Being paced is a feeling deeply connected to the airport experience. One moves at different speeds, ranging from hurried, to strolling, to static. Pacing compartmentalizes the airport into different time zones, sections, areas of consumption, relaxation, waiting, boredom. This dossier engages with the airport as a complex configuration of moving images, bodies as well as objects–neck pillows, screen fields, military patches, meditation rooms, maps, and other forms of guidance. It considers pacing as a method for doing film and media studies in situ.
Consider the many airport terminals that are under construction right now all across the globe. Imagine for a moment that they are not pieces of infrastructure with a yet-to-come opening date but monuments of the future past, their lounges already … Continue reading “Pacing the Airport”
Its grip is firm, yet soft. It confines you, but with the best of intentions. Like a weirdly sexual caterpillar or a slug that has come to rest on your shoulders, it covers the back of your head and your … Continue reading “Welcome Confinement: Notes on the Neck Pillow”
The flight status “delayed” marks the fragility of the perpetual, intricately planned flow of traffic at the airport. It also works as a regulator, slowing down the complex, chaotic dynamics of ongoing processes and simultaneously countering our rushed states of … Continue reading “Customized Aviation Software Solutions”
Imagine you are just a few hours away from your holiday. As usual, you have planned everything long in advance. The destination has been on your “Must-See-Places-in-the-World” list for a long time; you selected the flight carefully, and you informed … Continue reading “The Lost World”
“Weaving exemplifies the underlaying strata of the interplay between arts and media: it is defined by a particular and indissoluble union of art and technology.” –Birgit Schneider in Programmed Images: Systems of Notation in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Weaving Weaving and … Continue reading “(Un)Weaving: Worlds of/in Textile and Thread”
In this flighty article, I will look closely at the logo of the German company Lufthansa, taking the 2018 re-branding of the airline as a departure point to investigate the inherent temporalities that lay in the crane’s design. I. “The … Continue reading “From Crane to Plane: Temporalities of a Bird-Inspired Design”
To what gods is one supposed to pray in this place, conveniently located at FRAport’s Terminal 1, Gate Z, where something so obviously glitzy as an undulating, wavy ceiling with a polished-gold finish can pass for “weltanschaulich neutral”? When one … Continue reading “Groves of Post-Criticality: Quiet Rooms at the International Airport”
This animated map made by Max Galka shows passenger air traffic over a year. Every small dot stands for around two thousand people. We are all probably familiar with these visualizations showing the marvel of global mobility at scale. I … Continue reading “Airport as a Bordering Process”
The title of this piece refers to dreaming, an experience one can have awake and asleep alike. Dreaming takes you somewhere else, on a somewhat miraculous journey–pretty much like floating in mid-air. Boarding an airplane is still an exceptional situation … Continue reading “Dream with Me about Unwinding”
