A Hard Rain: music and science united against nuclear risks

Earlier this summer, the legendary American string quartet Kronos Quartet performed Hard Rain, a concert confronting the existential risks of nuclear weapons. It was part of the first Nobel Laureate Assembly for the Prevention of Nuclear War at the University of Chicago, marking 80 years since the first ever atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Among the Assembly’s experts, and signing its declaration, was Centre researcher Victor Galaz, who is also working on a popular science book about the legacy of nuclear testing and its connection to climate risks.

The performance with Kronos Quartet contained readings, music, and reflections on humanity’s fragile future, using the power of both science and art to warn of the dangers of a new era of nuclear proliferation.

Centre researcher Per Olsson co-produced the concert alongside long-time collaborator and former colleague Owen Gaffney. For Olsson, the initiative reflects the Centre’s deep commitment to working across sectors and creating new cultural spaces where scientific knowledge meets emotional experiences.

“Facts alone are not enough,” Olsson explains. “We need music, storytelling, and art to help us feel the weight of these existential risks, to touch our common humanity.”

Firsthand testimony of Hiroshima

The programme included the moving firsthand testimony of Hiroshima survivor Kiyoshi Tanimoto, read by Nagasaki University professor Tatsujiro Suzuki, interwoven with music by Laurie Anderson and performed by Kronos.

The concert closed with a powerful reimagining of Bob Dylan’s legendary anthem A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall performed by Kronos and Allison Russell. This live rendition was based on an earlier recording that brought together more than 50 international artists. Among them were Ringo Starr, Willie Nelson, Laurie Anderson, Sara Parkman – and punk icon Iggy Pop – all lending their voices to a collective act of remembrance and resistance.

This collaboration was the third in a series of concerts Olsson and Gaffney have developed with the Kronos Quartet, following earlier performances in Stockholm – including one held in the decommissioned experimental nuclear reactor at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology. Each event has been designed as what Olsson and Gaffney call “Strange Attractors”: creative encounters where science and art combine to illuminate the climate and nature crises, as well as other urgent challenges of our time.

New pathways to engage

The timing of Hard Rain is sobering. With the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombs, heightened geopolitical tensions, new technologies reshaping warfare, and nuclear proliferation once again on the rise, the concert and its accompanying EP serve as urgent reminders of what is at stake.

“Resilience thinking is not just about the science and natural ecosystems,” Olsson reflects. “It’s about the stories and cultural resources we can draw on to face uncertainty and risk. By working with artists, we create new pathways to engage people, to feel, to care – and ultimately, to act.”

Through projects like Hard Rain, the Stockholm Resilience Centre continues its long-time work to bridge disciplines, challenge conventional boundaries, and explore how art and science together can help us confront existential threats, ranging from the climate crisis and biodiversity loss to AI and nuclear risk.

As part of their ongoing work at the intersection of art and science, Olsson and Gaffney have also launched a record label, Strange Attractors. The release of A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall was the first of many from a record label that will be driven by a Manifesto “For the Love of the Biosphere”. Over the next five years, the label aims to commission and release 50 songs, with the biosphere itself credited as co-owner of the intellectual property. Each commission will emerge from a new and unpredictable collaboration: a strange attractor.