I work on media art and philosophy with an intercultural focus, and on small-footprint media. I program experimental media for venues around the world. I'm a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. 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 of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō, Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) nations. I am proud to be active on SFU Faculty for Palestine and SFU Council on Islamophobia.
I got a Guggenheim fellowship for Small Files for a Small World, a book on carbon footprint of streaming media. I'm using it to sponsor international small-file workshops in 12 cities, including Dhaka, Mexico City, Cairo, Kigali, Tehran, and Guwahati. See updates at smallfile.ca
My book The Fold: From Your Body to the Cosmos is out from Duke University Press! See some of The Fold's early iterations here
Other recent and forthcoming publications
"Talismanic Media," forthcoming in "Evil Eye Media Theory," edited by Farshid Kazemi, Radek Przedpełski, and me for Techniques
“Witches and the Origins of Capitalism” and “Letters from Home,” in Mike Hoolboom: Work, ed. Clint Enns (Ottawa: Canadian Film Institute, 2025). 10-11, 176-179.
“Small Files and the Environment: A Riyadh Case Study,” in Film Criticism Conference, ed. Carmen Victor (Riyadh: Saudi Film Commission, 2024). 77-82.
“Streaming video, a link between pandemic and climate crisis,” Pause. Fervour. Reflections on a Pandemic, ed. Manca Bajec, Tom Holert, and Marquard Smith (Journal of Visual Culture and Harun Farocki Institut, 2024). 44-46.
“Can cinema slow the flow of blood?”, Routledge Handbook of Arab Cinema, ed. Noha Mellor (London and New York: Routledge, 2024). 252-264.
“Collapse Informatics and the Environmental Impact of Information and Communication Technologies,” Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies. On Selected Writings page
“...Scaling Down: On the Unsustainable Pleasures of Large-File Streaming,” in What Film Is Good For, ed. Julian Hanich and Martin Rossouw. University of California Press, 2204.
(Older writings on Selected writings page)
Talks
“Mitigating the environmental impact of machine learning: Talismanic Tiny Media.” Keynote talk at Eco Media Footprints workshop, Jönköping University, Sweden. Organized by Annette Hill. By videoconference. January 15, 2025.
“Mitigating the environmental impact of machine learning,” talk in the series AMS Special Session on Mathematics, AI, and the Social Context of Our Work, organized by Yaim Cooper. 2025 Joint Mathematics Meeting, Seattle. Online. January 9, 2025.
“Spice Media,” talk in panel I organized, “A phytogeography of magic: migrations of Islamicate talismanic plants,” Middle East Studies Association. Online. November 14, 2024.
The Small File Media Festival
Five years in, we're smaller than ever!
The Substantial Motion Research Network
Inspired by process philosopher Sadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, Azadeh Emadi and I founded SMRN in 2018 for scholars and practitioners interested in cross-cultural exploration of digital media, art and philosophy. We meet bimonthly to share work in progress. See documentation of our massive June 2022 event A Light Footprint in the Cosmos here
"Evil Eye Media Theory," featuring articles by SMRN members, is forthcoming in Techniques
Tackling the Carbon Footprint of Streaming Media
Dr. Anne Foerster: The Restorative Brain
My neuroscientist mother's research on spontaneous regeneration in the central nervous system!
lmarks [ ] sfu [ ] ca
