcraft works across film, sculpture, and installation to document “Sites of Accumulation” — places with high concentrations of psychological, economic, material, or political energy.

Whitcraft examines sites where complex entanglements of complex entanglements of technological spelunking, biodiversity risk, social media discourse, economic anomalies, climate change, and geopolitical fiction are all revealed.

Drawing from contemporary philosophy, and borrowing scientific research methods from geology, anthropology, and sociology, Whitcraft challenges the traditional separation between rational and irrational and his work brings to light the unconscious dimensions of social, political, and geological events.

Deploying modified cinema cameras and drones to ‘see’ outside of the visible light spectrum, and special radios to ‘listen’ to not only wi-fi signals but also background radiation from space, his light and sound installations operate at the limits of human perception.