Marshall Mcluhan and the Arts MOHAMMAD SALEMY

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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 ASALMCLUHANAND THE MARSHALL 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.

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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

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to Toronto on the centenary of James Joyce’s Tat same year, in October, “he held his frst birthday, two years later. Te list is long and one-man show in North America at the gal- interesting because it cross-reads diferent and lery Moos. It contained twenty-six new and inspiring artistic experiences. However, in this old painted constructions and some drawings” brief essay, I want to focus on a collaboration (Heinrich 98). Etrog became a Canadian citi- that is not ofen investigated when discussing zen in 1963, when he was thirty years old. Coin- McLuhan’s artistic associations and which I cidentally, that same year on October 24th, the think ought to be delved into for diferent rea- McLuhan’s Centre for Culture and Technology sons. It is, in fact, strategic to appreciate how was also established at the St. Michael College McLuhan has acted as a facilitator of a renewed at the University of Toronto. Twelve years lat- 20th-century inter-art dialogue. I consider the er, in 1975, Etrog’s experimental flm Spiral was conscious shif from modernist avant-garde to shown at the Centre (also broadcast on CBC new avant-gardes and art forms of the 1970s in television), an event that triggered a collabo- relation to McLuhan’s environmental explora- ration between the Romanian-born sculptor tions. Tis essay also pays homage to an artist and the Canadian media guru and literature that deserves to be remembered as one of the professor. Tey worked together on a publica- most original voices of the Canadian artistic tion based on that movie: Spiral. Images from renaissance. I focus on the brief but meaning- the Film. Text by Marshall McLuhan, published ful collaboration between Marshall McLuhan in 1987 by Exile Editions in Toronto. and Sorel Etrog, the Romanian-born Canadian artist who passed away in 2014. Primarily a sculptor and a visual artist though he also wrote plays, non-fction, and poetry, Sorel, Marshall, and Dada: Etrog already had a history of collaborations Changing Perspectives with important writers of his time, among them Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett. In 2013, the Art Gallery of Ontario hosted a Similarly, by 1975 McLuhan had published his major retrospective dedicated to Sorel Etrog, most celebrated (and controversial) artistic showing fve decades of his works and art proj- books: Te Medium is the Massage and War ects. Te exhibition closed at the end of Sep- and Peace in the Global Village (with Quentin tember; Sorel passed away a few months later, Fiore, respectively in 1967 and 1968); Counter- in February 2014. Born in 1933 in Jassy, Ro- blast (illustrated by Harley Parker, 1969) and mania, in a Jewish family, Etrog was a young Trough the Vanishing Point (also with Parker, boy when the Germans occupied the city in 1969); From Cliché to Archetype (with Wilfred 1939, followed by the Russians a few years lat- Watson, 1970). Inter-art collaboration was very er. Te family succeeded in escaping to Israel much part of the artistic spirit of time. How- in 1950; here, Etrog served in the army (doing ever, with McLuhan all experiments were as- a period of active duty during the Suez crisis sociated to his media investigations, meant to in 1956) and received an Army scholarship to perfect a discontinuous form of writing capa- attend a new school of art in Tel Aviv (Hein- ble of rendering the acoustic dimension of the rich). His frst group exhibition was in 1956, new electric environment. A form capable of but his life took a new turn in 1959, the year he alerting to the ongoing perceptive shif and of met the Canadian Art critic, Samuel J. Zacks. making people aware of and even experience

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the continuing cultural and societal change: a over common people and conformism and form that McLuhan called the mosaic.3 Sim- orthodoxy over creativity and original think- ilarly, Etrog’s artistic search intended to ex- ing. Trough Dada, art becomes “anti-art,” a plore the invisible cultural patterns underpin- process of rebellion against “the inconsistency ning the visible surface. McLuhan and Etrog of conventional beliefs” (citation). Like Dada, shared not only the will to experiment with art Etrog too opposed the habits of the public and forms, but also a deep knowledge of Modern- the intellectuals alike. Similarly, this is what ist avant-garde experiments with form, as well McLuhan intended to do with his frst pub- as of later artistic explorations. Te Teatre of lished volume, Te Mechanical Bride, where the Absurd was also a shared area of investiga- he openly stated that he wanted to take his tion. Knowing both Ionesco and Beckett, Sorel readers inside the revolving picture and make Etrog was familiar with their post-war poet- them sort out the behavioural patterns sublim- ics; as an artist who had survived German and inally imposed on them by some of the best- Russian occupation he, too, felt that “what is trained minds of the time. In later books, Mc- absurd, or rather what is unusual, is frst and Luhan was never so explicit again; however, all foremost what exists, reality” (Bonnefoy 127). his work on media, culture, and society was McLuhan also defned the absurdist theatre intended to help people acquire awareness of movement as penetrating reality through a more or less visible cultural and societal phe- provocative use of verbal cliché: “Ionesco par- nomena through a disruptive use of language ticularly cultivates the art of the verbal cliché, and formal techniques. and he uses the verbal cliché to probe one of the most fascinating phenomena of our age Sorel Etrog never doubted McLuhan’s Da- and that is the way in which the Western mind daism. I met him in 1997 through Barry Cal- is changing its mind”, (McLuhan and Watson laghan, a Canadian intellectual who must be 5). For McLuhan, the theatre of the absurd was acknowledged not only for his own work as instrumental to understand that, perhaps, “the a writer and a critic but also for his incessant universal human condition today in a period role as a generous advocate and supporter of of rapid innovation is necessarily that of alien- literary and artistic causes. Barry Callaghan ation” (McLuhan and Watson 9).4 turned the project conceived by Sorel and Mar- shall into a book and introduced me to Sorel’s As an artist, Etrog had grown in the wake of work, pointing out the correspondences with “Te Dada Circus” (his term),5 so much so that some of McLuhan’s ideas I was exploring at his work stands at the cross-road of the histor- the time. Tanks to Barry, meeting Etrog be- ical avant-garde of the early-20th century and came for me a journey into artistic and cul- the more experimental artistic trends of the tural discovery. His studio was a place where 1960s-1970s. According to Tristan Tzara, also many media theories of the time materialised a Romanian and one of the founding fathers of in front of my eyes: I found myself immersed Dadaism, “Te beginning of Dada were not the in a strange wood made of sculptures combin- beginning of art but of disgust” (qtd. in Rubin ing a variety of coloured inorganic elements to 12). Tis disgust was for a materialistic society shape curious humanoids. Etrog walked me that had led to a horrible and unprecedented along his creatures, himself a tall man whose war and was not changing its priorities: élites long arms continued to move around as if also

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translating his words into whirling objects. To uncanny through a grotesque (absurd) render- follow him into his own creative maze was not ing: he shocked the bourgeois of his own time only a fascinating but also an enlightening but attracted many other mimes. journey into both Etrog’s inner landscape and poetic. I could not but think of him as a young As Sorel told me, “Art is a language” and “art- boy surviving German and Russian occupa- ists only have diferent languages.” Sometimes, tion, and of him discovering ways to shape his the diferent languages contaminate each oth- own “disgust” through artistic patterns. Afer er and fourish to touch our senses and our all, Dada itself started at the outbreak of World minds. Tis is what happened when Etrog’s vi- War I. Anti-Art was not “art for art’s sake” but sual imagery and McLuhan’s media poetic met. rather a form of protest against societal confor- McLuhan found Etrog’s explorations interest- mity, especially against intellectual conformity. ing for many reasons: they were rooted in the Tis is precisely what brought McLuhan and modernist avant-garde he loved so much; they Etrog together many years later. Acting afer explored diferent perceptive modes; they in- another horrible World War, they both operat- vestigated form as a tool to make you see, feel, ed against the cultural homologations of their and hear in a renewed way. Te two men met time. While sharing his art with me, Sorel was in Toronto where McLuhan accepted to screen explicit in pointing out what he meant by de- Etrog’s flm Spiral at the Centre of Culture and fning McLuhan as a Dadaist: Technology. McLuhan suggested that Etrog select “stills from the flm so that he could pro- For me, I decided that McLuhan was a Da- vide an annotation to those images—a free daist. I tell you why. Because of his liter- form text of quotations from various writers— ary criticism. Since the frst book, he was as well as a commentary” (McLuhan and Etrog, involved in the absurd, he explored the back cover). Tanks to another great mime ads. He conceived the comic and the ab- and sham of the Canadian cultural scene, Bar- surd as an attack. This was Dada! Anti-art. ry Callaghan, that idea became a tangible ob- Give bourgeois insomnia to wake them ject a few years afer McLuhan had passed away. up. Dada liked to put traps. Same for Mc- Today, it remains as a memento of an original Luhan. Dada was an art of reaction. Mc- artistic encounter. It also remains a tool to re- Luhan, too, taught us to react, to change consider our environment through poetry and perspective, to look at things in a differ- images, as words and still-shots pose an in- ent way. tellectual challenge to an increasingly materialistic society. As a book, Spiral is conceived To change perspective. To look at things in a to make ideas on media and society resonate diferent way. Etrog was right. Tis is what Mc- through a witty juxtaposition of images from Luhan taught us when he started to employ the flm and literary quotations from a broad the poetic process to “adjust the reader to the Western tradition that encourages readers to contemporary world” (McLuhan, Te Interior navigate the ongoing profound cultural shif. Landscape, xiv), exploring ads through his literary knowledge. Tis is also what he taught us when he started to read the global village through artistic patterns, emphasizing the

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Moving Printed Images Through Literary Voices circles, as he moves down and then up again, defning a movement that recalls that of a spi- Midway in our life’s journey, ral. Similarly, while marching into the dark and I went astray from the straight then into the light, Dante meets people and Road and woke to fnd my- ideas of the past as well as of his present. He self alone in a dark wood. inhabits a temporal continuum that blurs traditional perceiving patterns, as he is talking to Tese verses open not only Dante’s Divine Com- the dead and to the immortals alike, as well as edy, but also the volume Spiral. Images from to himself and to his readers. His fnal epipha- the flm. Chosen by McLuhan, they accompany is therefore reached through a diferent ap- ny the frst two images taken from Etrog’s flm proach to historical time and space, as if spiral- and show the face of a man refected in a mir- ing across ages. According to Etrog: ror: eyes shut in the frst image (Midway in our life’s journey); eyes open in the second (I The Spiral is a single continuous line that went astray from the straight / Road and woke creates within itself the parallel that exists to fnd myself alone in a dark wood). From the conventionally between two lines. There- very beginning, the combination of image and fore, you can have on this single line mo- text engages the reader in a series of juxtapos- ments in time and space that signify the ing movements that alter the linearity and the past, the present, and the future – and fxity of the printed page. Te frst and imme- these moments occur in this unique situ- diate one is purely mechanical and playful as it ation as parallel. Time and space are col- consists in the optical illusion if readers quick- lapsed. Chronology is obsolete. (McLu- ly turn the frst two pages: a short flm showing han and Etrog 123) the man on the frst page opening his eyes on the second page, suddenly staring at them. In Certainly, Etrog’s fascination with the spiral fact, it is a double optical illusion as the man is as a form appears to be in line with the visual looking at himself through a mirror. Te trick- and conceptual culture of his time, from land ery refex replicates the opening scene of the art (consider Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson, flm; it becomes here a challenge to the idea of 1970) to the new industrial design, especially point of view or perspective. At the same time, the so-called psychedelic design that became a it retrieves McLuhan’s famous image of the sensation from the 1960s for more than a de- rear-view mirror, another optical illusion that cade. However, his defnition clearly reveals challenges your way of perceiving an environ- how he goes beyond the mere visual leitmotif ment while moving. Te words by Dante add in the pursuit of a deeper search, which is at emphasis to the idea of inner journey and visu- once philosophical and ontological: he is look- al/perceptive illusions, as they develop a meta- ing for a shared existential meaning within a phor also shaping a shifing environment: the technologically evolving society. At the same main character leaves the straight road and en- time, he is investigating across art forms to fnd ters a dark wood alone. He leaves the known the most suitable one to serve that purpose. for the unknown as he embarks in a journey of Metaphorically, the spiral perfectly captures discovery. We know that Dante’s journey pro- a new, universal human condition through ceeds not through straight lines but through the dynamism of a movement that renders

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spacetime and neither just space nor time elements—indeed, the melting of the human (“time and space are collapsed”). Similarly, the body and inorganic components of our civ- storyline of Etrog’s flm follows an analogous ilization. In a sort of progression d’éfet, Etrog spiraling movement. shows a gun extending the human arm; a hand playing with two eggs on a female breast; na- Te movie runs for about 30 minutes, with ked human bodies packed as food in tins; a music by Dmitri Shostakovich, and unfolds watch and a human hand taking turns on a through parallel visual motifs that divide into plate as nourishment on display; warms and two main themes (life and death), which there- screws blurred together as rotten corpses; a fore work as the two imaginary lines within the new born baby in an incubator (artifcially fed) also imaginary spiral (the flm sequence). Te and a blindfolded man sedated with a pacifer; flm narrative is not easily rendered through a naked child drawing the sun on a blackboard; an ordered telling, precisely because it is con- naked adults in prison whose hands tries to ceived as a spiraling montage of symbolic im- break free from the wooden cage; and others. ages creating a thematic rather than linear plot. Among all these pictures, a blindfolded nurse Tis captured McLuhan’s attention too: and a gravedigger burying a blindfolded man return along the spiraling narrative to repre- Te flm Spiral was not scripted but iconically sent the passage from one human condition to drafed, image by image. Te structural theme another (and from organic to inorganic), in an of Spiral presents the oscillation of two simul- incessant existential dance. Te idea of repeat- taneous and complementary cones or spirals, ed and interrelated patterns reaches its climax constituting the synchronique worlds of birth through the image of two mouths (of a man and death. Spiral is not a diachronique or lineal and of a woman) connected through a pipe; structure, but a synchronique and contrapun- they create an air circulating system controlled tal interplay in a resonating structure whose through a faucet positioned at the centre. You centre is everywhere and whose circumference live or you die depending on the (mechanical) is nowhere. (McLuhan and Etrog 125) faucet position (open or closed), but both lives are inter-dependent. Te opening scene of the flm, later retrieved as the opening image of the book, introduces In its montage, Etrog’s 1974 spiraling flm re- the theme of perception and shows the read- calls Fernand Léger’s 1924 avant-garde flm, er how to interplay with its narrative construc- Ballet Méchanique, as it also proceeds with no tion. As anticipated, it shows the close-up of a linear but conceptual plot through a montage man with his eyes wide closed. Suddenly, he which alternates a series of images combin- opens them and stares at himself in a mir- ing organic and inorganic elements. However, ror. Due to the refecting illusion, he seems to while in Léger’s flmic experiment, the cubist stare at us too, challenging us to look through montage creates a dance that transcends the things and not at them. Consistently, the sto- traditional idea of a story, in Etrog’s the story then unfolds along a journey that oscillates ry remains. Spiral points to the numbing pro- between two main leitmotifs: the juxtaposition cess induced by media as environments, some- of images of death and of images of life, and thing that McLuhan had investigated since the the juxtaposition of natural and mechanical early 1950s. Te spiral is precisely that which

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provides a discerning direction that orients that McLuhan had been exploring for more the audience’s psycho-perceptive responses. than 20 years. Te flm was the perfect cor- Terefore, Etrog’s flmic experiment goes be- relative objective to his own ideas on media, yond the cubist urge to overcome a represen- art, and society. Both Etrog’s flm and McLu- tative (narrative, pictorial) model, as it engages han’s explorations were meant to awaken their with the human existential and physical condi- audiences. tion within the consolidating mass-society, following new wars and cultural revolutions. Like in the flm, the Spiral book, too, collaps- es time and space and chronology is obsolete; In spite of other more cruel (and “real”) images the frst two pages are meant to alert readers already seen by the television audiences of the on that. Te playful optical illusion and the time (Vietnam was still happening and broad- carefully chosen literary quotations are ofered cast and on air), in 1975 when Spiral was broad- neither as an amusement nor as an introduc- cast on TV, CBC opted for a late evening time. tion to the original flm content. Instead, they Etrog’s flm was all but traditional or conform- are assembled to show the perceptive strategy ist and the accelerated montage of somewhat that readers must adopt to start their own jour- disturbing images in the flm (including some ney of discovery, to open their eyes. Tis book explicit nudes and some implicit sexual meta- must not be read. It must not be watched. Tis phors) risked shocking audiences outside the book must be experienced. Readers are invit- avant-garde circles. As Mcluhan would say, ex- ed to shif their mode of observation from light perimental art not only navigates change but on to light through. Te inter-art dialogue Mc- also challenges comforting aesthetical mod- Luhan proposed here becomes not a captivat- els; it is no surprise to know that McLuhan de- ing technique simply following the art trends cided to show Spiral at his Centre. Etrog’s flm of the time. Instead, it is employed as a strat- resonated with McLuhan’s explorations of old egy to overcome traditional and linear modes and new media as extensions of man, as well as of perception that he considers no longer ft with his idea of how those extensions afect the for the individuals inhabiting the electric age. human sensorium. Etrog, too, was pursuing Alienation also comes from schizophrenic at- “not the ethical quest but the quest of the great titudes to an evolving habitat, from our inabil- fool” (McLuhan, Te Interior Landscape, 31). ity to remodel our sensorium. For this reason, Etrog’s Spiral made visible the shif from linear the printed verbo-voco-visual version of Etrog’s into acoustic space, the shif from one sensori- Spiral is developed as a perceptive counter-en- al mode to another, something that McLuhan vironment consciously conceived to resonate called the passage from the eye to the ear, from into the readers’ inner landscape in more per- the mechanic to the electric age. In the initial vasive ways than the original cinematic one. part of the flm, a woman seems to give birth to a dial and to an adult man; in the fnal part, Te paradox is explained once one recalls Mc- a naked baby plays with a broken watch. Hu- Luhan’s original defnition of flm as a form, manity is born again in a world where time is as “the fnal fulflment of the great potential no longer measurable along a line, and space of typographic fragmentation” (McLuhan Un- needs to be rethought. Etrog’s experimental derstanding Media 393); similarly, “movies as- flm, too, navigated the environmental change sume a high level of literacy in their users and

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prove bafing to the non literate” (384). Here, readers cognitively and physiologically, creat- the focus is neither on the content nor on the ing an acoustic (verbo-vocal-visual) montage; montage technique of flms, but rather on their readers must fll in the gaps connecting the mode of fruition prior to the invention of elec- visual (the images from the flm) to the aural tronic and digital techniques. Until that mo- (the text chosen by McLuhan) in a process that ment, flms were a manifestation of the civili- requires a multisensory approach—indeed, a zation of the eye and their mode of fruition was mobile point of view that helps them to see truly literate: the audience looked at the screen “the action that is in progress and in which ev- where lights and images were projected. Tey erybody is involved” (McLuhan, Te Mechani- looked at the screen as they looked at a written cal Bride 8). As a book, Spiral invites the specta- page: words run one afer the other creating a tors of the movie Spiral to become an audience train-of-thought. Similarly, images run one af- so as to fully experience a dynamic, interactive ter the other, creating the illusion of movement, communicative process that alerts them on the in fact, a train-of-still-shots. Terefore, if as a absurdity of all environmental dynamics. flm Etrog’s Spiral is considered avant-garde in terms of content and technique of montage, Te collaboration between McLuhan and Etrog it nonetheless remains traditional in terms translates into an editorial inter-art project that of perceptive modes: it engages its spectators conveys movement to the printed page, giving mostly conceptually, challenging their stan- shape to what McLuhan terms the “concrete es- dardized understanding of reality. With lat- say.” McLuhan, a knowledgeable literary schol- er technological developments (and starting ar, was familiar with poésie concrète and how it with television), images and sounds were in- had inspired diferent uses of old printing tech- stead projected on the audience, changing the niques. His interactive mosaic of words, imag- psychophysical dynamics of watching a moves, and gaps plays with that tradition to create ie. Spectators are turned into screens as imag- a new form of essay that does not narrate the- es are projected towards them; spectators enter oretical investigations but rather renders them the technological fux and complete the com- directly on the printed page. At the same time, municative fow physiologically. Electric me- Etrog’s original movie ofers him a series of dia induced a new tactile form of perception pertinent illustrations to ideas he had been ex- that McLuhan defned as a multi-sensorial and ploring for decades: acoustic (that is, non-linear and all-embracing) interplay, something that returns spectators to In the flm Spiral the ubiquitous and mov- their role of audiences. Te term audience is in ing centre intensifes awareness of the fra- fact particularly appropriate for the electronic gility and transience of existence. In the and digital forms of communication and me- uncertainty of the interval between the dia, as it returns the communicative process to pram and the coffn, between birth and an auditory dimension as per its original ety- death, Spiral presents many labyrinths mology. Spectators (from the Latin spectator, and portraits of the human cognitive pro- viewer/watcher) watch what is in front of them cess. The drama of these two imbalanc- (light on); audiences (from the Latin audentia, es is portrayed by the action of the two listening) engage acoustically in a communi- ambulances in the labyrinth of the city cative process. As a book, Spiral engages the streets. The body in the incubator points

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to a labyrinth (spiral) of respiration in a presented as a form that translates the uni- blind struggle for survival. The open-heart versal search of many other artists of the 20th surgery reveals the spiral of human circu- century; he confrms that Etrog also belongs lation in a parallel struggle for blind sur- to McLuhan’s own sacred wood of conscious vival. One of the bizarre conceits of the artists enlightening on the archetypes of hu- sequence of the sardine can concerns the man logic and ingenuity. Man as the medium obsession of a consumer age with pack- is, in fact, the title of McLuhan’s aferword in ages, whether books or hi-rise or the nu- the book; it is the fnal epiphany of an artistic clear family. This witty observation per- journey meant to trigger awareness of a com- vades the flm as a continuing metaphor, plex societal process. A journey that has put as do the two ambulances. (McLuhan and traps on the readers/audience as the spiraling Etrog, 126) story has been told to invite them to change perspective, to look at things in a diferent way. In the flm, the two metaphors introduced here Consciousness of one’s own actions follows a (a “witty observation” and the “two ambulanc- renewed sensorial consciousness, something es”) are juxtaposed with a series of visual sym- that can be achieved only if we are ready to bols that immediately reinforce the spectator’s leave comforting but numbing intellectual and “awareness of the fragility and transience of artistic cocoons; it implies a shif from man- existence” within what is presented as “a con- nerism to experimentalism. sumer age” where thoughts, people, and ideas are equally turned into pre-packed goods. Te Te journey of initiation conceived by Etrog list is long: eggs/breast/womb (life) and arms and McLuhan is not a reassuring one. Contrary (death); clocks (mechanic and limited exis- to the one that takes Dante to progress from tence) and the natural birth of a baby (perma- Hell to Paradise “to see again the stars,” our nence of the human species); blinded man and consumerist society makes the individuals spi- books; people in a cage and burning books; a ral upon themselves, as if they were navigating pram and a cofn; cans of worms and cans of a never-ending cultural maelstrom. Inevitably, people; naked bodies and artifcial (mechani- the human condition cannot but be one of con- cally induced) breathing; and many more. stant alert and struggle to remain awake and acquire sensorial insomnia because we inhab- Te storyline of the iconically drafed movie it a world of constant technological innovation spirals to an ending where a naked baby plays and deep cultural shifs. Te request is there- with a broken clock and open eyes are paint- fore to overcome habits and embrace (artistic) ed on the bandage covering the real eyes of a challenges. Virgil guides Dante out of his ig- naked man. Elaborating modernist poetics, “In norance and takes him to Beatrice, the woman Spiral Etrog confronts us with the same Waste representing pure love and honesty of intents, Land situation on the wired planet in the form the woman who will lead him to reach the of both a visible dialogue of cinema and the ac- highest pick. Trough Spiral, Dante’s search be- tion of symbolist drama” (McLuhan and Etrog comes not only the poet’s and the philosopher’s 127). In his fnal comments, McLuhan con- quest but everyman’s search. It acquires a difer- nects the evident social and cultural denuncia- ent meaning because human ignorance main- tion in the flm to Etrog’s creative process, here ly refects environmental ignorance, as the flm

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and the book came afer not only Dante and portable still-shots that move beyond the fxity his natural and theological “world architec- of the printed page to enter the audience’s in- ture”: they came afer World War II and Sput- terior landscape and alert them to new knowl- nik6 Te world Etrog and McLuhan inhabited edge of their time. was a new manmade environment built on “an electronic interdependence” that recreated the world “in the image of a global village” (Mc- Works Cited Luhan, Te Gutenberg Galaxy 36). McLuhan and Etrog lived and rendered a passage from Barilli, Renato. “L’estetica tecnologica di Marshall a given environment to a new and evolving McLuhan.” Tra presenza e assenza, Bompiani, 1974. one. Consistently, to accompany Etrog’s spiraling symbols, McLuhan selected texts from Betts Gregory, Hjartarson Paul, and Smitka Kristine writers and artists who had experienced and (eds). Counter-Blasting Canada. Marshall McLuhan, rendered ages of passage, that is, ages marking Wydham Lewis, Wilfred Watson and Sheila Watson. Te University of Alberta Press, 2016. the making of new cultural and technological environments. Dante himself was a poet who lived at the end of the Middle Ages and at the Bonnefoy Claude. Conversations with Eugene Iones- dawn of Italian Renaissance. McLuhan also co. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. quoted Shakespeare, the bard who blurred the auditory into the Gutenberg Age. He quoted Cork, Richard. Vorticism and Abstract Art in the Joyce, Eliot, and Yeats, the Modernist masters First Machine Age. U of California P, 1976. who retrieved the aural while the Gutenberg’s mechanic age shifed into the electric age. He Dasenbrock, Reed Way. Te Literary Vorticism of quoted Etrog’s favorite authors, Ionesco and Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis. Johns Hopkins Beckett, who used the grotesque to unveil the UP, 1985. absurd of intellectual conformism. In the book, these voices—altogether forming a sort of per- Eliot, T.S. Te Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism. ceptive leitmotif of McLuhan’s discourses on Faber & Faber, 1955. media as environment—combine with those of other writers and philosophers, (Tomas Har- Etrog, Sorel and John Cage. Joyce and the Dada Cir- dy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Blaise Pascal, Eliz- cus: A Collage / An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake. abeth Akers Allen, David Herbert Lawrence, Te Black P/Te Dolmen P, 1982. Fyodor Mikhailovich ), poets (Geofrey Chau- cer, Samuel Taylo Coleridge, Wystan Hugh Gordon, W. Terrence. Marshall McLuhan: Escape Auden, Robert Frost), and theorists (Claude into Understanding: A Biography. Basic Books, 1997. Elwood Shannon and Warren Weaver, Alfred Tomatis) to accompany the journey unveiling Granata, Paolo. “A Return to Magic: the (Go)Spell of man as the medium. Tese voices too are col- Technology in Marshall McLuhan’s Tought.” McLu- lapsed to shape the continuous movements of han. Social Media Between Faith and Culture, edited by Domenico Pietropaolo and Robert K. Logan, Le- the human consciousness. Together, images gas Publishing, 2014, pp. 97-110. and texts are used as fragments shored against intellectual conformism and cultural hypnosis,

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Heinrich Teodore Allen. “Te painted construc- —. Understanding Media: Te Extensions of Man. tions.” Five Decades, edited by Ohor Holubizky. Art 1964. Edited by W. Terrence Gordon, Gingko P, 2003. Gallery of Ontario, 1968, pp. 94-99. —. Te Interior Landscape: Te Literary Criticism of Lamberti, Elena. Marshall McLuhan’s Mosaic. Prob- Marshall McLuhan, 1943–1962. Selected, compiled, ing the Literary Origins of Media Studies, University and edited by Eugene McNamara. McGraw-Hill, of Toronto Press, 2012. 1969.

—. “Not Just a Book on Media: Extending the Guten- —. “Art as Anti-Environment”, Art News Annual, berg Galaxy.” Te Gutenberg Galaxy. Te Making of XXXI, (1966), pp. 55-8 Typographic Man. University of Toronto Press, 2011, pp. xxv-xlv. —. ‘Verbo-Voco-Visual’, Explorations in Communica- tions, 8 October 1957, p. 11. Fernand, Léger and Murphey, Dudley, Ballet Mé- canique, Produced by André Charlot, Written by McLuhan, Marshall and Sorel Etrog. Spiral. Images Fernand Léger, Music by George Antheil, Cinema- from the Film. Text by Marshall McLuhan, Exile, 1987. tography by Dudley Murphey and Man Ray. Silent Movie, France, 1924 McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore. Te Medium Liska, Vivian and Astradur Eysteinsson, editors. Is the Massage. Bantam Books, 1968. Modernism. Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages Series, John Benjamins, 2007. —. War and Peace in the Global Village. Bantam Books, 1968. Marchand, Philip. Marshall McLuhan: Te Medium and the Messenger. Ticknor & Fields, 1989. McLuhan, Marshall and Parker Harley. Trough the Vanishing Point: Space in Poetry and Painting. Harp- McLuhan, Marshall. Te Mechanical Bride: Folklore er & Row, 1969. of Industrial Man. 1951. Gingko Press, 2002. McLuhan, Marshall and Wilfred Watson Wilfred. —. Te Gutenberg Galaxy. Te Making of Typographic From Cliché to Archetype. 1970. Pocket Books, 1971. Man. 1962. Centennial edition. Toronto: U of Toron- to P, 2011. Moos, Michael A. Marshall McLuhan Essays: Media Research, Technology, Art, Communication. Amster- —. Counterblast 1954 edn. Foreword by W. Terrence dam OPA, 1997. Gordon. Aferword by Elena Lamberti, Transmedi- ale / Gingko P, 2011. Moss, John and Linda M. Morra, editors. At the Speed of Light Tere Is Only Illumination: A Reap- —. Te Gutenberg Galaxy: Te Making of Typograph- praisal of Marshall McLuhan. U of Ottawa P, 2004. ic Man. 1962. Centennial edition, with new essays by Terrence Gordon, Elena Lamberti, Dominique Powe, Bruce W. Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Schefel-Dunand, U of Toronto P, 2011. Frye. Apocalypse and Alchemy. U of Toronto Press, 2014.

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Rubin William S. Dada, Surrealism, and Teir Her- 4 Concerning McLuhan and the Teatre of the itage. Te Museum of Modern Art. Distributed by Absurd, it is interesting to recall what writes Philip New York Graphic Society Ltd., 1968 Marchand in his biography of McLuhan: “On De- cember 24th, 1980, in the company of Corinne and Teall, Donald F. Te Virtual Marshall McLuhan. Teri, McLuhan visited an exhibition of sculptures McGill-Queen’s UP, 2001. by Sorel Etrog at a local gallery. Etrog, an admirer of the works of Samuel Beckett as well as of McLu- —. Te Medium Is the Rear-View Mirror: Understand- han’s writings, had infuriated McLuhan earlier that ing McLuhan. McGill-Queen’s UP, 1971. month by comparing him to Beckett. McLuhan, who regarded the absolute godlessness of Beckett’s work Te Video McLuhan. Written and narrated by Tom with something approaching horror, grew so red in Wolfe. Set of six VHS video-tapes. McLuhan Pro- the face that one of his vein stood out” (275). Tis ductions, 1996. vehement reaction did not compromise the friend- ship between McLuhan and Etrog, who spent part Willmott, Glenn. McLuhan, or Modernism in Re- of McLuhan’s last Christmas vigil together. None- verse. U of Toronto P, 1996. theless, this reaction may surprise the reader, as Mc- Luhan ofen referred to the Teatre of the Absurd Notes to exemplify the societal contemporary malaise. For instance, in the introduction to his Understanding 1 “Te youth Narcissus mistook his own refection Media, McLuhan writes: “Te Teatre of the Absurd in the water for another person. Tis extension of dramatizes this recent dilemma of the Western man, himself by mirror numbed his perceptions until he the man of action who appears not to be involved in became the servomechanism of his own extended or the action. Such is the origin and appeal of Samuel repeated image… . He was numb. He had adapted Beckett’s clown” (20). to his extension of himself and had become a closed system.” (McLuhan, Understanding Media 63). 5 See: Etrog, Joyce and the Dada Circus: A Col- lage / An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake. Tis work 2 See: Marchand; Teall; Willmott; Moss and Mor- was frst published together with John Cage’s About ra; Barilli. Roartorio. An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake, edited and with and Introduction by Robert O’Driscoll for 3 “Te Gutenberg Galaxy develops a mosaic or feld the Te Dolmen Press in 1982. approach to its problems. Such a mosaic image of numerous data and quotations in evidence ofers 6 “When Sputnik went around the planet, nature the only practical means of revealing causal oper- disappeared, nature was hijacked of the planet, na- ations in history.” (McLuhan, Te Gutenberg Galaxy ture was enclosed in a manmade environment and 7). On the idea of McLuhan’s mosaic see also Lam- art took the place of nature. Planet became art from” berti, Marshall McLuhan’s Mosaic. (Te Video McLuhan).

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