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Micro POM
Aalborg 2022

Transition Regimes:
Cultures of Media Art

Aalborg University
May 10-11, 2022

Create Campus
Rendsburggade 14
Aalborg, 080 DK-9000
Denmark

Rumble in the Sea
Mukul Menon |Kat Suryna | Sumreen Shahzad | Bena Torres
This project looks at creating literacy around the subject of deep-sea mining through critical play. Deep-sea mining is a practice of extracting minerals from the ocean floor for industries, such as the production of digital devices and lithium batteries for electric vehicles. Nations, governments, and private corporations construct the inevitability of deep-sea mining by claiming its necessity for the green economy – whilst environmental impacts are understudied and extremely uncertain. Policy development is being fast-tracked for economic and political interests while ignoring the lack of knowledge on the possible catastrophic ecological and social impacts caused by it. Through an illustrated fable and a card game, Rumble in the Sea creates an educational, informative, and entertaining discussion on deep-sea mining enabled through play. The game stages a dramatic conflict between two types of players with confronting commitments: investors and environmentalists. In the game, both parties decode the meaning of statements made by the biggest mining contractor known for successfully having steered the legislative development in its favour. Rumble in the Sea thus aims to subvert the status quo defined by prioritizing investors’ and manufacturers’ interests over citizens’ voices.

Project Team

Biographies

Mukul Menon

is currently pursuing the 2-year Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters Program in Media Arts Cultures. He has studied Global Media and Communications at SOAS, University of London and Urban Planning at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. He works around various academic and artistic intersections of documentary filmmaking, media studies, music, and urban planning. While he can go on about himself forever, he deeply respects the short-bio reader’s time.

Kat Suryna

is a figurative artist with a strong background in philosophy of science. Her work has been exhibited in Estonia, Hungary, Austria, and Hong Kong. Her art focuses on the human body, subjectivity, gender identity, and architectural narratives. As a researcher and educator, Kat investigates the relation between artistic work, science, and scholarly research. To this end, Kat has published on the use of DNN in the study and production of art and is currently developing her perspective on art and science within the framework of Science and Technologies Studies.

Sumreen Shahzad

has worked as a Public Relations, Celebrity and Client Servicing Manager at MINT PR and Image Consultancy in Lahore, Pakistan from (2019-2021); and as a Production Manager for drama serial Rasm-e-Duniya and Associate Producer for a stand-up comedy and talk show, Mazaaq Raat from (2017-2019). She has organized several fashion, lifestyle and corporate events during her time in the media field.

Bena Torres

is a visual artist, researcher, and educator currently based in Europe. She has participated in exhibitions including FASE Festival de Arte, Ciencia y Tecnología in Buenos Aires (2018), MANA Contemporary in Miami (2019), and recently Unter den Nägeln, at the Thüringer Landtag in Erfurt, Germany (2022). Torres has worked at institutions such as the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar on projects regarding internationalization and focuses on decolonial views, Andean cosmovision, and how we construct our own identities through art practice as sense-making.