Marina Zurkow makes psychological narratives about humans and their relationship to animals, plants and the weather.  The animated, carnivalesque tailgate party of Slurb loops and stutters like a vinyl record stuck in a groove. 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.

There is a history of satirical illustration, epitomized by J.J.Grandville in the 19th century, in which animal-headed humans are deployed in the telling of troubling social narratives. Slurb is that kind of cartoon. Facts of the ocean's radical changes in acidity and oxygen levels form the backbone of the animation; overfishing, dumping, and climate change's heating of ocean currents have already triggered a reversion toward a primordial sea in parts of the ocean 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.

Slurb, 2009, single channel video, duration: 17'42" loop, color, animation and stereo sound, music by Lem Jay Ignacio & additional animation: Jen Kelly

Zurkow is represented by Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in New York; since 2000, she has exhibited at The Sundance Film Festival, The Rotterdam Film Festival, Res Fest, Ars Electronica, Creative Time, The Kitchen, The Walker Art Center, the Brooklyn Museum, The National Museum for Women in the Arts, and Eyebeam, among other venues. Her videos have been broadcast on MTV, FujiTV and PBS. She is a 2005 NYFA Fellow, a 2003 Rockefeller New Media Fellow, and a 2001 Creative Capital grantee. She teaches at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), and lives in Brooklyn.