Modes of Climate Engagement: Three Recent Case Studies of Climate Change-related Exhibitions

Abstract

The challenges of how to connect people to the seemingly abstract concept of climate change has been explored by countless researchers who aim to help people understand the impact of emissions on rising temperatures. Climate change-themed exhibitions offer new pathways for connection with difficult-to-grasp climatological concepts; these methods are similar to the ways in which Lauren Berlant claims art activism “interferes with the feedback loop whose continuity is at the core of whatever normativity has found traction.”1 This review of three such exhibitions—one in-person, one online, and one hybrid—explores how new forms of meaning-making can emerge out of these public proposals for what is, essentially, a greater engagement with the terms of climate change in the here and now. These exhibitions share questions of social responsibility by involving forms of new media and piquing the curiosity of visitors, offering rich case studies with which to examine how mediation operates on multiple levels, and potentially broadening public engagement with climate change.