[csaa-forum] Baroque Fascination in Casino Movies and Safavid Carpets: Laura Marks (Simon Fraser Univ., Vancouver)

[Tara Forrest]

Dear All,

This is just a reminder about Laura Marks' talk that is taking place  
at UTS next Monday.

Everyone is welcome.

Best wishes,
Tara.


>
>
> (Sorry for cross posting)
>
> The Writing and Society Research Group, UWS, and Transforming  
> Cultures, UTS present
>
> Laura Marks (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver)
>
> DATE: Monday 27 October
> TIME: 5.30 for 6.00pm
>
> VENUE: Room 2.4.11 (Building 2, Level 4, Theatre 411), UTS city  
> campus, Broadway
> campus map: http://www.uts.edu.au/about/mapsdirections/bway.html
>
> Baroque Fascination in Casino Movies and Safavid Carpets
>
> Abstract: Nature is not the source of beauty in either Islamic art  
> or digital media. Rather beauty consists in the delight of  
> artifice. Conventionally, Islamic art should not invent but show  
> connections among parts of God's creation. Similarly, digital  
> media, particularly what Sean Cubitt calls the neo-Baroque cinema,  
> creates an algorithmic world like the closed world of contemporary  
> corporate capitalism.
> As eleventh-century Iranian literary theorist and theologian Abd al- 
> Qahir Al-Jurjani wrote, aesthetic pleasure results from the  
> revelation of hitherto unseen relationships: "Human nature is so  
> created, and human instinctive and innate qualities are such, that  
> when something appears whence it is not usually expected to appear,  
> and when it emerges from a source that is not its usual one, the  
> soul feels deeper fondness of, and greater affection for it." The  
> genre of casino films depicts a world of baffling complexity whose  
> internal relationships are fascinating to comprehend but impossible  
> to master. In the development of casino movies from the original  
> "Ocean's Eleven" (1960) to "Croupier" (1998) to the genre's  
> masterwork, Scorsese's "Casino" (1995), we observe a gradual shift  
> in focus from human and moral issues to the complex network of  
> relationships between the casino's financial system and the  
> underworld and criminal systems interlaced with it. In the neo- 
> Baroque film cycle "Ocean's Eleven" (2001) to "Ocean's  
> Thirteen" (2007), moral questions and narrative openness drop out  
> in favor of an amoral yet pleasing closed system.
> I compare these films to the development of carpet styles in  
> fourteenth to sixteenth-century Safavid Iran. Fourteenth-century  
> carpet weavers developed a method of layering up to four decorative  
> schemes for a three-dimensional effect. This "stratigraphic" method  
> culminates in late-sixteenth century Persian carpets. Organic  
> relationships are foregone in favor of a baffling complexity. A  
> beautiful Persian carpet appeals to both intellect, in the  
> complexity of its pattern, and senses, in its textures and colors,  
> and so does a good neo-Baroque film.
>
> Biography: Dr. Laura U. Marks is a scholar, theorist, and curator  
> of independent and experimental media arts. Always interested in  
> intercultural art and experience, she is currently researching  
> relationships between classical Islamic art and new media art for a  
> book prospectively titled "Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic  
> Genealogy of New Media Art." She is the author of "The Skin of the  
> Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses" (Duke UP,  
> 2000), "Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory  Media" (Minnesota  
> UP, 2002), and many essays. She has curated programs of  
> experimental media for festivals and art spaces worldwide. Dr.  
> Marks is the Dena Wosk University Professor of Art and Culture  
> Studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. www.sfu.ca/~lmarks
>
> All welcome.
> RSVP and information: writing at uws.edu.au  or  
> a.rutherford at uws.edu.au or tara.forrest at uts.edu.au
> www.uws.edu.au/writing_society/
> www.transforming.cultures.uts.edu.au/news_events/Laura_Marks.html
>
> Dr. Tara Forrest
> Senior Lecturer, Cultural Studies
> Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
> University of Technology, Sydney
> PO Box 123 Broadway NSW
> Australia 2007
> Phone: +61 2 95142182
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