DIM Cinema | Sept 20 | From Aniconism to Bliss: Media art shows its Islamic roots

DIM Cinema Presents
From Aniconism to Bliss: Media art shows its Islamic roots
Curated by Laura U. Marks
Monday September 20 2010 7:30pm
Pacific Cinematheque 1131 Howe St. Vancouver
10.50$/Students 9.00$ + 3$membership
www.dimcinema.ca  www.cinematheque.bc.ca

Particle bursts, mystical abstraction, and an intelligent suspicion of figurative images—qualities of some of the most thrilling media art works have deep origins in the great arts of Islam. Film, video, and digital works from the 1960s to the 2000 celebrate, knowingly or not, their Islamic origins. Mounir Fatmi and Peggy Ahwesh propose a sober aniconism in response to a contemporary image-world of pornography and murder. In works by Takeshi Murata and Cory Arcangel a giddy iconoclasm takes over. Doug Richardson’s analog vector experiments, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries’ insistent jazzy textualism, and Usama Alshaibi’s shimmying geometries celebrate the liberation from image making. The pixelline universe twinkles in the works of Walid Ra’ad, Paul Sharits, and Gheith Al-Amine, and finally Eric Siegel’s analog abstractions take us into the blissful beyond of the image.

Presented in conjunction with the launch of Laura U. Marks’ book Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art, at Centre A on Tuesday September 21 from 5-7 p.m. at the Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, SFU Woodward’s, 149 W. Hastings St.

Laura U. Marks is the author of The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (2000), Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (2002), and Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art (MIT Press, 2010). Dr. Marks is the Dena Wosk University Professor in Art and Culture Studies at Simon Fraser University. www.sfu.ca/~lmarks
 
Dieu me pardonne, Mounir Fatmi
She Puppet, Peggy Ahwesh
Untitled (Pink Dot), Takeshi Murata       
Low Level All-Stars: Video Graffiti from the Commodore 64 Computer, Cory
Arcangel and Radical Software Group
Visual Piano documentation of realtime vector display, Doug Richardson
Lotus Blossom, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries
Allahu Akbar, Usama Alshaibi           
Analytic Studies IV: Blank Color Frames, Paul Sharits                   
Miraculous Beginnings and No, Illness Is Neither Here Nor There, Walid Ra’ad
Ungrateful Ode to Adel Fakhoury and Brion Gysin, Gheith al-Amine
Tomorrow Never Knows, Eric Siegel

____________

DIM cinema is a monthly evening of contemporary short-form moving images and cinematic collaborations. DIM focuses on expanding the visibility of Canadian and international experimental artists and their practices in the cinema. Programmed by Amy Lynn Kazymerchyk through the Pacific Cinematheque Pacifique.

Newsletter: 

Add new comment

Full HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.