Nine Earths

3-5 April

Nine Earths is an immersive artwork that explores the relationship between ordinary lives and humanity’s excessive demand for the Earth’s resources. The immersive installation takes its audience on an audiovisual journey, blending words, film, photography, sound and data graphics to explore human consumption and its impact on our world. 

Nine Earths is a collaborative piece created by the arts collective D-Fuse. Central to the piece are “citizen stories” of ordinary people describing their daily routines, hopes and fears. The artwork travels through several continents, bringing together local experiences with its global theme. 

Nine Earths has been developed in collaboration with researchers, scientists and filmmakers worldwide. Originally commissioned by the British Council to mark the UK hosting of COP26, the UN climate change conference in Glasgow in 2021, the artwork is a dynamic piece that continues to evolve – adding different places, people and their stories as time goes on. For this special presentation a group of young people are collaborating with D-Fuse at the Roundhouse to add new “citizen stories” to the work. 

Influenced by Rutger Bregman’s book Humankind: A Hopeful History, Nine Earths makes the argument that it is realistic – as well as revolutionary – to assume that people are essentially good and that, together, we can build a better future.

View the trailer here

Why Nine Earths? 

Each year human demand for natural resources — our ecological footprint — exceeds what our planet can regenerate in that time. We are going beyond what scientists call our planetary boundaries, and in doing so putting all our futures at risk. If we all consumed as much as Americans, for example, we would need the equivalent of five Earths’ worth of the planet’s resources. The Nine Earths of the title is inspired by the ecological footprint of the highest consuming nation of all — Qatar.