This video is a predominantly found footage collage with moments of original video, examining the role of fast food culture in America. At its core, the work critiques the beginning of fast food, starting with the nation’s obsession with convenience. An ingrained habit of discarding things the moment they are no longer useful. This mindset, when applied to food, has metastasized into an industrial system that produces cheap, unhealthy products on a massive scale. The result is not only a nationwide health crisis but also carries immense environmental destruction. As depicted in the video; mountains of waste, pollution from factory farming, and the cruelty inflicted on animals in service of speed and profit.

   The piece juxtaposes advertising imagery, burgers flipping on the grill, and raw glimpses of production and waste with brief original scenes, creating a rhythm that mirrors the cycle of desire, consumption, and disposal. By confronting viewers with this loop, the work asks us to recognize how normalized the system has become, as we allow it to corrode our health and environment.

   Yet, the video closes on a subtle shift. In its final moments, the screen shows something ordinary and almost tender. A group of friends sitting together in a McDonald’s, trading jokes and enjoying each other’s company. It is a reminder that despite the destruction embedded in fast food culture, it has also been a backdrop for shared experiences, small joys, and fleeting human connections. The work leaves viewers to sit with this contradiction: the undeniable harm and the undeniable humanity bound up in the same space.

Created using Adobe Premiere Pro and digital video