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 currently 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 teach in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Azadeh Emadi and founded the Substantial Motion Research Network.
Interests
media art, media archaeology, intellectual genealogies, intercultural, algorithmic media, Islamic aesthetics, Deleuzian philosophy, Islamic philosophy, process philosophy, Hermetic tradition, taqiyya
Highlights
Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art (MIT Press, 2010).
Publications and Exhibitions
My most recent books are 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:
“Talisman-images: from the cosmos to your body,” talk at Columbia University (October 2018), Princeton University (November 2018), University of Buffalo (February
2019), University of Arizona (March 28, 2019), and California College of the Arts (April 2019). Based on an SMRN presentation and great feedback from SMRN members.
“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
“From haptic to optical, performance to figuration: A history of representation at the bottom of a bowl,” in Islam and the Politics of Culture in Europe: Memory, Aesthetics, Art, ed. Frank Peter, Sarah Dornhof, and Elena Arigita (Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag, 2013), 247-263.
“Imaginal Materials,” catalogue essay, Spectral Imprints, ed. Nat Muller, Abraaj Capital Art Prize, 2012
“A Deleuzian Ijtihad: Unfolding Deleuze’s Islamic sources occulted in the ethnic cleansing of Spain,” in Deleuze and Race, ed. Arun Saldhana (Edinburgh University Press,
2012).
“Aniconism: An Islamic Idea Blooms Anew in Contemporary Art, in Now Is the Time: Art and Theory in the 21st Century, ed. Jelle Bouwhis et al. (Amsterdam: NAi Publishers, 2009), 151-162.
“‘Taking a Line for a Walk’ from the Abbasid Caliphate to Vector Graphics,” Third Text 23:3 (May 2009): 229-240.
“Infinity and Accident: Strategies of Enfoldment in Islamic Art and Computer Art,” Leonardo 39:1 (Winter 2006): 37-42.