In 1992, a strange pine tree appeared in Denver, Colorado. Its goal: to remain as invisible as possible. A product of Larson Co, a company specialising in set design for theme parks, this plant was designed to hide something in plain sight. Unbeknownst to many, an antenna was concealed amongst its synthetic branches.
Its pine leaves were layers of camouflage. They would never grow, improve the air or temper the climate. Denver’s tree was the first example of a “mono-pine” – a play on the term “monopole”, used to describe undisguised telecommunications towers. Mobile devices were on the rise in the late 1980s. The industry saw a boom in its need for infrastructure – leading to the subsequent erection of cell towers around the world. In 2014 alone, it’s estimated that there were four million telecoms masts installed across the globe.
Işık Kaya (b. 1990) and Thomas Georg Blank (b. 1990) are lens-based artists interested in how humans “shape and inhabit” the world. Their project Second Nature documents mobile phone trees within the southern California landscape. Working almost exclusively at night, Kaya & Blank accentuates the artificial and uncanny qualities of each structure. The results are almost hyperreal: fake trees glowing in the dark.
“One can understand the mobile phone trees as camouflaged technology or as optimised nature, as a tree that can do more than ‘just’ look like a tree,” says author Ziad Mahayni in Transcending Nature, an essay written for the duo’s photobook, published by Kehrer Verlag. “They are part of a development that, since the late 20th century, has created many hybrid artefacts, from genetically optimised plants to cloned animals and artificial organs from 3D bioprinting.” Now, Kaya & Blank is presenting the project as part of PHOTO 2024, Australia’s International Festival of Photography. The event, which encompasses over 100 exhibitions – both in galleries and outdoors – is set to transform Melbourne and other locations across Victoria. This year’s title, and theme, is The Future Is Shaped by Those Who Can See It.
A: What’s your story? When did you become interested in photography? When did you meet, and why collaborate?
IK & TGB: We are visual artists working primarily with lensbased media. We currently live in Los Angeles, but Işık is from Turkey and Thomas is from Germany. We met at the University of California, San Diego, in 2018. During our time there, we started helping each other out with projects and, in the process, got more and more involved with each other’s practice. Eventually, we decided to work as a duo. Photography is part of our profession; it’s like our “home base” medium. We both have a formal training and have worked professionally with images and video in the past. Over the years, our approach began to expand further. We started to implement traces of other creative practices, collect and make objects, and experiment with new, alternative photographic processes.
A: Where did the idea for Second Nature come from? Do you remember the first time you noticed an artificial tree? Did you think this was an idea that could go somewhere?
IK & TGB: We saw a cell tower tree for the first time in 2019 on our way to Palm Springs, and neither of us had seen anything like it before moving to California. After this first encounter, Işık had the urge to start taking photos to observe them in more detail. We soon discovered cell tower locations were publicly accessible online, however, the challenge lay in identifying which ones were disguised as trees amongst the multitude of markers on the map. During the 2020 lockdown, Thomas diligently combed through each location in Google Street View. Weeks of effort yielded over 1,000 potential cell tower tree sites in Southern California. By 2022, we had visited almost every location from the Mexican border to Bakersfield. The sheer amount of these places was what made us realise this was really an idea worth pursuing.
A: Tell us about the historical and cultural significance of this breed of camouflage? Where did it first come from?
IK & TGB: Since the 1980s, a surge in mobile devices has fuelled a telecommunications infrastructure boom. The planet has become covered with cell towers. A key moment occurred in 1992 when a city in Colorado, concerned about the appearance of a proposed cellular tower in a scenic location, rejected a carrier’s request for a permit. The carrier hired a company, previously associated with Disney Theme Parks, which transformed the cell tower into an artificial pine tree. This marked the inception of a global phenomenon, raising fundamental questions about relationships between human beings and nature. Writer Amy Clarke encapsulates this as “a societal preference for ‘fake’ aesthetics over ‘ugly’ reality.”
A: The images are hyperreal, absurd, and slightly alarming, all at once. Is there a particular atmosphere, or idea, you hope that audiences will take away from the series?
IK & TGB: We don’t have a specific feeling or message to communicate, but we aspire to prompt contemplation. Recent history marked a shift in the human story: over 50% of us now live in cities. We occupy highly designed spaces which often prioritise efficiency over human needs. Our relationships with these environments are complex; we embrace the convenience of personal cars and high-speed motorways yet grapple with environmental consequences. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know that our reliance on ubiquitous connectivity through cell towers is accompanied by privacy concerns. The question is: what do we do about that? These are the kind of thoughts we would most like to provoke.
A: Which people, places or artworks inspire you most?
IK & TGB: Laura Poitras, Michael Wolf, Pipilotti Rist, Richard Misrach, Todd Hido, Trevor Paglen and Uta Barth are just a few of the artists who have had a big influence on us over the years. One specific artwork that left a lasting impression on both of us is the video Crossroads, directed by Bruce Conner in 1976. The moving-image piece showcases 37 minutes of highly slowed-down archival footage from an underwater nuclear test in the Bikini Atoll, with music from Patrick Gleeson and Terry Riley. The video possesses exactly the ambiguous quality that we aim for in our work: something that is at once uncanny, dark, terrifying, yet compelling and beautiful.
A: You seem to have a signature visual style – photographing brightly-lit built structures, devoid of human presence, under cover of night. Why choose this look?
IK & TGB: Night can bring a strange quality to an everyday scene. After dark, the camera can push the limits of our vision, either by using a long exposure or extremely high ISO values. Small traces of light can be technically enhanced to create images that seem artificial and otherworldly. These qualities match our experience of life – especially in the American West with its 24/7 capitalism. We live in a world that is obsessed with productivity and efficiency and, from a neoliberal point of view, the night as a time of rest and recovery is just a missed opportunity to produce and consume more. All these things come together to inform our aesthetic.
A: It’s a theme you often come back to. How does Second Nature compare to your other bodies of work, like Crude Aesthetics or Monuments? Are they similar or different?
IK & TGB: All our recent projects have focused on southern California’s infrastructure. We look at how it is a local manifestation of global conditions – the culmination of American cultural history and its neoliberal politics. Second Nature is a part of this exploration. Both Crude Aesthetics and Monuments address infrastructures for the production and consumption of oil and the ever-present car dependency. Whilst Second Nature is a more straightforward photographic series, our other bodies of work experiment with video projections as installations and trial alternative lens-based processes.
A: Walk us through your day-to-day. What’s it like to work as a duo? How do you manage the collaboration?
IK & TGB: Işık mostly operates the camera and processes images, whilst Thomas is more involved in research and developing the concepts. However, both of us are present in every stage of the process and we make each decision together. From the first time we worked together, this has felt very natural. We share a clear vision of what we want and can push each other to achieve the best results. On a practical level, it is more secure to be together at night in the kind of places we usually work. Sometimes we will wait in a location for hours in order to capture a certain moment, so giving each other company is much more fun than being alone.
A: Second Nature is part of PHOTO 2024: The Future Is Shaped by Those Who Can See It. What are you looking forward to from this year’s array of events and shows?
IK & TGB: The festival’s programme is so rich. We are very excited about the many outdoor exhibitions and having the opportunity to share our work alongside so many talented artists. Using public space for the presentation of contemporary photography allows a much larger and more diverse audience to experience the works of artists like Mous Lamrabat, Nan Goldin, Noémie Goudal, Omar Victor Diop and more. It is also a great way to imagine urban areas as a shared cultural space, without the constant visual clutter of advertising.
A: What’s next for you both? Are you in the process of producing any new projects, exhibitions or publications?
IK & TGB: We’ve just finished work on a new video about intermodal freight transport that is now on display as part of a group exhibition at Fondazione MAST in Bologna. Since the piece is part of a collection by different artists, the video is shown as a wall projection, but for future iterations we are planning on launching a much larger installation that will include salt prints made with water from ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, where we filmed the video. Getting the hang of these alternative photographic processes takes time, so we’re pretty sure that this project will keep us busy for a while.
PHOTO 2024 | Melbourne & Victoria | 1-24 March
Words: Eleanor Sutherland
Image credits:
1. & 4. Kaya & Blank, Second Nature (SN.76), courtesy of the artists.
2. Kaya & Blank, Second Nature (SN.89), courtesy of the artists.
3. Kaya & Blank, Second Nature (SN.17), courtesy of the artists.
5. Kaya & Blank, Second Nature (SN.43), courtesy of the artists.
6. Kaya & Blank, Second Nature (SN.87), courtesy of the artists.
