The Sky Is on Fire is a large-scale, 3-channel LED video installation. A slow, constant camera pan captures a setting of what seems at first to be an idyllic American suburb, subtly transformed to reveal its dystopian urban quality. Made in the wake of the tragedy of the Parkland school massacre in Florida in 2018, Van der Auwera’s digital processing of documentary photographs and 3D scans of real places, deconstructs spaces and images to create an uncanny imaginary landscape of a highly evocative quality. The artist’s distortions deliberately recall real places and events. In voice-over, a young man provides a monologue on how technology will outlast, preserve and save us. The promise of technology’s salvation is set against a virtual, constructed visual world. It is precisely the subtlety of transformation that causes The Sky Is on Fire to be so riveting.