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Marshall Mcluhan and the Arts MOHAMMAD SALEMY

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REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES IMAGINATIONS JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES | REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE CONTRIBUTORS ADAM LAUDER AND JAQUELINE MCLEOD ROGERS Publication details, including open access policy ELENA LAMBERTI and instructions for contributors: ALEXANDER KUSKIS ADINA BALINT http://imaginations.csj.ualberta.ca JESSICA JACOBSON-KONEFALL MAY CHEW DAINA WARREN TOM MCGLYNN HENRY ADAM SVEC ISSUE 8-3 KENNETH R. ALLAN Marshall McLuhan and the Arts MOHAMMAD SALEMY JODY BERLAND MARSHALL AND THE MCLUHAN Editorial Team: Brent Ryan Bellamy, Dominique Laurent, Andriko GARY GENOSKO Lozowy, Tara Milbrandt, Carrie Smith-Prei, and Sheena Wilson December 6, 2017 REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES MARSHALL MCLUHAN ARTS AND THE ARTS ISSUE 8-3, 2017 To cite this article: Lamberti, Elena. “Printing a Film to Make it Resonate: Sorel Etrog and Marshall McLuhan’s Spiral.” Imaginations 8:3 (2017): Web (date accessed) 25-38. DOI: 10.17742/IMAGE.MA.8.3.2 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.MA.8.3.2 The copyright for each article belongs to the author and has been published in this journal under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives 3.0 license that allows others to share for non-commercial purposes the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal. The content of this article represents the author’s original work and any third-party content, either image or text, has been included under the Fair Dealing exception in the Canadian Copyright Act, or the author has provided the required publication permissions. PRINTING A FILM TO MAKE IT RESONATE: SOREL ETROG AND MARSHALL MCLUHAN’S SPIRAL ELENA LAMBERTI Abstract | Tis essay investigates the collaboration between Résumé | Cet essai étudie la collaboration entre McLuhan McLuhan and the Romanian born Canadian artist, Sorel et l’artiste canadien d’origine roumaine, Sorel Etrog. En 1975, Etrog. In 1975, Etrog’s movie Spiral was shown at the Centre le flm Spiral d’Etrog a été présenté au Centre for Culture for Culture and Technology, established by McLuhan at the and Technology, créé par McLuhan à l’Université de Toronto. University of Toronto. Following that event, McLuhan sug- En réponse à cet événement, McLuhan a suggéré qu’Etrog gested that Etrog select “stills from the flm so that he could sélectionne « des images du flm pour qu’il puisse leur fournir provide an annotation to those images – a free form text of une annotation – un texte libre de citations de divers au- quotations from various writers – as well as a commentary”. teurs – ainsi qu’un commentaire ». Grâce à un autre grand Tanks to another great protagonist of the Canadian cul- protagoniste de la scène culturelle canadienne, Barry Cal- tural scene, Barry Callaghan, that idea became a tangible laghan, cette idée devint un objet tangible quelques années object a few years afer McLuhan had passed away: Spiral. après la mort de McLuhan : Spiral. Images from the flm. Images from the flm. Text by Marshall McLuhan, was in Text by Marshall McLuhan fut publié en 1987 par Exile Edi- fact published in 1987 by Exile Editions in Toronto. Today, it tions à Toronto. Aujourd’hui, il demeure un souvenir d’une remains as a memento of an original artistic encounter. It rencontre artistique originale. Il demeure également un outil also remains as a tool to reconsider our environment through pour reconsidérer notre environnement à travers la poésie poetry and images, as words and still-shots are cast to pose et les images, alors que les mots et les images fxes sont jetés an intellectual challenge to an increasingly materialistic so- pour poser un déf intellectuel à une société de plus en plus ciety. As a book, Spiral is conceived to make ideas on media matérialiste. Comme livre, Spiral est conçu pour faire réson- and society resonate through a witty juxtaposition of images ner des idées sur les médias et la société par une juxtapo- from the flm and literary quotations from a broad West- sition spirituelle d’images du flm et des citations littéraires ern tradition that encourages readers to navigate the ongo- d’une large tradition occidentale qui encourage les lecteurs à ing profound cultural shif. Known but not ofen investigated naviguer dans le profond changement culturel en cours. Con- when discussing McLuhan’s artistic associations, the collab- nue, mais rarement étudiée lors des discussions sur les asso- oration between Etrog and McLuhan ought to be delved into ciations artistiques de McLuhan, la collaboration entre Etrog for diferent reasons. It is, in fact, strategic to appreciate how et McLuhan devrait être explorée pour diférentes raisons. Il McLuhan has acted as a facilitator of a renewed 20th century est, en fait, stratégique d’apprécier comment McLuhan a agi inter-art dialogue. Ten, it helps to consider the conscious en tant que facilitateur d’un dialogue interartistique du 20e shif from modernist avant-garde to new avant-gardes and siècle renouvelé. Ensuite, il est utile de considérer le passage art forms of the 1970s in relation to McLuhan’s environmen- conscient de l’avant-garde moderniste à de nouvelles formes tal explorations. Finally, it also pays homage to an artist that avant-gardistes et artistiques des années 1970 en relation deserves to be remembered as one of the most original voices avec les explorations environnementales de McLuhan. Enfn, of the Canadian artistic renaissance. cela rend également hommage à un artiste qui mérite qu’on se souvienne de lui comme l’une des voix les plus originales de la renaissance artistique canadienne. ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 25 PRINTING A FILM TO MAKE IT RESONATE n Marshall McLuhan’s narrative on media Unmistakably, McLuhan’s ideas on art are and society, the artist is the hero oppos- rooted in his profound knowledge of Mod- ing the actions of the “many thousands of ernist artists. He learned from Ezra Pound Ithe best-trained individual minds [that] have to consider the artist as “the antenna of the made it a full-time business to get inside the race.” Reading James Joyce disclosed to him collective public mind … in order to manipu- the probing powers of etymology as a key to late, exploit, control” (Te Mechanical Bride v). sensorial playfulness. T. S. Eliot’s poetry and Against these invisible forces, the artist is the criticism opened up new “doors of perception individual who uses their integral awareness on the poetic process” (McLuhan, Te Interi- to perceive the emerging subliminal societal or Landscape xiii-xiv). Wyndham Lewis’s vor- patterns and anticipate change. As an explor- texes and spatial philosophy ofered McLuhan er, the artist is the interface of juxtaposing en- a conceptual form designed to capture the in- vironments; their art is meant to keep people ner truth of a situation through a distorted and awake to the fgure and ground interplay. Te grotesque perspective. McLuhan’s intellectual artist is the antidote to the Narcissus narcosis debts to these artists (and others), have been that numbs perception and kills free will.1 In- acknowledged, discussed, and investigated.2 evitably, the artist cannot be prudent, nor dec- However, being a “serious artist” himself—that orous. McLuhan portrays him as a sham and is, a mime and a sham—McLuhan did not in- a mime, a character who “undertakes not the dulge in “Modernist mannerism.” Instead, he ethical quest but the quest of the great fool” put on the Modernists and then started new ex- (McLuhan, Te Interior Landscape xiii-xiv). In plorations of his own, engaging in original col- McLuhan’s media poetic, the arts are privileged laborations with contemporary artists. He got probing tools precisely because they turn given along better with artists than with most of his perceptive rules upside-down and let the artist fellow academics because his own modus ope- take diferent roads. Inevitably, the arts are at randi was intrinsically artistic; that is, experi- once a mirror of their time (hence the artist as mental, innovative, and outrageously non-aca- a mime) and barometer of all that is new, trans- demic. If not anti-academic. gressive, and mystifying (hence the artist as a sham). For this reason, the “serious artist” op- McLuhan’s works with Harley Parker, Wilfred poses and challenges ofcial art and refuses to Watson, Quentin Fiore are well known. His comply with the established models (McLuhan, connections with Wyndham Lewis and Shei- “Art as Anti-Environment” 56); in fact, they de- la Watson have been explored to better un- tect the techniques of manipulation, exploita- derstand McLuhan’s creative probing method tion, and control through the contemplation (Betts et al.). We know that a variety of artists of ofcial art. Tat is the preliminary step to and celebrities came to his Centre at the Uni- develop a counter-environment and to restore versity of Toronto to discuss contemporary sensorial and cognitive awareness. Mannerism trends in society, politics and, of course, the numbs because it comforts us, while avant-gar- arts, including John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and de art awakens because it shocks us. Ofcial art Keith Carradine. John Cage’s Roaratorio, frst preserves the status quo, but experimental art produced at the Paris Festival d’Automne at navigates change. Beaubourg in January 1980, was presented as a tribute to Marshall McLuhan when brought REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 26 ELENA LAMBERTI to Toronto on the centenary of James Joyce’s Tat same year, in October, “he held his frst birthday, two years later.
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  • Was Mcluhan a Semiotician?

    Was Mcluhan a Semiotician?

    MediaTropes eJournal Vol I (2008): 113–126 ISSN 1913-6005 THE MEDIUM IS THE SIGN: WAS MCLUHAN A SEMIOTICIAN? MARCEL DANESI That the world is being threatened more and more by those who hold the levers of “media power,” i.e., by those who control television networks, movie production studios, and computer media, is obvious to virtually everyone. It was, of course, Marshall McLuhan who was among the first to emphasize this fact, showing how the “meaning structures” that the media produce shape human cognition. The interesting thing for a semiotician is that he did so in a way that is consistent with semiotic ideas and, above all else, semiotic method. Was McLuhan a semiotician? Of course, he never claimed to be one, and, whether he knew anything about semiotic theory as such is beside the point. It is not commonly known outside of semiotics proper that the “science of signs” grew out of attempts by the first physicians of the Western world to understand how the body and the mind interact within specific cultural domains. Indeed, in its oldest usage, the term semiotics was applied to the study of the observable pattern of physiological symptoms induced by particular diseases. Hippocrates (460?–377? BCE)—the founder of Western medical science—viewed the ways in which an individual in a specific culture would manifest and relate the symptomatology associated with a disease as the basis upon which to carry out an appropriate diagnosis and then to formulate a suitable prognosis. The physician Galen of Pergamum (130?–200? CE) similarly referred to diagnosis as a process of semiosis.