Synthetic Nights: Machine and Human Learning in 24-Hour Cities

Reia, Jess

Dossiers, no. 2, vol. 11September 7, 2026<September 9, 2026

Synthetic Nights: Machine and Human Learning in 24-Hour Cities

Jess Reia

If the night is barely seen, can it be understood by algorithms? Jess Reia argues that the opacities and refusals of nocturnal life expose the limits of machine learning, and makes the case for expanding what counts as data after dark.

Dossiers, no. 2, vol. 10July 8, 2025<July 8, 2025

Celluloid Nights: Film-Technological Modernity and Weimar Republic Berlin

Simon Schiller

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.

Dossiers, no. 2, vol. 10July 8, 2025<December 7, 2025

Building Shadows: Rethinking Darkness in the Urban Night

Chantal Meng

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.

Dossiers, no. 2, vol. 9June 27, 2024<June 27, 2024

Nightlife as Queer Political Method

Tamar Shirinian

Tamar Shirinian engages with “nightlife” as a temporal and affective phenomenon, emphasizing the particular political possibility that exists at night. Night requires a different kind of method, one attuned to the undercommons and its thinking on the move, and attentive to emotion, invisibility, and uncertainty.

Dossiers, no. 2, vol. 9June 27, 2024<June 27, 2024

Emplaced Bars and Episodic Events: Reflections on Nightlife Forms

Amin Ghaziani

Amin Ghaziani argues that the closure of gay bars disrupted the field of nightlife and encouraged the visibility of other forms of fellowship called “club nights.” Ghaziani calls for conceptual plurality in how we think about nightlife forms and proposes a strategy for studying episodic and event-based scenes.

Dossiers, no. 2, vol. 9June 27, 2024<June 27, 2024

New Directions in Queer Nightlife: Infrastructures, Undercommons and Submerged Narratives

Johan Andersson and Jamie Hakim

In their introduction to the dossier, Johan Andersson and Jamie Hakim highlight the methodological challenges raised by new research in queer nightlife.

Dossiers, no. 3, vol. 5August 24, 2020<August 27, 2020

COVID Nights

Will Straw

Will Straw analyzes nocturnal videos that reveal the scale of night-time cultures happening during the COVID-19 lockdown and the role of the pandemic in highlighting ongoing policy debates about urban lighting, urban noise, and spectacle.