Patricia Pia Bornus & Bianka-Isabell Scharman, Lightscapes, Nightscapes – An Introduction
Patricia Pia Bornus and Bianka-Isabelle Scharmann introduce the dossier on Lightscapes and Nightscapes with some reflections on cities, light, and night.
Sofia Panza & Carlo Ugolotti, In the Glow of the City: Lighting Urban Space as an expressive tool in the cinema of Bernardo Bertolucci
Sofia Panza and Carlo Ugolotti examine the expressive and psychological uses of light in the city films of Bernardo Bertolucci.
Eva Wiegert, Lights at Night: Contemporary Artistic Photographs from Lagos, Nigeria
Eva Wiegert draws on contemporary photographic series by African artists to examine how artists harness the city’s nocturnal light to reimagine urban space. These photographs not only capture the energy of nocturnal Lagos but also challenge stereotypes and invite viewers to see its people and places from new perspectives.
Elif Kaymaz, Nocturnal Architectures of Allure: On Celebration and Illumination in Early Twentieth Century Turkey
What happens when the night becomes a stage for nationalism? Tracing the nocturnalization of national day celebrations, Elif Kaymaz argues that choreographed lightscapes reshaped urban space to cultivate emotions of unity, pride, and festive allure, offering citizens of early Republican Turkey not just a spectacle to watch but a space to inhabit.
Clara Podlesnigg, The George Floyd Hologram: Between Memorial, Media, and Market
Drawing on the George Floyd Hologram Memorial Project, Clara Podlesnigg examines how luminous projections transformed sites of white supremacy into spaces of counter-narrative and spectacle. While the hologram elevated Floyd’s image into a racial icon, it also exposed the problematic convergence of commemoration, commodification, and the erasure of Black life in public space.
Chantal Meng, Building Shadows: Rethinking Darkness in the Urban Night
Reflecting on her photographic work, Chantal Meng shows how the experience of artificial light reshapes our very concept of darkness, thereby necessitating a reconsideration of shadows.
Simon Schiller, Celluloid Nights: Film-Technological Modernity and Weimar Republic Berlin
Simon Schiller examines the techniques used to capture night on film in Weimar-era Berlin and discusses the intersections of cinema, electricity, and light in urban modernity.
Laura Laabs, Like Moths to a Flame
Laura Laabs follows the smooth path of a drone, the central vehicle in a tech demo for raytracing technologies. Using the moth as a figure for our relationship to light, Laabs asks what is at stake in such mediations of reflection and shine.