Rafael Lozano-Hemmer:  Undercurrents

Production | Exhibition Grant

Commissioned by Buffalo Bayou Partnership, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer has conceived a new installation to be sited within the cavernous underground Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern—an 87,500 square foot decommissioned drinking water reservoir in Houston. Lozano-Hemmer’s Undercurrents will comprise an immersive echo chamber of voices, light, and memories, leading to an audiovisual representation of communication across time, space, and relationships. The work will consist of a mile-long, nerve-like network of bright-white LED light cables stretched across the Cistern’s 221 columns and suspended just over the mirrored surface of water covering the floor. The resulting matrix of zigzagging lines of light creates a seemingly endless “switchboard” of connection across the entire width and length of the Cistern, an effect which is doubled by the reflectivity of the pool of water at the bottom of this monumental, former industrial space. Connected to the network of lights are intercoms, each consisting of a microphone, speaker, and push button, placed at regular intervals along the quarter mile perimeter of the space. Beckoning visitors to press a button and speak, the intercoms convert original messages into modulations of light brightness, which are visually transmitted along a path which may randomly fork at any given Cistern column (a “node”), bouncing around the vastness and traveling steadily until it finally reaches another intercom. As the message arrives, it plays back on a second speaker, only the message is slightly mixed with echoes of voices from the past and from a curated archive.

The spirit of the artwork is that the switchboard of communication is slow, unpredictable, and contains traces of collective memory. Ultimately, Undercurrents gives audiovisual forum to visitors’ thoughts and messages, playing back in tandem with salient and relevant poetry by invited writers. As visitors traverse the artwork, they may add to or simply listen to this content, experiencing the piece like a mesmerizing reservoir that makes tangible our fleeting vocalizations of existing here, now, and in relation to others.

For more information, visit: https://buffalobayou.org/location/the-cistern/