Unsecurities Lab: Sunk Costs

Description

SUNK COSTS takes the sinking of the cargo ship Felicity Ace, which went down off the Azores in 2022 carrying nearly 4,000 luxury electric vehicles, as a case study in the contradictions of “green” capitalism, logistics and ecological accountability. The project explores what happens when infrastructures of progress literally catch fire, exposing the volatility, opacity and environmental cost of systems designed to appear seamless.

This event at Newspeak House combines video essay, archival narration, speculative storytelling and research discussion. It includes a talk by Dr Nathan Jones on Unsecurities Lab, a Security Lancaster and School of Arts initiative that uses contemporary art as a live research environment for exploring emerging security questions with researchers, practitioners and specialists from different fields. The event will also feature a playtest of a new decision theatre in development for Unsecurities Lab at Lancaster University, creating perspectival cross-sections through the entangled networks of ecology, economy and geopolitics that shaped the Felicity Ace before and after it sank 3,000 metres to the ocean floor.

Bringing together artistic research, supply-chain analysis and speculative method, the evening examines how global logistics, extractive geographies and financial architectures converge in, and are memorialised by, contemporary wrecks.

Period	4/05/2026
Held at	Newspeak House, United Kingdom
Degree of Recognition	International