Postcommodity interlaces multiple scenes of a desert lakebed with an evocative soundscape, directing our attention toward a human-induced ecological catastrophe in Owens Valley, situated east of the Sierra Nevada in California. Historically known as Payahüünadü (“place of flowing water”) by the nearby Paiute tribes of Bishop and Lone Pine, this valley once thrived as a meeting place for Indigenous peoples. After California’s 1848 gold rush, the influx of new settlers into coastal cities prompted a redistribution of land and resources by state and federal authorities. In the early 1900s, the City of Los Angeles constructed an aqueduct to divert water from the valley, devastating the local ecosystem. The desiccated lakebed now generates dust storms that distribute carcinogenic particles over large distances, causing health issues, displacing locals, and destroying agricultural lands. Postcommodity, led by Cristóbal Martínez (b. 1974, Alcalde, New Mexico; Genízaro, Manito, Xicano) and Kade L. Twist (b. 1971, Bakersfield, California), brings an Indigenous perspective to challenge Western settler colonialism through interdisciplinary art.

To illustrate the tension between cinema and surveillance, Going to Water features a melodic call-and-response between synthesizers and trombones that is composed in pentatonic scale in G-flat major. This soundtrack runs asynchronously from the video.