Unsecurities Lab 4

Description

Unsecurities Lab 4: SUNK COSTS was an interdisciplinary workshop developed by Unsecurities Lab at Lancaster University in collaboration with the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business and the SUNK COSTS artist collective.

The workshop explored the sinking of the cargo ship Felicity Ace, which went down off the Azores in 2022 while carrying nearly 4,000 luxury electric vehicles. The incident was used as a case study for examining contemporary insecurity across maritime risk, green capitalism, global supply chains, ecological accountability, insurance, labour, logistics, ocean governance and sustainability in business.

Participants included artists, academics, policy specialists, maritime experts, environmental researchers, sustainability practitioners and business-accountability scholars. Working with film material, archival narration, speculative storytelling and structured discussion exercises, they examined how a single shipping accident can expose wider systems of technological, economic and ecological dependency.

The workshop invited participants first to respond from their own area of expertise, then to inhabit different perspectives connected to the incident, including ecological, financial, logistical, corporate, maritime and more-than-human positions. This process created a layered account of the wreck as more than an accident: a point where global systems of extraction, mobility, consumption, risk and environmental harm became briefly visible.

The workshop tested Unsecurities Lab’s broader method of using art as a research environment for collaborative foresight. The collaboration with the Pentland Centre strengthened the workshop’s focus on sustainability, corporate accountability, environmental governance and the hidden infrastructures that connect business decisions to ecological consequences.

The workshop contributed to Unsecurities Lab’s research on art-led security thinking, environmental risk, maritime futures and the cultural analysis of infrastructure. Outputs include workshop documentation, a developing report and methodological insights into how immersive and speculative art practices can support interdisciplinary analysis of emerging insecurities.

Period	6/05/2026
Event type	Workshop
Location	Lancaster, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International