Light refreshments will be provided. Free and open to the public.

The Small File Media Festival (smallfile.ca) draws attention to the alarming, and quickly growing, environmental impact of information and communication technologies (ICT). We invite makers to submit works of a tiny bitrate of max. 1.44 megabytes per minute, demonstrating that moving-image medium can be absorbing and provocative without a high carbon footprint. I will explain some of the reasons for ICT’s environmental impact. Further, I will argue that the large files of streaming established the infrastructure of data centers, networks, and devices that machine learning applications later came to exploit.

In the medium term, renewable technologies are projected to supply only the additional energy demand as fossil fuels continue to be extracted. Thus the solution to this disastrous environmental impact can only be degrowth. Small files contribute to the graceful decline in which humans begin to make do with sparser infrastructure, on the model of countries in the global South. Doing so, I will suggest, ICT can align with the cosmos, instead of exploiting it, in a practice that I will call talismanic.

The talk will include enticing clips of small-file movies

Supported by the Mini-Roser Grant and the Sustainability Research Initiative

Special thanks: CINE, Jane Zelikova,  Xochitl Ryan, Donna Axel, Shane Enzensperger and Kendra Nelson. Organized by Kalpana Subramanian , Assistant Professor, CINE

Laura U. Marks is a researcher on media ecology, non-Western media histories, experimental cinema, Islamic philosophy, Arab cinema, aesthetics, and embodiment. Her books are The Fold: From Your Body to the Cosmos (Duke, 2024), Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image (MIT, 2015), Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art (MIT, 2010), Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (Minnesota, 2002), and The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Duke, 2000). She leads research on the carbon footprint of streaming media and 2020 she founded the Small File Media Festival, which celebrates movies that stream at extremely low bitrate. With Azadeh Emadi she co-founded the Substantial Motion Research Network of artists and scholars working on non-Western approaches to media. She programs experimental media art for venues around the world. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Guggenheim Fellow, Marks teaches in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, located on the unceded territory of the Squamish, Stolo, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam nations.