Die Sonneninsel (The Sun Island): European Growth, Ideals, Aspirations, and Intricacies

Floris Paalman takes a considered look at Thomas Elsaesser's documentary Die Sonneninsel (The Sun Island). The construction of the European Central Bank on the site of Frankfurt's former wholesale market – a building designed by Elsaesser's grandfather, Martin – offers an opportunity to probe architectural and family history, in what Paalman terms "auto-media archaeology."

The Extended City Symphony

Welcome to the first installment of “From the Archive,” a new recurring section highlighting archival-based scholarship and practice in urban media studies. To start things off, Floris Paalman discusses how the ideas of “database cinema”  informed the curation of the Extended City Symphony Program at EYE Filmmuseum’s ResarchLab.