Slurb (Invited)

Slurb (a word that collapses “slum” and “suburb") encapsulates a dreamy ode to the rise of slime, a watery future in which jellyfish have dominion. The animated, carnivalesque tailgate party loops and stutters like a vinyl record stuck in a groove. 

There is a long history of satirical illustration, epitomized by J.J. Grandville in the 19th century, in which animal-headed humans are deployed in troubling social narratives. Slurb is that kind of cartoon. Facts related to the ocean’s radical changes in acidity and oxygen levels form the backbone of the animation. Overfishing, dumping, and warming ocean currents have already triggered a reversion toward a primordial sea in areas larger than the state of Texas.

Slurb’s surface is inspired by fictions, like J.G. Ballard’s prescient 1962 novel Drowned World, in which inhabitants of a flooded world feel the tug of the sun and dream of a return to their amniotic past.

Marina Zurkow 
New York University