Soul-Assemblage Media
with Professor Laura U. Marks
Simon Fraser University, Vancouver
Moderated by Professor Minoo Moallem, Director of Media Studies
Presented by The Department of Media Studies and co-sponsored by BCNM.
Register for the Zoom link here!
This talk will introduce my concept of the soul-assemblage, a gathering of beings organic and inorganic, material and immaterial, that enter into coalitions healthy and unhealthy. Soul-assemblages exist at hyper-local, planetary, and cosmic scales. I’ll explain the soul-assemblage’s roots in the thought of Leibniz, Deleuze, Glissant, and Sadra and show how it is useful aesthetics, personal improvement, and activism. Media too are soul-assemblages, gathering together infrastructures, movies, and audiences, and I will describe the particularly intensive and salubrious soul-assembled gathered around a small-file movie of no more than 5 megabytes, of the sort we screen at the Small File Media Festival.
About Laura U. Marks
Laura U. Marks works on media art and philosophy with an intercultural focus and an emphasis on appropriate technologies. She is the author of four books, most recently Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image, and co-founder of the Substantial Motion Research Network. She led the research group Tackling the Carbon Footprint Streaming Media and founded the Small File Media Festival. She programs experimental media art for venues around the world. Marks teaches in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.