Islamic genealogies of Western art and thought
I seek and invent roots in Islamic art and philosophy for contemporary media art and thought. Concepts including the imaginal realm, Islamic Neoplatonism, and process philosophy. Recently I am looking at Mulla Sadrâ Shirazî and Shi'i philosophy for sources and parallels to the thought of Spinoza, Leibniz, Whitehead, and Deleuze, and following the travels of Isma'ili Shi'i thought into Europe in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This search stumbled me upon the transmission of books of magic from the Islamicate world to Europe, especially talismanic magic and, recently, plant magic. I continue to be fascinated with the way styles and motifs travel and transform, especially in ceramics and textiles as they move from Muslim countries to Europe and the Americas.
Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.
“Process Thinking for Islamic Art and Media Art: Performative Abstraction and Collective Transformation,” in Made for the Eye of One Who Sees: Canadian Contributions to the Study of Islamic Art and Archaeology, ed. Marcus Milwright and Evanthia Baboula. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 2022. 376-390. On Selected Writings page
“Talisman-images: from the cosmos to your body.” In Deleuze, Guattari and the Art of Multiplicity, edited by Radek Przedpełski and S. E. Wilmer. Edinburgh University Press, 2020. On Selected Writings page
"Lively Up Your Ontology: Bringing Deleuze into Sadrā’s Modulated Universe," Qui Parle? 27:2 (December 2018): 321-354. On Selected Writings page
“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. On Selected Writings page
“Real Images Flow: Mulla Sadra Meets Film-Philosophy,” Film-Philosophy, 20 (2015), “A World of Cinemas” special issue, ed. David Martin-Jones. 24-46. On Selected Writings page
"Life in the Manifold: Mulla Sadra, Deleuze, Whitehead," [translated into Portuguese], Conexões, University of Campinas, Sao Paulo
"The taming of the haptic space, from Málaga to Valencia to Florence," Muqarnas, 32, special issue, “Gazing Otherwise,” ed. Olga Bush and Avinoam Shalem. 253-278. On Selected Writings page
"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. On Selected Writings page
“Imaginal Materials,” catalogue essay, Spectral Imprints, ed. Nat Muller, Abraaj Capital Art Prize, 2012 On Selected Writings page
“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). On Selected Writings page
"Words dream of being flowers, ducks dream of being words: the becoming-world of foliated Kufic,” in Variantology 4, ed. Siegfried Zielinski and Eckhard Fürlus (Köln: Walther König), 267-288.
"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 Pusblishers), 151-162.
“‘Taking a Line for a Walk’ from Islamic Art to Algorithmic Modernism,” Third Text 23:3 (May 2009): 229-240.
“Genetic algorithms, Kunstwollen, and Caucasian carpets,” in Place Studies in Art, Media, Science and Technology: Historical Investigations on the Sites and the Migration of Knowledge, ed. Andreas Broeckmann and Gunalan Nadarajan (VDG Weimar, 2008). On Selected Writings page
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