Climate Parliament is an immersive, interactive installation created by Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. The artwork consists of 481 pendant speaker-lights that react as people traverse the public path through the 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.

Shifting between global and local ecological concerns, the installation documents a variety of perspectives concerning the present climate crisis. Some voices declaim the urgent need to recognize the crisis; many offer clear statements on how to confront it. There are calls for protest, calls for politicians to act responsibly, calls to recognize the impact of the fossil fuel economy on our world, calls for the government not to subsidize the fossil fuel industry, calls to recognize Indigenous perspectives on the problems of a changing economy, calls to acknowledge the impact of war and the weapons industry on our climate, calls to recognize the uneven social and racial implications of climate change, calls for environmental justice, calls for confronting entities that facilitate climate destruction or obfuscate the science and the urgency of the problem, calls to listen to expert perspectives, peer-reviewed scientific knowledge, and the voices of those at the forefront of facing the impact of our fiercely changing climate. 

Commissioned specifically for the O’Connor Building for Engineering and Science, Climate Parliament is the culmination of Lozano-Hemmer’s decades-long exploration of creating polyphonic, interactive light and sound installations that investigate the nature of human perception. It is also the artist’s largest scale work to date to directly address the climate crisis. Drawing from historical and contemporary research, at Rice and from around the world, Climate Parliament invites visitors to imagine the impact of our current actions on the future of people and the planet.

About the Artist
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (b. 1967, Mexico City, Mexico) 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. 

Lozano-Hemmer lives and works in Montréal.