Laura U. Marks
I work on media art and philosophy with an intercultural focus. I program experimental media art for venues around the world. I am working on enfolding-unfolding aesthetics, a research method informed by theories of the fold in Deleuze and in Shi’a philosophy, and on the influences of hermetic practices from the Muslim world on European arts and philosophies of the secret. I also founded the Small File Media Festival. I teach in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Azadeh Emadi and I founded the Substantial Motion Research Network in 2018.
Interests
media art, carbon footprint of streaming media, media archaeology, intellectual genealogies, intercultural, algorithmic media, Islamic aesthetics, Deleuzian philosophy, Islamic philosophy, process philosophy, Hermetic tradition, taqiyya
Publications and Exhibitions
My new book The Fold: From Your Body to the Cosmos, is coming out from Duke University Press in April and has benefited so much from SMRN conversations. Before that, Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image (MIT Press, 2015) and Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art (MIT Press, 2010). Some other writings relating to SMRN’s interests are:
Co-editor, with Farshid Kazemi and Radek Przedpełski, “Evil Eye Media Theory,” special journal issue by members of Substantial Motion Research Network. Forthcoming, Techniques, https://techniquesjournal.com/
“Process Thinking for Islamic Art and Media Art: Performative Abstraction and Collective Transformation,” in Made for the Eye of One Who Sees: Canadian Contributions to the Study of Islamic Art and Archaeology, ed. Marcus Milwright and Evanthia Baboula. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum. 376-390. Awarded prize for best edited collection by the University Art Association of Canada, 2023.
“Talisman-images: from the cosmos to your body.” In Deleuze, Guattari and the Arts of Multiplicity, ed. Radek Przedpełski and S. E. Wilmer (Edinburgh University Press, 2020)
“Lively Up Your Ontology: Bringing Deleuze into Sadrā’s Modulated Universe,” Qui Parle? 27:2 (December 2018): 321-354.
“We will exchange your likeness and recreate you in what you will not know”: Cinema and process philosophy,” in Film Theory Handbook, ed. Hunter Vaughn and Tom Conley (Anthem Press, 2018)
“Real Images Flow: Mulla Sadra Meets Film-Philosophy,” Film-Philosophy, 20 (2015), “A World of Cinemas” special issue, ed. David Martin-Jones. 24-46.