Cover of Special Issue Hors Serie Volume XXVII, 2025. Cover art, Maria A., Temeio, 2025. Courtesy the artist.
A central provocation of this special issue is that innovating legal epistemologies of deep-sea governance, and research-driven artistic and curatorial practices, are inseparable. Curatorial methods insist upon the critical value of multivocality in imagining the future, and upon the potential to distribute advocacy among plural knowledge-makers. The papers gathered here together build on how various stakeholders have conceived of opportunities for change both within the scope of UNCLOS and its management at the ISA, as well as beyond these frameworks, exploring deep seabed extraction across cultural theory, jurisprudential theory, artistic practice, and histories of ocean science, law, and governance.
Contributors include the Deep Currents Collective (Giulia Champion, Mekhala Dave, Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Jonathan Galka, Alejandro Limpo, Susan Reid, Khadija Stewart); economic law researcher Diva Jain; transmedia artist, ocean scientist and writer Mae Lubetkin; lawyer and art historian Mekhala Dave; history researcher Sonya Schoenberger; environmental humanities researcher Yasmin Sani and artist-researcher Sun Woo Yoon.
Edited by Dr. Nabil Ahmed, Co-Founder of INTERPRT and Professor of Visual Intervention, NTNU (Norway); Ute Meta Bauer, Professor of Curatorial Practice, NTU and Director, NTU CCA (Singapore); Dr. Jonathan Galka, Historian and Post-doctoral Fellow, NUS ARI (Singapore); Dr. Hervé Raimana Lallemant-Moe, Director General, Digital Economy and Public Law Associate, UFP (French Polynesia).
The Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific – Journal de Droit Comparé du Pacifique (CLJP-JDCP) was created in 1994 under the name Revue Juridique Polynésienne (RJP). It is an international, multidisciplinary journal focusing on specific topics concerning the Pacific region and in addition to special issues, is published once a year under the auspices of the Association de Legislation Comparée de Pays du Pacifique (ALCPP) [Association of Comparative Legislation of the Countries of the Pacific].
We thank the Editors-in-Chief Professor Tony Angelo and Dr Sage Yves-Louis and their editorial team for providing the space to present on the timely subject of seabed mining and its attendant regulatory frameworks and ethical questions.
Our gratitude goes to Polynesian artist Maria A., whose image from her work Temeio (2025) featured on the cover of this special issue.
Nabil Ahmed holds a PhD in Research Architecture from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a senior lecturer at the Cass School of Architecture at London Metropolitan University. As an artist and researcher, Ahmed looks at environmental violence and new forums for environmental justice through spatial analysis, writing, and interdisciplinary projects. Since 2013, he has been investigating the impact of mining, land grabs, and self-determination in West Papua. He is the founder of Inter-Pacific Ring Tribunal (INTERPRT), a long-term project on ecocide in Oceania and the Pacific region, commissioned by TBA21–Academy. He has participated in the two-year Anthropocene Project at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin; the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennial; the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial (2016); and numerous other exhibitions. More recently he has published in art, science, and architecture publications such as Third Text, Scientific Reports, Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth (Sternberg, 2014), Volume, and South Magazine (Documenta 14).
Dr Hervé Raimana Lallemant-Moe (French Polynesia) is a member of the Governance and Insular Development Research Team (GDI – University of French Polynesia) and the Center of International Law (CDI – University of Lyon III). His research interests include environmental law, international law, and oversea communities’ legal issues, particularly for French Polynesia, and his specialty is climate change legal issues. Lallemant-Moe is teaching law at the University of French Polynesia, where he is an alumnus. He also graduated from the University of Western Brittany (France) and the University of South Pacific (Fiji). Lallemant-Moe is the assistant of Maina Sage, Member of the French National Assembly (French Parliament). He previously worked several years for the Polynesian Government and was a member of the High Council of French Polynesia, a group of legal experts who served as advisors to the President of the country.
Ute Meta Bauer is a Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU). She is currently the Acting Director and Principal Research Fellow at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore); and is the Chair of the Masters in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices (MA MSCP) programme. Having served as the Founding Director of NTU CCA Singapore for over a decade, her work as educator and curator over the past years has focused on Climates. Habitats. Environments. At the Centre, she curated and co-curated The Oceanic (2017/2018), Trees of Life. Knowledge in Material (2018), and The Posthuman City (2020). In 2022, she served as curator for the Singapore Pavilion at the 59th Biennale di Venezia, featuring artist Shubigi Rao. Her recent large scale projects include the 17th Istanbul Biennial (2022), co-curated alongside David Teh and Amar Kanwar, and the artistic direction of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024. She is a Trustee of the Art Foundation TBA21 and a member of the Governing Council of n.b.k. Berlin. Bauer was recently conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Art and Design by Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki, Finland.
Dr Jonathan Galka is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Science, Technology and Society (STS) Research Cluster in the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore. Dr. Galka holds a PhD and MA in History of Science from Harvard University. During 2024–2025, he was a visiting scholar with NTU CCA for the Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss research project. At ARI, he is working on the histories and futures of deep seawater technologies, especially ocean thermal energy conversion. His dissertation examined the 20th-century identification of deep-sea manganese nodules as scientific, political, and economic resources and how the construction of nodules as a mineral resource frontier imbricated the biological and geological sciences with Cold War and postcolonial ocean law and politics. As a member of the Deep Currents Collective, Dr. Galka contributes to policy and curatorial interventions centering alternative modes of imagining seabed and deep-sea governance.
