In the first days after arriving to Omaha, Nebraska on the occasion of a three month residency at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, I found myself exploring greater Omaha. Within a short car ride, the landscape varied from urban to rural to suburban. While on these isolated trips in my car, I noticed an object of infrastructure that interrupted the horizon. The T-128 Rotational Siren. I am a native Californian and for the coming months would be living in the tornado corridor of the United States for my first time. I was quick to observe multiple tornado sirens that were situated in proximity to a diverse range of communities. Research led me to the Douglas County Emergency Management Agency, where a list of addresses for every tornado siren is available.

Outdoor Warning Siren System, 2022

After a few days of corresponding with the director, I learned about the installation of these sirens, communication devices, and how they are controlled. This work is the product of balancing my studio practice with fieldwork and the results are a series of missions to locate the sirens and photograph them as a sort of typology. In addition to the photographs, I produced video work and field recordings of the siren tests conducted on the first Wednesday of each month I spent in Omaha in 2022. These sirens are especially reverberant in their aural quality during testing. However, some local residents I had spoke to while making the photographs shared that they had never visually taken note of the sirens in their neighborhoods.