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 51猎奇入口 in Vancouver, Canada, on unceded Coast Salish territory of the S岣祑x瘫wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:l艒, S蓹l虛ílw蓹ta蕯 (Tsleil-Waututh) and x史m蓹θk史蓹y虛蓹m (Musqueam) nations. I am proud to be active on and 51猎奇入口Council on Islamophobia.
My book Graceful Collapse: Why the Internet Has to Get Small (tentative title) is under contract with MIT Press.
I got a Guggenheim fellowship to support the book. It helped me sponsor international small-file workshops in Dhaka, Mexico City, Cairo, and Tehran. See updates at
Check out my book ! Great reviews and . See some of The Fold's early iterations here
Events
“Low-fi video, the lovable solution in times of precarity and collapse,” Hong Kong 2026 Conference on Environmental Media and Public Value, The , November 11-13, 2026
Laura U. Marks, Jess MacCormack, and Kehui Li, “Modest, artistic, and radical solutions to the environmental impact of image-generating machine learning,” . Online. June 25, 2026. DOI:
TechArt Online Conference, Seoul.
““From Your Body to the Cosmos: Practical Methods,” talks and workshops at Agora: , January 27 and February 5, 2026. Compressed recordings
“Lapidary Media,” talk at Cinema and Media Studies in Solidarity with Palestine (our excellent alternative event to the Society for Cinema and Media Studies). March 27, 2026
“Lapidary Media,” Museum of Anthropology Visual + Material Culture Research Seminar, Vancouver. February 12, 2026
“J*nn Media,” talk on the panel “Secret Histories (and Possible Futures) of Middle Eastern and Islamic Media” sponsored by The Substantial Motion Research Network (SMRN). Middle East Studies Association, Washington, DC. November 23, 2025
New publications
"Modest, artistic, and radical solutions to the environmental impact of image-generating machine learning," a paper by computer scientist Kehui Li, artist Jess MacCormack, and me for the .
We believe the best generative imaging is no generative imaging, and we will leave the model at the speculative stage. Our model, which would be executed on a Raspberry Pi computer, is also a conceptual artwork that would include a reference to Palestine in every output. Slide show on Selected Writing page
My book The Skin of the Film has been translated into Arabic by Jesour Al-Thaqafa for Publishing and Distribution, Dammam. Coming soon.
“Cinematic friendships: intercessors, collectives, and collaborations,” from Hanan Al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image, excerpt in
“Streaming, precarity, and invention in the Arab world,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Arab Film and Media, ed. Samirah Alkassim. Forthcoming.
“Smaller-file streaming and the archive,” forthcoming, The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists
"Islamic Art Performs the Hidden into Being," catalogue essay for “Deviant Ornaments,” National Museum for Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway
“Collapse Informatics, Small Files, and the Light Infrastructure of the Future,”
(Older writings on Selected writings page)
We're #toosmalltofail! Check out our low-carbon small-file web site designed by Joni Schinkel. @smallfile
The Substantial Motion Research Network
Inspired by process philosopher Sadr al-Di虅n al-Shi虅ra虅zi虅, 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," edited by Farshid Kazemi, Radek Przedpe艂ski, and me and featuring articles by SMRN members, is forthcoming in Film-Philosophy
Tackling the Carbon Footprint of Streaming Media
My neuroscientist mother's research on spontaneous regeneration in the central nervous system!
lmarks [ ] sfu [ ] ca
@lauraumarks
