HOUSTON, TX (PNAN) – The Moody Center for the Arts will commemorate the opening of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s immersive audiovisual installation Climate Parliament by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer with a public reception on Tuesday, September 24, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. A reception will follow a presentation by the artist and a panel discussion with Rice University faculty cultural anthropologist Dominique Boyer and climate scientist Sylvia Dee.
Reflecting past and current research, both at Rice University and around the world, Climate Parliament represents the first permanent installation by this artist to directly address the climate crisis.
The artwork consists of 481 pendant speaker-lights that react as people traverse the public path through the Ralph O’Connor Building for Engineering and Science. Each pendant plays back a unique recording of a leading scientist, scholar, activist or student as they share their research on, perceptions of, and resistance to, climate change. As many voices sound simultaneously, activating many frequencies at once, the piece creates complex aural patterns reminiscent of the sound of crashing waves on a seashore.
“We’re honored to share this profound work of public art,” said Executive Director Alison Weaver of the Moody Center for the Arts. In addition, “Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s creative approach to the urgent topic of climate change encourages us to engage our senses of sight and sound and to contribute our own voices towards collaborative action. Featuring Climate Parliament in the Rice Public Art collection reinforces the university’s commitment to inspiring interdisciplinary research across the arts and sciences, and to addressing one of the most critical issues of our time.”
Voices included in this installation range from Greta Thunberg and Margaret Mead to Rice University students and scholars like Professors Jim Blackburn and Timothy Morton, as well as Houston-based researchers and activists, including Jaime Gonzales, former Director of the Nature Conservancy, and environmental justice activist Reginald Moore.
“Climate Parliament is a performative representation of the voices that warn us of the dire consequences of man-made environmental decimation,” said the artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. “The project is inspired by decades of artists and composers using multi-speaker arrays such as Edgar Varèse, Bernhard Leitner, Shilpa Gupta, Janet Cardiff, and George Bures Miller.”
For more information, online at www.moody.rice.edu or call 713-348-ARTS.
About
Born 1967 in Mexico City, Mexico, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and currently lives and works in Montreal, Canada, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in physical chemistry from Concordia University in Montréal in 1989. Initially, he worked in a molecular recognition lab in Montréal and published his research in
chemistry journals. Although he did not pursue a career in science, it has influenced his work in many ways. In 2003, he founded his studio Antimodular Research, where he collaborates with programmers, engineers, architects and designers in a laboratory-like environment to pose hypotheses and test potential solutions to both theoretical and practical problems.
The first artist to represent Mexico at the Venice Biennale (2007), Lozano-Hemmer has been featured in solo exhibitions at museums around the world, including the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; AmorePacific Museum, Seoul; the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. His work is held in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museo del Barrio, New York, Tate, London, Jumex and MUAC, Mexico City; and SFMOMA; among many others.