Event overview
Luminous images, hidden in the senses: cultivating cosmic perception
This talk draws together body, spirit, and cosmos in a way that might appear obsolete, drawing on medieval Arabic and European thought, but proves beautiful and practical for our times. I begin by outlining my method of affective analysis, which proceeds from affect through embodied perception to concept. To this I add a first, and most difficult, step of connecting to the cosmos itself, through bodily perception. This relies on a cosmology in which entities connect and communicate through a kind of tactile causality, in a synthesis that draws on thinkers such as Peirce and Al-Kindī. Then, modernizing medieval theories of natural magic and the process philosophies of Mulla Sadra Shirāzī—who wrote, “What are perceived by the five senses are luminous hidden images existing in another world,” I sketch how we humans’ sensory experiences can be a portal to the cosmos.
Laura notes that if people want to prepare they can read
Laura U. Marks, “Affective Analysis,” in Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods, ed. Celia Lury, Rachel Fersham, et al. (New York: Routledge), 152-157.
"I work on media art and philosophy with an intercultural focus. My most recent books are Hanaan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image (MIT, 2015, 2017 recipient of College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism, and Choice magazine’s "Outstanding Academic Title") and Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art (MIT, 2010). I program experimental media for venues around the world. As Grant Strate University Professor, I teach in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, on unceded Coast Salish territory."
Laura is also known as the author of two influential books on cinema and the senses: The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses and Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media and for her work with indigenous filmmakers and artists, including her collaborations with the Substantial Motion Research Network: for scholars and practitioners interested in cross-cultural exploration of media art and philosophy
http://www.sfu.ca/~lmarks
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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31 Oct 2019 |
6:00pm - 7:30pm MRB Screen 1 |
Accessibility
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