In photographs, videos, and installations, Kaya & Blank reveal the infrastructures that keep industrial societies running while simultaneously destroying them.

Oil pumps, pipelines, and refineries produce fossil fuels; ports, container ships, and motorways enable the transport of goods; endless monocultures yield energy crops; data centres and radio masts make digital communication possible: modern societies are driven by systems that run non-stop. They span, shape, and consume the world and its limited resources.

The night-time images by Işık Kaya and Thomas Georg Blank focus on these architectures of neoliberal industry. Their works bring to light the exploitation of raw materials by way of an intensive examination that employs early photographic techniques while also creating their own processes to expose their motifs on bitumen, sea salts, and living algae cultures.

In this way, they develop a visual language that rethinks the material foundations of the capitalist world and calls into question the futures built upon them.

In cooperation with Darmstädter Sezession, a second part of the exhibition will open in April at Künstlerhaus Ziegelhütte in Darmstadt.

SAHA –provided support for Kaya & Blank - Infrascapes