At the NEXT IN Summit 2025, the Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer offered a radical reimagining of artistic participation, drawing on key works from across his career. You can watch the full keynote here.

During his address at the second edition of the NEXT IN Summit, organised by ACCIONA Cultura, the Mexican-Canadian electronic and visual artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer spoke to a packed auditorium about a different way of understanding participation in art. For him, it is less about a comfortable or spectacular experience and more a space of friction, responsibility, and shared consciousness. “When the public participates,” he noted, “something changes forever.”

Through a selection of his projects, the artist demonstrated how what begins as a simple interaction can trigger an unsettling reflection on pollution, vulnerability, and collective care. Lozano-Hemmer advocated for a critical approach, creating open, unfinished works that only fully exist when the public engages with them. “There is nothing to see if people don’t show up,” he remarked.

You can watch an excerpt of the session here.