The Little Shrimps are Running Out of Space

The North Sea Shrimp represents an emblematic foodstuff because it is closely connected to shrimp boats, fishermen's families, regional traditions, and specific coastal locations. These little sea-dwellers can be conceived as living creatures permeated by social practices, political discourses, regulatory efforts, cultural histories, economic developments, globalization processes – such as being peeled in Morocco – and climate change.

This was the starting point for the project by Daniele Alef Grillo, artist and filmmaker, and Martin Döring, researcher on climate change adaptation. The artistic project aims at making the different modes of "shrimp existences" more visible. It blends fishermen and their prey into each other and reflects their entangled socio-ecological and climate-shaped world through a two-channel video installation.

Martin and Alef started with a cooperative analysis of relevant quotes taken from interview studies conducted in CLiCCS over the past few years. The interviews address various thematic categories such as: family history, self-images of fishermen, change in fisheries as seen through fishermen’s eyes, future of fishing and fishermen, and climate change as seen through fishermen’s eyes. From the many voices of the fishermen, Alef extrapolated a “super-testimony” synthesizing the various points of view into a sort of collective verbal portrait.

"We really tied something nice together, where we meet and where we really collaborate, and it's not so much something like knowledge exchange. It's really something where we try to tease out something together." – Dr. Martin Döring

Alef and Martin use photos and a film as tools for visualizing the various life-worlds of shrimps as animals, shrimps and fishermen, and shrimps as a foodstuff. On one monitor of the installation, one gets an insight into the socio-cultural dimensions and spatialities of shrimps. A female character generated through AI interprets the collective voice, specifically to emphasize the abstraction from the predominantly male world of reference. On the second monitor, a cook prepares step-by-step a "Krabbenbrötchen". The so-called "shrimp bun" is typical of the North Sea culinary culture. Between the two videos, a silent dialogue is initiated that invites to discover the points of connection between the two narratives.

"Art brings a new dimension into the living of science and scientific facts". – Dr. Martin Döring

The stories provide different perspectives on the seemingly same thing. As it becomes evident, a shrimp is not just a shrimp but a multilayered creature suffused and shaped in various ways and currently affected by climate change. They have their place in society while they are currently running out of space in nature due to climate change.

"Art and science both investigate human consciousness and our being in the world. But with different methods." – Daniele Alef Grillo