SMRN now has about 80 members from 17 countries. We come together around shared interests in media archaeology, the migration of Islamic aesthetics, international contemporary art, media theory, and connections between Islamic and Western philosophy. Our online platform provides a private forum for network members to share work, workshop projects, and collaborate. In monthly video-conference meetings, members present works in progress, both scholarly and artistic, for feedback. On the platform’s public face you can see members’ research profiles, publications and artworks, and find out about coming events.
After almost four years of collaborating online, SMRN held our festive symposium, exhibitions, screenings and performances, A Light Footprint in the Cosmos, in Vancouver in June 2022. Full program, gallery tours, abstracts, and other documentation here
SMRN's mind-blowing meetings are for members only, but you're invited to our new bimonthly online lecture series! News here
Here's our mysterious collective artwork, SMRN Whispers
SMRN's podcast channel is at Creative Disturbance. We have a serious backlog.
We hold local workshops in members' cities on themes like "De-Westernizing Your Media Practice" and small-file media production
Emadi developed the concept of the network from her doctoral research that brought together the Persian Islamic philosophy of Mulla Sadrā Shirāzī (1571-1641) with Western process philosophies to investigate the digital moving image. Sadrā’s theory of Substantial Motion (al-harakat al-jawhariyya) inspired the design of this network. Each member of SMRN contributes to the development of other members and benefits from the input of others in return.
Azadeh Emadi, diagram explaining Sadra's concept of substantial motion
