TRACE

Howl festival 2007

A 100 gallon oil spill.

Performance art

TRACE a performance by Theresa Byrnes

Exploring our spiritual relationship with crude oil.

Crude oil is the blood of the planet, created by the compression and heating of ancient organic materials over geological time. Oil is formed from the preserved remains of prehistoric zooplankton and algae, which have settled to the sea (or lake) bottom in large quantities under anoxic conditions.

TRACE contemplates our relationship with Crude oil; liberated by and victims of its exploitation -- the substance of time immemorial, we are caught in the middle. We struggle to define our role in this archetypal ménage that could lead us toward annihilation.

The earth is our body, a holy ground of all matter recycling itself. The spiritual lesson inherent in our dependency on; destruction of the environment for; and geo political warfare to gain control of crude oil may be to respect and connect our lives to our ancestry going back to the beginning of life on earth.

Artist Theresa Byrnes

Videographer Paul Garin