MANNERS OF UNFOLDING IN THE CIINEMA
27 Jan 2011 - 16:00 / 27 Jan 2011 - 18:00
Room 222, Innis College
2 Sussex Ave
Toronto
A talk by Laura U. Marks, Simon Fraser University, presented by the Cinema Studies Institute, the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, and the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto.
This talk draws from Deleuze, Leibniz, and classical Islamic thought to elucidate different manners of cinematic unfolding. We can think of aesthetic mediation not as a barrier but as an enfolded, connective tissue between the beholder and the beheld. This tissue folds and unfolds in various ways occurring to how one understands the relationships between image, information, and world or infinite. For example, the cinematic image may unfold from the world with little intervention: this would be Bazinian realism, and it could also be described by Islamic Neoplatonism. Or the image may resist unfolding, according to Isma‘ili terms of latency and manifestation; or the image may appear as a disconnected confetti that, while Baudrillard might have something to say about it, is also described in terms of 10th century Islamic atomism.
Dr. Laura U. Marks is the Dena Wosk University Professor of Art and Culture Studies at Simon Fraser University. A scholar, theorist, and curator of independent and experimental media arts, she is the author of The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Duke University Press, 2000),Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (Minnesota University Press, 2002), and many essays. Several years of research in Islamic art history and philosophy gave rise to Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art (MIT Press, 2010). She has curated programs of experimental media for venues around the world. Her current research interests are the media arts of the Arab and Muslim world, intercultural perspectives on new media art, and philosophical approaches to materiality and information culture. [www.sfu.ca/~lmarks]
