Deep Sea Assembly is a collaborative artistic research project by Aria Farajnezhad and Rita Süveges, developed in dialogue with scientists and researchers at MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences and the AIMS³ research initiative. The project investigates how the deep sea is perceived, mapped, measured, and transformed through scientific technologies, and how these practices intersect with extraction, carbon storage, data ownership, ecological responsibility, and climate justice. Bringing artistic and scientific perspectives into conversation, Deep Sea Assembly unfolds through collective research, workshops, moving-image production, and public discussion. Its first public iterations took place at MARUM in 2026: a participatory workshop in May, followed by the screening of the video essay From the Abyssal and a panel discussion in July.
From the Abyssal, 9 July 2026
From the Abyssal is a video essay developed by Aria Farajnezhad and Rita Süveges as part of the artistic research project Deep Sea Assembly. Combining expedition footage, scientific imaging, voice-over, and sound, the film reflects on the deep sea as a space that is increasingly mapped, measured, and rendered available for scientific, political, and economic intervention. It brings questions of seabed and sub-seabed mapping into relation with data ownership, marine carbon storage, extraction, technological vision, and climate justice.
The screening was followed by a panel discussion with Paul Berndt, Dr. Acer Jian Figueroa, Christina Nadolsky, Prof. Dr. Leonie Tuitjer, and Prof. Dr. Achim Kopf. The conversation addressed the accessibility and ownership of marine data, the legal and political implications of storing CO₂ in international waters, the challenges of upscaling laboratory research, and the urgency of degrowth across different sectors. It also opened broader questions about democratic decision-making, historical responsibility for emissions, uneven development, and the difficulty of navigating the climate crisis across institutional, industrial, and individual scales.
Credits
Editing, text, and voice:
Aria Farajnezhad and Rita Süveges
Sound design:
Máté Előd Janky
Footage from the expeditions:
MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen
Conceptual references:
Holly Jean Buck, After Geoengineering
Denise Ferreira da Silva, “Toward a Black Feminist Poethics”
Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism
Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation
Jason Hickel, “Ecomodernism, Green Growth and the Imperial Arrangement”
Andreas Malm and Wim Carton, The Long Heat
Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I
Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom”
Thanks to:
Dr. Achim Kopf
Paul Berndt
Prof. Dr. Martin Eickhoff
Isabel Lange
Dr. Christian Meurer
Nils Strackbein
Dr. Matthias Zabel
The project was made possible with the support of:
Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space
MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen
Deep Sea Assembly, 7 May 2026
Deep Sea Assembly was a four-hour participatory artistic research workshop developed by Aria Farajnezhad and Rita Süveges in collaboration with MARUM and in dialogue with the AIMS³ research project. Bringing together twelve participants from artistic and scientific fields, the workshop explored marine carbon capture and storage not only as an emerging technological response to the climate crisis, but also in relation to historical emissions, climate justice, democratic decision-making, and unequal social and geopolitical conditions.
The workshop was structured around a specially designed platform by Farzad Golghasemi, produced by Aucoop Bremen e.V. Conceived as both a functional and spatial element, the platform supported the different stages of the gathering and created a shared setting for reading, discussion, material engagement, and collective reflection.
The workshop began with an introduction to marine carbon-dioxide removal, followed by a collective role exercise in which participants embodied natural resources, technological infrastructures, and other forces connected to carbon emissions and their reduction. A guided walk through the Bremen Core Repository, MARUM’s equipment hall, and the test pool combined encounters with scientific instruments and underwater technologies with performative readings addressing histories of extraction, exploitation, and enslavement.
The workshop included fourteen basalt stones engraved with words and phrases related to carbon removal, extraction, infrastructure, and ecological vulnerability. The artists thank Mario Petry for advising on the engraving process, Mahmoud Tamma for his assistance with plotting the stencils, and Steinmetz Vegesack for carrying out the sandblasting.
Along the route, participants carried basalt samples collected during an AIMS³ expedition to the Atlantic Ridge and engraved with terms such as “decarbonize” and “fragile infrastructure.” Their surfaces were later transferred onto paper through frottage and supplemented with annotations and critical reflections. The resulting posters were exhibited in the foyer before the group reconvened to discuss how carbon removal might be understood as necessary while remaining inseparable from questions of accumulation, profit, responsibility, and the political conditions through which technological solutions are implemented.
Aria Farajnezhad 