Sunk Costs: The Saga of the Felicity Ace. Elisa Cuesta Fernández & Jamie Allen

Sunk Costs: The Saga of the Felicity Ace takes the 2022 sinking of the cargo ship Felicity Ace—which went down off the Azores 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 the infrastructures of progress literally catch fire, exposing the volatility and opacity of systems designed to appear seamless. Part speculative storytelling, part forensic reconstruction, the performance interweaves archival narration, manifest readings, sound fragments, and visual cartographies. From different spaces, Elisa and Jamie alternate voices in a hybrid, performative dialogue—moving from the factual to the mythic, from the lithium fire’s chemistry to the moral and material legacies of wreckage. Drawing from environmental forensics, marine policy, and artistic research, the piece situates shipwrecks as forensic remains of late capitalist mythologies. What should remain underwater? What wreckage do we still rely on? What is, in fact, down there? 

Elisa Cuesta is an artist and industrial designer whose work examines the entanglements between ecological systems, infrastructures, and speculative storytelling. Combining artistic research and hybrid making, she creates installations, cartographies, and artefacts that merge traditional and experimental techniques. Her practice, grounded in transdisciplinary collaboration, spans institutional and independent contexts. In 2024 she was commissioned for the Climate Biennial (Avilés, 2026) and collaborates with TBA21–Academy. She has contributed to Science Gallery Dublin, Nest, LABoral, and the Museum of Science and Technology in Belgrade.

Jamie Allen is an artist and researcher exploring how infrastructures and technologies shape ecological, social, and symbolic life. With a background in engineering and media art, his work combines research, speculative storytelling, and infrastructural critique through installations and publications. He is Senior Researcher at Critical Media Lab (Basel), Visiting Fellow at Cambridge HPS, and co-founder of metaLAB (Europe) and continent. His ongoing project Sunk Costs explores maritime losses and ecological afterlives, including the 2022 Felicity Ace shipwreck.
https://jamieallen.com/