Marshall Mcluhan and the Arts

GUEST EDITORS

JAQUELINE MCLEOD ROGERS

ADAM LAUDER

CONTRIBUTORS

ADAM LAUDER AND JAQUELINE MCLEOD ROGERS

ELENA LAMBERTI

ALEXANDER KUSKIS

ADINA BALINT

JESSICA JACOBSON-KONEFALL MAY CHEW DAINA WARREN

TOM MCGLYNN

HENRY ADAM SVEC

KENNETH R. ALLAN

MOHAMMAD SALEMY

JODY BERLAND

GARY GENOSKO

REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES

MARSHALL MCLUHAN AND THE ARTS

ISSUE 8-3, 2017 MARSHALL MCLUHAN AND THE ARTS ISSUE 8-3, 2017 Guest Editors – Jaqueline McLeod Rogers and Adam Lauder Issue Managing Editor - Brent Ryan Bellamy

Editor in Chief | Rédacteur en chef Sheena Wilson Managing Editor | Rédacteur Brent Ryan Bellamy Editorial Team | Comité de rédaction Brent Ryan Bellamy, Dominique Laurent, Andriko Lozowy, Tara Milbrandt, Carrie Smith-Prei, and Sheena Wilson Elicitations Reviews Editor | Comptes rendus critiques – Élicitations Tara Milbrandt Web Editor | Mise en forme web Brent Ryan Bellamy French Translator & Copy Editor | Traductions françaises Ève Robidoux-Descary English Substantive & Copy Editor | Rédacteur Shama Rangwala Copy Editor | Révisions Shama Rangwala Founding Editors | Fondateurs William Anselmi, Daniel Laforest, Carrie Smith-Prei, Sheena Wilson Previous Team Members | Anciens membres de l’équipe Marine Gheno, Dennis Kilfoy, Daniel Laforest, Lars Richter, Katherine Rollans, Angela Sacher, Dalbir Sehmby, Justin Sully Editorial Advisory Board | Comité scientifque Hester Baer, University of Maryland College Park, United States Mieke Bal, University of Amsterdam & Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Netherlands Andrew Burke, University of Winnipeg, Canada Ollivier Dyens, Concordia University, Canada Michèle Garneau, Université de Montréal, Canada Wlad Godzich, University of California Santa Cruz, United States Kosta Gouliamos, European University, Cyprus Faye Hammill, University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom Anton Kaes, University of California Berkeley, United States Dominic McIver Lopes, University of British Columbia, Canada Sarah McGaughey, Dickinson College, United States Peter McIsaac, University of Michigan, United States Marie-Dominique Popelard, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris, France Christine Ramsay, University of Regina, Canada Laurence A. Rickels, Academy of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe, Germany Will Straw, McGill Univeristy, Canada Imre Szeman, University of Alberta, Canada

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Printed in Canada Sommaire/Contents

McLuhan and the Arts after the Speculative Turn • 5 Adam Lauder and Jaqueline McLeod Rogers Printing a Film to Make it Resonate: Sorel Etrog and Marshall McLuhan’s Spiral • 25 Elena Lamberti Mansaram and Marshall McLuhan: Collaboration in Collage Art • 39 Alexander Kuskis Critique, texte et art contemporain. Repenser l’héritage de Marshall McLuhan aujourd’hui • 57 Adina Balint Songlines, not Stupor: Cheryl L’Hirondelle’s nikamon ohci aski: songs because of the land as Tech- nological Citizenship on the Lands Currently Called “Canada” • 71 Jessica Jacobson-KonefallMay ChewDaina Warren McLuhan’s Photographic Gestalt (and the project of the object world) • 83 Tom McGlynn L(a)ying with Marshall McLuhan: Media Theory as Hoax Art • 99 Henry Adam Svec Marshall McLuhan’s Counterenvironment within the Stream of Defamiliarization • 111 Kenneth R. Allan Our World: McLuhan’s Idea of Globalized Presence as the Prehistory of Computational Temporality • 129 Mohammad Salemy Assembling the (Non)Human: The Animal as Medium • 139 Jody Berland The Designscapes of Harley Parker: Print and Built Environments • 153 Gary Genosko Contributors • 165

Front Cover Image: Tom McGlynn. painted over crosswalk, Jersey City, 2016. Acknowledgements

Collecting essays about McLuhan’s interest in and contributions to art theory and practice has been a delight from start to fnish. We thank all involved in moving this project forward—a diverse group resistant to being called out on an individual basis. The online version of our special issue of Imag- inations journal attracted brilliant essays and frst-rate scholarship as well as many original insights and connections. To celebrate this substantive contribution to McLuhan scholarship, we were eager to see the journal migrate to a print version. Of course, we have been aware that this act of remediation—moving from online to print—goes against current trends and invokes the tetralogical principle of reversal. Judging by the number of contributors and McLuhan scholars who have requested a print version of the journal, it seems we continue to crave the attractions of print and literacy.

Thanks to Imaginations editorial board for accepting and encouraging the project. Special thanks go to Brent Ryan Bellamy, who was always organized, gracious and generous in responding to every in- quiry, and always kept us to timelines. We were also impressed by the impeccable editing of Shama Rangwala, whose textual revisions often indicated that she may have understood better how to give bold salience to a moody idea. We feel fortunate to have worked with Dr. Markus Reisenleitner, who took over the task of making the volume print ready. We are grateful to contributor Adina Balint for generously supporting the project of seeing the volume into print.

University of Winnipeg has been generous in providing support for this project, making the print volume possible. We want to thank Dr. Jino Distasio, VPA of Research, who provided invaluable seed funding. By showing interest and asking incisive questions, he also provided encouragement and some practical guidance, as did Dr. James Currie, VPA UW. We are especially grateful to Education Dean Dr. Ken McCluskey, who stepped forward to share his publishing resources and who believes in the value of books and their production—maybe they have some lingering cultural power after all. Thanks, too, to Kari McCluskey, who helped with every stage of the print production work, drawing on her considerable experience to make good decisions. Adam Lauder would like to acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. MCLUHAN AND THE ARTS AFTER THE SPECULATIVE TURN

ADAM LAUDER AND JAQUELINE MCLEOD ROGERS

cLuhan and the arts is a well-trod- signifcant advance in our still evolving con- den theme yet surprisingly still fer- ception of McLuhan as a thinker and practi- tile ground for original scholarship tioner of aesthetics. Mand research-creation. Milestones include ex- cavations by Richard Cavell and Elena Lamber- A notable acceleration in the uptake of McLu- ti of the aesthetic sources of McLuhan’s media han’s thought in recent years points to some- analyses in the literature and visual arts of his thing of a mutation in the trajectory of recovery, time as well as his infuence on a range of con- restoration, and revision initiated by the publi- temporary artistic projects, from happenings cation of his Letters in 1987. It has become com- to installation art. Janine Marchessault and monplace to attribute McLuhan’s post-contem- Donald Teall have also presented compelling porary revival to the forces of retrospection portraits of the media thinker as himself an and reassessment focused by centennial cele- artist or “poet-artist manqué” (Teall, Te Me- brations of his birth in 2011. Yet there is more dium 6).1 More recently, case studies of specifc than chronology driving this renaissance. artists and movements inspired by McLuhan— notably Kenneth R. Allan’s exploration of Mc- Richard Cavell has recently drawn parallels Luhan’s notion of the “counterenvironment” as between McLuhan’s thought and contempo- a mode of immanent critique practiced by con- rary afect theory and new materialisms. It is ceptualists ranging from Dan Graham to the also not coincidental that McLuhan’s thought Vancouver-based N.E. Ting Co. Ltd.—have experiments have been the object of renewed lent additional defnition and texture to exist- attention amidst the intellectual sea-change ing accounts of the longue durée of McLuhan’s spelled by the speculative turn. While it would infuential percepts. Yet no authoritative sur- be dubious and unfruitful to retrospectively vey of McLuhan’s global impact on contempo- claim McLuhan as a new realist avant la lettre, rary art has emerged to-date. Tis special issue compelling resonances between his trans- of Imaginations does not, and for reasons of gression of disciplinary boundaries and pres- space alone cannot, fll this gap. Nonetheless, ent-day intellectual currents illuminate some the articles and artists’ responses gathered here, of the leading concerns propelling the pres- both collectively and individually, constitute a ent special issue of Imaginations. If the 1990s

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gave us a “virtual” McLuhan who was simulta- “non-philosophy” elaborated by Laruelle that neously a philosopher of diference and a fore- comes closest to McLuhan’s non-standard hu- runner of the spatial turn, today the media an- manism and best illuminates the experimental alyst is ripe for reevaluation as the generatively currents propelling this special issue. unclassifable thinker that he is. Laruelle (b. 1937) is Professor Emeritus at the In common with the proponents of various University of Paris X (Nanterre). Of his more Speculative Realisms, McLuhan’s writings are than 20 monographs, some dating back to the characterized by a profound wariness of the 1970s, English translations have only begun to “Subject” produced by Enlightenment epis- appear since 2010, although they are now be- temologies and conserved, if profoundly re- ing published at a rapid rate by the most distin- confgured, by the linguistic turn which coin- guished academic presses. Laruelle began his cided with the waning of his own reputation career by extending but also hybridizing the afer 1968.2 “Man” may be the unapologetic seemingly incompatible post-structuralist the- subject of McLuhan’s media explorations, yet ories of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze. By it is no liberal-humanist individual—no Vit- the early 1980s, however, he was beginning to ruvian Man—that emerges from his collagiste push against these “Philosophies of Diference” prose. Rather, McLuhan presents us with an to formulate his own non-philosophical alter- oddly prosthetic and generic humanity that native (discussed in detail below): a rethink- anticipates the contemporary French thinking of the central assumptions of continen- er François Laruelle’s provocative contention tal philosophy that nonetheless makes new, if that “there are no longer subjects” (“Is Tink- sometimes unrecognizable and perverse, uses ing Democratic?” 233). Likewise anticipatory of its now-familiar concepts and vocabulary. of Speculative Realism, McLuhan drew upon Some commentators group Laruelle with An- a range of scientifc discourses to expand the glo-American thinkers associated with Specu- scope of humanistic study beyond the con- lative Realism—an afliation that the non-phi- fnes of Greek metaphysics and Judeo-Chris- losopher would likely reject. Nonetheless, tian theology. In particular, McLuhan emerges Laruelle’s project shares with SR an ambition to as a prescient critic of linguistics as the master think beyond such hallmarks of French Teory signifer of the human. For the Toronto School as the linguistic metaphor and the centrality of thinker, as for contemporary realists, “ontology the Subject utilizing techniques and terminol- is politics” (Bryant, Srnicek, and Harman 16)— ogy derived from science. an orientation made plain by his prefatory profession of faith in “the ultimate harmony of all Like Laruelle, McLuhan is a gnomic thinker being” in Understanding Media (5). who defes standard disciplinary taxonomies and norms. Indeed, McLuhan’s currently ac- Yet McLuhan’s non-Kantianism—derived from cepted designation as a media theorist or me- Henri Bergson, as traced by Stephen Crock- dia philosopher is questionable, not only on er—thwarts any meaningful alignment with the basis of his own of-noted resistance to contemporary neo-Kantians such as Gra- systemization; the Toronto School thinker pre- ham Harman or his noumenal world of “ob- ferred, like Laruelle, an aesthetic and experi- jects.” It is, rather, the eccentric project of mental methodology substituting non-rational

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“percepts” for the concepts of conventional culture and perspectival optics alike (Counter- epistemology. Even the default subsumption of blast n.p.). Paralleling the originary “blackness” McLuhan’s protean speculations under the ru- that Laruelle attributes to the Real (thereby re- bric of media studies is debatable, if only giv- jecting standard metaphysical metaphors of il- en his noted lack of training in communica- lumination and enlightenment), McLuhan de- tions and resolutely literary methodology. Like scribed this acoustic space as “the dark of the Laruelle, McLuhan’s project is more accurate- mind” (Counterblast).4 ly characterized as an irreverent bricolage of seemingly irreconcilable methodologies that Moreover, McLuhan’s acoustic space as well as efects a mutation of the central forms of clas- the “mosaic” form that he developed to com- sical Western epistemology and its contempo- municate its heteronomous essence (Gutenberg rary ofspring. Galaxy 265) can both be likened to Laruelle’s insistence upon the foreclosure of the Real to Te formal orientation of McLuhan’s analyses epistemological capture: a “One” that unilater- was long dismissed as a methodological short- ally equalizes all attempts at its representation coming, a holdover from the naïve formalism as necessarily incomplete. Laruelle’s universe practiced by an earlier generation of human- establishes an irreversible vector from the Re- ists. Jessica Pressman has persuasively argued al-One to its representations, thereby standing for a recovery of McLuhan’s approach as an in- on their head the pretentions of philosophers novative modality of New Critical techniques to transform the Real. McLuhan’s mediatic of close reading. In light of Laruelle’s trenchant Real is likewise misconstrued as relational. Af- critique of the enduring form of Western phi- ter all, the medium is the message: the terms of losophy, however—what he describes as its this most celebrated yet persistently obscure of circular, “decisional” structure (the constantly McLuhan’s axioms being as irreversible as the rearticulated yet functionally invariant dyads variables in Laruelle’s non-philosophical ma- of Subject/object, Idea/representation, One/ trix. Te medium is a vector that only travels in multiple, Being/beings, etc.)—McLuhan’s for- one direction. In other words, content, always mal methodology emerges with renewed rel- inadequate as a description of the medium and evance as a perspicacious excavation of the a secondary to its efects in McLuhan’s writings, prioris of Western epistemology and aesthet- can be likened to Laruelle’s view of philoso- ics. Indeed, there is a strikingly proto-Laruel- phy’s doomed attempts at capturing the Real. lian orientation to McLuhan’s recognition of the dyadic fgure/ground dynamics of typog- Te conficting percepts superposed by Mc- raphy as an artefact of Western rationalism and Luhan’s textual mosaic issue unilaterally from its binary apparatus of subjectivization. Antici- a non-totalizable mediatic Real. His analyses pating the quantum chaos, or chôra, that Laru- thereby unfold “alongside” the blackness of elle opposes to the empirico-transcendental acoustic space in a manner consonant with doublets of philosophy, McLuhan, himself par- Laruelle’s non-philosophical project (Intellec- tially infuenced by developments in quantum tuals and Power 32). Te medium is the message mechanics,3 hypothesized a non-perspectival can also be understood as articulating a form “acoustic space” in contradistinction to the du- of radical immanence; that is, the message does alistic positions structurally inscribed in print not transcend the medium, but is immanent to

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its form. Tis immanental orientation corrob- representational machinery of Platonic episte- orates Donald Teall’s likening of McLuhan’s mologies more generally. thought to that of Deleuze, whose 1968 text Te Logic of Sense infuentially proposed a neo-Sto- Te mannerist theatre staged by McLuhan’s ic reading of the “blank word,” which (like Mc- “non-book” collaborations with designers Luhan’s medium) “says its own sense” (79).5 Quentin Fiore and Harley Parker (Michaels, McLuhan’s maxim equally resounds in Laruel- “Foreword” 8) abounds in quotations and imag- le’s radical deconstruction of Deleuze’s philos- es gleaned from a beguiling gamut of pop-cul- ophy of immanence; the former proposing, in tural and “serious” sources (not to mention the words of John Ó Maoilearca, a thought ca- their incessant paraphrase of McLuhan’s own pable of “doing what we say we do” (45, original earlier, single-authored texts). Precedent for emphasis). What more concise description of such assemblage is found in the ventriloquism McLuhan’s medium than that it, too, says what of mass-media formats (comic-strip, editorial, it does? newspaper) and the high-Modernist prosody performed by Te Mechanical Bride, the me- McLuhan elaborated his prescient critique of dia analyst’s frst monograph. Yet McLuhan’s the dyadic technics of Western thought in a détournement of readymade materials can be performative style that Richard Cavell has pro- traced further back to the anti-Bergsonian (yet, ductively likened to performance art.6 Similar- paradoxically, enduringly Bergsonian) rhetoric ly, Laruelle has stated that, “what interests me of Wyndham Lewis: the Canadian-born multi- is philosophy as the material for an art” (Mack- media Modernist whose impact on McLuhan ay and Laruelle 29): an aesthetic project that has been analyzed in depth by Lamberti and he characteristically qualifes as non-standard is the subject of the recent anthology Counter- aesthetics. Te mosaic of quotations assembled blasting Canada. by Te Gutenberg Galaxy “clones”—as Laruel- le would say—its philosophical and aesthetic Lewis—whom McLuhan frst read during his reference material through a scriptural redu- doctoral studies at Cambridge in the mid- plication that deliberately contravenes the her- 1930s, and subsequently befriended during meneutic norms of philosophical commentary World War II while lecturing at St. Louis Uni- and interpretation. McLuhan thereby reduces versity and Assumption College (today’s Uni- his chosen objects of study (François Rabelais, versity of Windsor)—was a prominent crit- Peter Ramus, Te Tragedy of King Lear, etc.) to ic of the non-logical metaphysics of Bergson. so many “simple materials” (Laruelle Principles Yet, as SueEllen Campbell and others have of Non-Philosophy 9) or, what he would term demonstrated, Lewis’s anti-Bergsonian po- with Wilfred Watson, “clichés,” stripped of lemic remained perplexingly Bergsonian in their pretentions to transcendent Truth. Tis its mere upending of the driving dualisms of citational procedure—which sets the stage for Bergsonian metaphysics: “matter and memo- Laruelle’s practice of radical paraphrase—pow- ry, perception and recollection, objective and erfully foregrounds the materiality of print as subjective” (Deleuze, Bergsonism 53). Howev- an instrument of rational thought while simul- er, where Campbell and other commentators taneously exposing and sterilizing the dyadic on Lewis’s fraught relationship to Bergsonian modernisms have tended to view the British

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artist-author’s enduring if covert Bergsonism the constraints of logical consistency, whose as an unwitting inconsistency, it is equally le- “proof” it purported to embody (Counterblast gitimate to recognize in Lewis’s “perverse” (Ed- n.p.). In the post-lineal world inaugurated by wards, “Wyndham Lewis’s Vorticism” 39) Berg- electronic media, “[a]ll knowledges are equal” sonism a deliberate logic of paraconsistency. A (Ó Maoilearca 28), just as no representation of similarly heretical reuse of Bergsonian dual- the Real can dominate in Laruelle’s democracy isms in tandem with borrowings from contem- of thought. porary scientifc discourse was made earlier by Marcel Duchamp (see Henderson; Luisetti Much as Laruelle has strategically appropriated and Sharp; Ó Maoilearca), whose para-paint- theoretical material from the neo-Bergsonian erly masterpiece Te Bride Stripped Bare by Deleuze, whose imperative (as paraphrased Her Bachelors, Even (1915-1923) also informed with collaborator Félix Guattari) to “create McLuhan’s Mechanical Bride (see Cavell, Re- concepts” (5) he has divested of its metaphys- mediating McLuhan 50). Much as Duchamp ical impulse, Lewis mimicked Bergson’s meta- seized upon the denigrated mechanical and physics of creative evolution in his 1930 mas- rationalist pole of Bergson’s dualist apparatus terpiece, Te Apes of God. Te latter text stages to enact an unauthorized, and pointedly an- a carnivalesque pageantry of modernist clones ti-vital, reuse of the French vitalist thinker’s mocking the French philosopher’s artistic ac- conceptual apparatus, Lewis, too, can be un- olytes, who are represented as little more than derstood as appropriating Bergson’s popular stereotyped “walking ideas” (Edwards, Wyn- writings as “a whatever material” for unsanc- dham Lewis 320). Occupying the perspectival tioned remediation (Ó Maoilearca 164). Clear- centre of Lewis’s literary vortex is the absentee ing a path for the non-philosophical “clones” philosopher Pierpoint (or “peer-point”) (Mill- of Laruelle as well as the clichés of McLuhan er 117), whose insights are parroted by the den- and Watson, Lewis’s heteroglossia of Bergso- izens of Lewis’s counterfeit “society of creators” nian formulas belongs to a Bergsonian tradi- (Deleuze, Bergsonism 111). Acting as the proto- tion and yet remains defantly non-Bergsonian typical medium, the Virgil-like Horace Zagreus in its divestiture—and, indeed, overt satire—of “broadcasts” (Apes 271, 418, 433, 434) Pierpoint’s the transformational potential of philosophical views via mock-radiophonic performanc- concepts. In McLuhan’s reworking of Lewisian es of the reclusive guru’s “encyclical” (125) as strategies of pastiche, paraconsistency emerg- he guides protagonist Dan Boleyn through a es as a primary characteristic of what he alter- Dantean Bloomsbury. Lewis’s satirical rever- nately termed “post-lineal” or “post-alphabet- sal of the dynamics of Bergsonian comedy (as ic” culture: neologisms that are strikingly con- theorized by the French thinker in his pop- sistent with the non-Euclidean model pursued ular essay Laughter)—which Lewis dubbed by the egalitarian thought of Laruelle in their “non-moral satire” (Men Without Art 107-108) radical expansion and mutation (but not aban- in opposition to the socially corrective func- donment) of the schemata of classical episte- tion that Bergson attributed to the mechanical mology.7 In advance of Laruelle, McLuhan was essence of the comic—can be likened to John drawn to non-Euclidean models of space that Ó Maoilearca’s description of non-philosophy’s liberated humanity from what he dubbed the “mockery of the philosopher’s truth” (176): a “straight-jacket” of the parallel postulate and mockery enacted through a quasi-behaviourist,

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“postual” miming of philosophical positions vocabulary from divergent domains to fabulate (see also Hokenson). Similarly, Teall situated novel thoughts that are real but fctive: not au- the Menippean satire of academic norms prac- thoritative descriptions of the Real but rather ticed by McLuhan’s irrevent non-books with- fctions composed of statements that, however in a tradition of “learned satire” with which confictual or incomplete, are nonetheless real he also connected Lewis (Te Virtual Marshall in themselves. McLuhan 41). A contemporary artist whose work suggests A key point of tension between the non-Berg- compelling analogies with Laruelle’s practice sonian mimicry practiced by both Laruelle of philo-fction is Robert Smithson (1938-1973), and Lewis emerges from the latter’s emphatic whose photo-essays transgress disciplinary anti-humanism, which cannot be reconciled boundaries and protocols to spin unreliable with the persistence of the Human in non-phi- narratives cannibalizing the work of other cre- losophy. Laruelle insists that the “non-” prefx ators. Te early Smithson text “Entropy and which he appends to his minoritarian practice the New Monuments” is axiomatic in its trans- of thought is in no way synonymous with the formation of a conventional survey of recent negation implied by anti-philosophy. Non-phi- art (in this case, Minimalist sculpture) into a losophy does not aim to overturn or nullify free-ranging meditation on the ineluctable fa- philosophy, but—on the model of non-Eu- tum of an entropic cosmos, weaving referenc- clidean geometry, which accepts the axioms of es to everything from tourist guides to Claude classical geometry yet adds seemingly incom- Lévi-Strauss into a deliberately anti-academic patible postulates thereto—sets out to expand heteroglossia. Smithson’s compulsive fabula- the scope of humanistic study by multiplying tion echoes McLuhan’s reconfguration of the and mutating its disciplinary resources, even “critic as creator” (Cavell, Remediating McLu- at the risk of inconsistency. Te persistence of han 79) through his innovation of the multi- the Human in Laruelle’s thought is framed in modal “essai concrète” (Teall, Te Medium emphatically futural terms, as the open ques- 240). tion of humanity’s “salvation” (Smith, Laruelle 6), a formulation that recalls the future tense “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan,” in which McLuhan cast his prophetic pro- Smithson’s signature 1969 mock-travelogue, nouncements on social and sensorial transfor- reported on a recent tour of the Mexican pen- mations that he associated with the prolifera- insula in a satirically hypertrophied imperson- tion of electronic media. A shared modality of ation of the frst-person narrative conventions science fction is an additional manifestation of embedded journalism that may have been of the two thinkers’ common literary orienta- inspired by the artist’s familiarity with the iron- tion: a re-description of philosophical and ex- ic travel writings of Wyndham Lewis, whom tra-philosophical materials that Laruelle theo- he referred to as his “favorite author” in 1965 rizes (in reference to his own project) as “phi- (qtd. In Crow 37).8 “Incidents of Mirror-Travel” lo-fction.” Refusing to abandon the contents is eminently philo-fctive in its superposition of conventional philosophical discourse, Laru- of its host text—the 19th-century American elle instead “superposes”—an operation trans- travel writer John Lloyd Stephens’s 1843 Inci- planted from quantum physics—concepts and dents of travel in Yucatán—with more dubious

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“histories” of the mythical continents of Atlan- geometry” (127) of these mirrored arrays can tis and Mu by James Churchward and Ignati- be likened to the “matrix” that Laruelle posits us Donnelly. Tis pseudo-scientifc travesty of as the a priori of a (non-)photographic vision Atlantean utopias efects a ludic “revers[al of] preceding the emergence of the technical ap- Platonism” (Deleuze, Logic of Sense 291). paratus of the camera—which, in his account, is only incidental to a longer trajectory of phi- Smithson recounts his temporary installation losophy’s “onto-photo-logical” unfolding (Pho- of “hypothetical continents” along his Yucatán to-Fiction 3).9 Te alternating f ares and mot- itinerary based on the imaginative cartogra- tled obscurity manifested by Smithson’s arrays phies of Churchward and Donnelly: piles of can also be likened to the “blinding of the light seashells or stone conjuring the conjectured of logos by the really blind thought of photog- coastlines of the “lost” landmasses of Lemu- raphy” postulated by Laruelle as a refusal of ria and Mu. In thus materializing a specious the representational metaphysics of Platonism facticity, Smithson manifests a logic of para- (Te Concept 58). As Smithson writes, “mirror consistency anticipatory of Laruelle. “Con- surfaces cannot be understood by reason” (“In- trary to afrmations of nature,” writes Smith- cidents of Mirror-Travel” 124). son, “art is inclined to semblances and masks, it fourishes on discrepancy” (“Incidents of Te non-photographic image theorized by Mirror-Travel” 132). Laruelle as an alternative to the specular optics of conventional photographic discourse is “Incidents of Mirror-Travel” simultaneously confoundingly “obscure and black” (Te Con- mobilizes the camera in unconventional ways cept 58). Like the non-photographic “clones” of that clear a path for Laruelle’s discourse on an unrepresentable Real formulated by Laruel- “non-photography” as an instantiation of “vi- le, Smithson’s mirror displacements are, more- sion-in-One,” the French thinker’s term for a over, “empty in general of phenomenological unilateral modifcation of human perception. structures of perception: horizon, feld of con- Photographs accompanying Smithson’s tex- sciousness, fringe and margin, pregnant form tual account of his Yucatán expedition point- (Gestalt), fux, etc.” (Te Concept 102). Te art- edly depart from the formalist conventions of ist superposes mottled or monochromatic mir- a medium then struggling to acquire critical rors with generic stretches of beach or jungle to legitimacy. Smithson’s defantly casual photo- produce not a photographic representation but graphs redirect the reader’s touristic gaze away rather a non-mimetic “clone” of the Real. Te from the expected archaeological monuments phenomenologically void visuality composed portended by the title’s nod to Stephens. Tey by Laruelle’s photographic clones is a “vision- record instead an anti-spectacular invento- in-One”: not a representation of the (non-vi- ry of sites/sights: ephemeral arrays of square sualizable) Real-One, but the manifestation mirrors, or “mirror displacements,” installed of a “specifc relation to the real” (Te Concept by the artist on beaches and the jungle foor. 143, 6). Perversely, these crude grids refuse a specular optics, refecting instead monochromatic ex- Unlike philosophy’s attempts at remaking the panses of sky or dazzling solar fares. Te rig- Real in its own image, Laruelle’s non-philoso- orous abstraction constituted by the “broken phy aims at “[a] radical modifcation not of the

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World but of our vision(-in-One) of the World” cites McLuhan’s notion, advanced by Under- (Principles of Non-Philosophy 190). Tis am- standing Media, that cinema generates a “Reel bition, particularly as expressed through the World” (91)—a postulate which we might ret- matrix of non-photography, can be likened to rospectively liken to Laruelle’s discourse on the mediatic and sensorial project of McLu- photo-fction. Inspired by the form as much as han, whose “mosaic” resembles Laruelle’s vi- the content of McLuhan’s writing, Smithson’s sion-in-One. Both ofer unilateral manifesta- photo-essays do not so much represent a per- tions of the Real’s precession: not an illuminat- vasively mediated world as elaborate intricate ing and specular light on, but an opaque and fctions conjugating photographic and philo- vectorial light through. But what then to make sophical materials. of McLuhan’s frequent designation by communications scholars as a transformation theorist? Another contemporary creator amenable to in- Does not his celebrated re-description of the terpretation through a superposition of McLu- “matching” model inscribed in classical Infor- han’s aesthetic speculations with the non-aes- mation Teory as creative “making” disclose a thetic thought of Laruelle is the former Van- nakedly philosophical pretension (“Environ- couver-based conceptual enterprise, N.E. ment” 118)? Our answer must be no. In com- Ting Co. Ltd. (NETCO, 1966-1978). From its mon with Laruelle, it is our vision of the world 1966 founding by Canadian artist Iain Baxter that McLuhan aims to modify and whose pri- (b. 1936), the fctional corporation was thor- or modifcations he painstakingly historicizes oughly McLuhanite in inspiration. Baxter through case studies of specifc media such as had been early exposed to the media analyst the printing press. Te Real remains emphati- through his participation in planning the 1965 cally impervious to the mediatic (re-)“making” McLuhan-themed Festival of the Contempo- of McLuhan’s Man. McLuhan’s “medium” is rary Arts at the University of British Colum- not an alienated relation but something clos- bia (UBC), where he was then employed as er to what Laruelle terms a “unilateral duali- an assistant professor. Notes for a “self-inter- ty”: a non-dialectical distance or (non-Kantian) view” delivered at UBC in the spring of 1965 transcendental.10 Tis notion of immanent dis- deploy such McLuhanite terminology as “lin- tance is perhaps most powerfully conveyed by eal,” “mosaic,” and “interplay of media,” the McLuhan’s infuential theorization of the “An- artist proposing that “macluen [sic] says [w]e ti-Environment” (or counterenvironment) must learn to arrange the sensory life in order brought into visibility by the artist, which ex- to…fashion the environment itself as a work of poses habitually unseen aspects of the every- art” (n.p.). In the same year as these initial en- day without thereby negating them. Due to its gagements with McLuhan, Baxter joined forces quantum essence, the vectorial Real is, how- with fellow Washington State University alum- ever, never deterministic, notwithstanding its nus John Friel to form the artists’ collective IT, unidirectional character. which also involved occasional contributions by future NETCO co-president, and Baxter’s Smithson’s familiarity with McLuhan’s the- then wife, Ingrid Baxter (b. 1938; known until ses on media and perception is attested to by 1971 as Elaine Baxter). Anticipating the corpo- direct references in such texts as “A Museum rate authorship of the N.E. Ting Co.—whose of Language in the Vicinity of Art,” where he inhabitation of business frameworks would

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parallel McLuhan’s corporate “de-authoriza- a solo exhibition at the Sonnabend Gallery in tion” of Romantic constructions of the singu- New York (Fig. 2). More than a postmodern lar creator (Cavell, Remediating McLuhan 31)— recognition of pervasive mediation, IT’s clones IT’s products were the work of “more than one dramatize the foreclosure of the Real: trans- mind” (Baxter to Deborah, April 22, 1966). Te forming aesthetic objects into inert material anonymous participants of IT and NETCO si- for disarmingly generic fctions. multaneously portend the “generic” humanity that Laruelle places in tension with the shared “Subject” of humanism and post-structuralism.

Figure 1. IT, Pneumatic Judd, 1965. Courtesy Iain Baxter& and Raven Row.

Te disorienting familiarity of IT’s stock-in- Figure 2. N.E. Thing Co. Ltd., Dummy Self-Portrait trade was a calculated efect of the collective’s Sculpture, 1971. Courtesy Iain Baxter& and Raven Row. unconventional methodology of cloning art- In parallel with his involvement in IT, Iain Bax- works by the recognized names in contempo- ter experimented with techniques of non-ver- rary art: from Donald Judd (Fig. 1) to Kenneth bal pedagogy that radicalized McLuhan’s cri- Noland and Claes Oldenburg. IT’s re-perfor- tique of print-based classroom procedure. In- mance of well-known canvases and sculptures corporating found objects gleaned from his ur- pointedly stripped their referents of all aes- ban explorations, Baxter’s lectures at UBC and thetic pretension through an irreverent substi- later at Simon Fraser University (SFU) mimed tution of non-art materials betokening the ge- a choreography of generic actions (such as neric textures of everyday life under late cap- “swimming on dry land,” Fig. 3) to a rigorous- italism for the transcendent realms of formal ly abstract soundtrack of John Cage and Edgar autonomy or self-referentiality attributed to Varèse (see Baigell and Smith 370). Tese in- their prototypes by critics and art historians. terventions mounted a dramatic challenge to Tis cloning procedure would realize its apo- scriptural epistemology inspired by McLuhan’s gee only afer IT was subsumed within NET- audile-tactile speculations and incorporating CO’s cunning “COP” (or Copy) Department Edward T. Hall’s insights on non-verbal com- when, in 1971, the co-presidents appeared as munication (which, signifcantly, also served as “dummies,” or clones of themselves, as part of a point of departure for McLuhan’s extension

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thesis). In Laruellian terms, non-verbal teach- an indirect product of Baxter’s involvement ing constituted a “postural” thought in which, in crafing a McLuhan-inspired “panaesthetic to quote John Ó Maoilearca, “ideas are turned grammar” of the arts at SFU (Schafer, “Clean- into behavior” (144). Te embodied “stance” ing” 10). (Laruelle, Te Concept 12) that Baxter’s McLu- han-inspired non-verbal pedagogy substituted NETCO was established as a transdisciplinary for the logical content of conventional teaching “umbrella” (Baxter, “Interview”) for the manu- served as a gateway to the sensorial informa- facture of a diversifed product line envisioned tion products subsequently manufactured by as varieties of what company personnel termed the N.E. Ting Co.—the company itself being “Sensitivity Information”: Sound Sensitivity In- formation, or SSI (“music, poetry [read], singing, oratory, etc.”), Moving Sensitivity Infor- mation, or MSI (“movies, dance, mountain climbing, track, etc.”), Experiential Sensitivity Information, or ESI (“theatre, etc.”), and Visual Sensitivity Information, or VSI (“a term developed and used by the N.E. Ting Co. to denote more appropriately the meaning of the traditional words ‘art’ and ‘fne art’ or ‘visual art’”) (“Glossary” n.p., Fig. 4). Te company’s discipline-defying inventory and sensorial taxon- omy resonated with the eforts of Baxter and fellow SFU faculty—notably composer and “soundscape” theorist R. Murray Schafer—to forge an interdisciplinary curriculum at the non-credit Centre for Communication and the Arts fueled by McLuhan’s non-Kantian hybridization of media and disparate disciplinary knowledges. Positioning themselves as peda- gogues-at-large, the company’s co-presidents identifed as public “educators of the senses” (Fleming 37). Sensitivity Information products generated by company researchers through their interactions with the environment were registered utilizing NETCO’s proprietary glossary of code-like Sensitivity Information ac- ronyms (listed above), sometimes assuming the form of absurd formulae mocking the structuralist drive to mathematize knowledge. Tese were inscribed on generic “information Figure 3. Iain Baxter, Non-Verbal Teaching (“Swimming on Dry Land”), ca. forms,” designed by “Director of Information” 1964-1966. Courtesy Iain Baxter& and Raven Row. Brian Dyson to serve as an infnitely extensible

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corporate archive. Te greater part of these in- abstract drawings manifest “blind” transcrip- formation forms documented the generic in- tions of musical performances, their seem- frastructure of suburbia. Sitting somewhere ingly random marks functioning somewhat between a conventional photo album and a akin to a “seismograph” (Galloway, Laruelle McLuhanesque blueprint for social media im- 163). NETCO’s registrations of Sensitivity In- age-sharing sites, the 1978 compendium of information comprise analogously non-mimetic formation forms, N.E. Ting Co. Ltd., Vol. 1, an- inscriptions of “afect and its intensity” (Laru- ticipates Mohammad Salemy’s recent likening elle, “La plus haute 144), having similarly de- of Instagram to the generic properties of Laru- veloped in dialogue with musical performance elle’s non-photography. (in NETCO’s case, R. Murray Schafer’s compu-

Figure 4. N.E. Thing Co. Ltd., “Glossary,” 1966. Courtesy Iain Baxter& and Raven Row.

Te Company’s mock-psychophysical tran- tational reimagining of conventional musical scriptions of its corporate operations can be notation as a record of”exact frequencies” as likened to the “economy of pure force” re- well as Iain Baxter’s redeployment of Cage and corded by the oeuvre of August von Briesen Varèse within the context of his own gestural in Laruelle’s perspicacious reading (“La plus experiments in non-verbal teaching) (Schafer, haute” 144). Trough a process akin to Surreal- Te New Soundscape 3). Von Briesen’s blind ist modalities of automatic writing, or the tech- inscriptions of musical performance manifest niques of psychophysical registration, or invol- an audible-tactile Real comparable, moreover, untary “writing down” (304), studied by Ger- to the acoustic space constituted by NETCO’s man media theorist Friedrich Kittler, Briesen’s

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McLuhan-inspired corporate archive of Sensi- interplay, between McLuhan and Sorel Etrog, tivity Information. the Romanian-born Canadian artist who passed away in 2014. In 1975, Etrog’s experi- Te intention of this admittedly somewhat per- mental flm Spiral was shown at McLuhan’s verse Laruellian reading of McLuhan and his Centre for Culture and Technology, trigger- artistic respondents is not to impose a false im- ing the collaborative publication based on that age of McLuhan as non-philosopher but, rath- movie, Spiral. Images from the Film, published er, to claim him as “material” for novel thought in 1987. Lamberti teases out Dadaist elements experiments that de-authorize canonical por- in Etrog’s montage, indicating how their as- traits of the media analyst, thereby opening up sault on familiarity and conformity appealed his percepts to new possibilities for non-stan- to McLuhan and inspired his proposal to select dard usage. Without applying a Laruellian lens stills and match them with a free-form text of per se, the articles assembled by this special is- quotations from various writers as well as orig- sue are exemplary demonstrations of just such inal commentary. a performative approach to McLuhan. Togeth- er, they constitute an appropriately fractalized Lamberti points out that McLuhan himself image of the media analyst and his contested can be understood as an artist who made a legacy. conscious shif from modernist avant-garde to neo-avant-gardes and the art forms of the While they examine new territory and are 1970s. Apart from rounding out the record wide-ranging in focus and methodology, the of McLuhan’s oeuvre by bringing this less- articles in this volume are assembled accord- er-known project to light, Lamberti also pays ing to likenesses of theme and approach. Te homage to Etrog and his contribution to the frst two examine McLuhan’s interactions with Canadian artistic renaissance. artists he knew, his contemporaries Sorel Etrog and P. Mansaram. Te next two identify points Te story of McLuhan and Mansaram provides of continuity between McLuhan’s perspectives a friendly and productive biographical ani- and contemporary work as well as points re- mation of a Joycean phrase favoured by Mc- quiring adjustment and amendment, particu- Luhan: “the West shall shake the East awake” larly in relation to Indigenous knowledge. Fol- (Understanding Media 236). Alexander Kuskis lowing these are two studies by artists who describes the dialogue between McLuhan and adapt McLuhan’s ideas in their own work. Te Mansaram begun when Mansaram arrived remaining four articles are theory-oriented, from India to establish himself in Toronto. Mc- each sounding McLuhan’s insights for reso- Luhan was interested in easternisms, and dis- nances with current critical engagements. covered in Mansaram and his art a primary and informing source. Coming early in this Both artists featured as McLuhan associates in volume, this article serves as a felicitous point the frst two articles were newcomers to Cana- of departure by introducing a number of ref- da, whose art refects their encounter with the erences foundational to McLuhan’s art theo- culture of Toronto as fresh and strange. Elena ry. For example, Kuskis reveals several places Lamberti animates a lesser-known collabora- where McLuhan developed his equation of art tion that expands our sense of fgure-ground with national security by linking art to Distant

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Early Warning (DEW Line) signals, under- the key role of the artist as McLuhan saw it— scoring how, for him, the artist fulflls a so- to explain the environment, both human and cial or civic calling, being both “defensive and human-made, from a stance at once atemporal prophetic.” and situated in space.

Kuskis’s close reading of a McLuhan-inspired Jessica Jacobson-Konefall, May Chew, and collage, Rear View Mirror 74, reveals how mon- Daina Warren analyze Cree artist Cheryl L’Hi- tage and mosaic are complementary in be- rondelle’s multidisciplinary art work nikamon ing fragmentary, co-authored, and multi-per- ohci askiy (songs because of the land), a piece spectival. Kuskis also exhumes the collabora- that began as a technologically-recorded per- tive process of making: McLuhan hand-wrote formance of L’Hirondelle’s walks through Van- several text passages onto the collage canvas, couver city spaces in 2006 and endures as an penciling in excerpts from sources he found interactive website. Tey present this work compelling in literature and life. Tere is also a as an example of how Indigenous artists use photograph of McLuhan mid-collage, taken by digital media to explore their relation to the Mansaram and paying direct homage to Mc- land—a relationship divergent from that of Luhan as inspiration. While McLuhan is fre- non-Indigenous colonizers with cultivated re- quently cast as artist in this volume, this arti- liance on media as tool extensions. In place of cle provides a concrete instance of his aesthetic roads cutting through land and settlements as- activity. serting property rights and ownership, L’Hi- rondelle’s art draws on a tradition of movement Speaking as a theorist grounded in French and pathways of Indigenous ancestors across the Québécois tradition, Adina Balint draws on land of North America. Te authors argue that several of McLuhan’s key concepts to reveal in Indigenous art, content is more important how they remain vital to the interests and prac- than form or medium, and that media are tools tices of three contemporary Canadian artists. adopted by First Nations artists for purposes of She also demonstrates how they can serve as circulation and engagement. critical tools and vocabulary illuminating our understanding of three recent exhibitions of For both contemporary artists represented their art: Vision trouble, Our Land: Contempo- here, McLuhan provides theoretical precedent rary Art from the Arctic, and Superimposition: and kinship. In his artist’s statement, Tom Mc- Sculpture and Image. Tese shows share a cen- Glynn complicates subject/object relations he tral drive to explore the interaction of percep- identifes in the medium of photography and tion, experience, and media, and she identifes in his photographic work as related to McLu- four characteristics that for McLuhan distin- han’s understanding of the photograph as both guished our encounter with art: an appeal to real and mediated. McGlynn links his decision the senses, viewer engagement, the creation of to photograph incomplete worlds—“partial in- relationships, and recognition of the unseen or stantiations”—to McLuhan’s concept of the hu- complexity that exceeds what can be perceived man encounter with external reality as being in everyday experience. Although Balint does one of self-imposed limitation and incomple- not urge this connection, readers might want tion. He accepts what he takes to be McLuhan’s to consider how these artists are performing challenge to avoid narrowing our gaze and our

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sensory lives by categorizing and naming, in- to be perceived as gnomic guru, and avoided stead being receptive to perceptual shifs and publishing a retrospective guide to assist the environmental change. McGlynn points out audience navigate his work via a script redact- that the photograph, for McLuhan, changed ed to impose a particular form of consistency. our relation to the object world, allowing the It is this commitment to the play and refusal individual holding the camera to capture a to break the spell by imposing temporal con- view of reality at once detailed and holistic— straints that Svec admires as precedent-setting yet at the same time, one limited by the pho- in his own hoax work. tographer’s selective focus. He says that the objects he presents in his photographs should be Te fnal four essays ofer theoretical examina- understood as having lives of their own, and tions of McLuhan’s work that resonate with ele- also as subjects of his composing. ments of the speculative turn—its materialism and realism, its rethinking of historicism, and In “L(a)ying with Marshall McLuhan: Me- its de-emphasis of the Subject through an en- dia Teory as Hoax Art,” Henry Adam Svec’s gagement with the non-human (animal). artist response examines media theory and hoax from his dual perspective as trained me- Ofering a longue durée of the “counterenvi- dia theorist and hoax performance artist who ronment,” Kenneth Allan places McLuhan’s has engaged in several projects that chase the concept in relation to the other and prior ex- question “wouldn’t it be fun if ?” He invokes pressions of “defamilarization” in art theory Innis as an iconic “scholarly persona” whom and practice, helping us to see shifs and con- he plays of against, and fnds fellowship with tinuities amongst users of this concept. While McLuhan, who was both performer and trick- he does not dismiss the ways in which McLu- ster—what Lamberti refers to in this volume as han put his signature on the idea, particularly a “sham” artist, a concept which, like Svec, she in his response to the media environment of employs to refer to his practice of de-center- his cultural moment, Allan is interested in the ing and de-familiarizing assumed patterns and broader contours of defamiliarization—its at practices with the grace of humour and even least 200-year history—and reminds us not to a measure of self-deprecation. Svec cites Glen “imagine that the idea emerges out of no- Wilmot’s description of McLuhan as consum- where in the many instances of its appearance.” mate mask-wearer, increasingly adept at the He provocatively links defamiliarization to the “put on.” In Svec’s assessment, McLuhan main- phenomenon of institutional critique, which tained agency and controlled his performative probed the silent power of cultural systems, persona, combatting forces of media exploita- fipping the silent ground of institutional space tion by crafing his image in deliberately staged into force felds shaping human attention and performances. Whereas a common trope of agency. By locating McLuhan’s use and devel- hoax art is the ultimate “reveal,” where the per- opment of the term within a historical context, formance culminates in a clarifying statement Allan paradoxically reveals the extent to which by the artist, Svec notes that McLuhan was en- McLuhan’s formulation was timely and origi- tirely committed to the performative rhetori- nal—a perspective that resonates with contem- cal process of lobbing probes to excite audience porary reassessments of historicism. engagement or participation; he was willing

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Mohammad Salemy recuperates a signifcant interchange and assemblage which instantiate media event, the frst global satellite feed of the notion that all forms and species are eco- a news show, BBC’s Our World (1967), which logically interdependent and co-evolving. united an “estimated 500 million viewers in 24 countries” spatially and temporally. Salemy Several recent theorists have employed afect theorizes this form of “televisual intersubjec- theory to diferentiate humanity from the ma- tivity” as a new way of experiencing reality and chine world—Berland suggests that this theo- time, with “accessible liveliness made a medi- ry may help move us beyond simply conceding ated experience almost as tangible, real and au- that we have entered an ever-accelerating loop thoritative as any physical encounter with the of exchange between humans and technology. world.” He diferentiates this perspective from It should be remembered that McLuhan em- a Benjaminian understanding of temporali- phasized feeling as a key ingredient of the Hu- ty grounded in phenomenological experience, man, arguing that media amputations can in- which flters present through past. He argues duce narcosis. By contrast, animals assist us in that for McLuhan virtuality adds another di- feeling and even remind us of our losses: “the mension—a “technologized intersubjective pleasure and anxiety of witnessing the merg- temporality,” which “includes technologies’ ing of bodies, technologies, and nonhuman impacts on our understanding of that entity species.” While McLuhan never made this ar- and of time itself.” Salemy establishes the im- gument, Berland is likely accurate in thinking portance of Our World as a media event, reit is not one he would have opposed; namely, producing the transcript of the interview with that we are implicated in animal and plant life, McLuhan featured as part of the Canadian seg- which, like the human world, is also caught up ment in which McLuhan explores themes in- in processes of machinic change. By examining cluding space/time acceleration, participato- ourselves from a non-human perspective, we ry engagement, and media history. According can respect animals’ struggles and experienc- to Salemy, McLuhan emerges from this media es and potentially reconceive our own position event as an ahistoric mediator. within a shared ecology.

Introducing the lens of critical animal stud- Contributing to the media-archaeological ies, Jody Berland urges us to revise our under- project of unearthing lesser-known fgures and standing of McLuhan as a devoted humanist, materialities, Gary Genosko examines Harley arguing that McLuhan’s theory of extensions Parker’s productive collaborations with fgures irrevocably moved away from anthropocentr- other than McLuhan. Genosko presents the icism toward a posthumanist perspective her- relatively unknown and still contested history alding a nature/culture intersection. She notes of Flexitype—whose creation he attributes to that McLuhan was not only interested in me- Allan Fleming (who engineered the technolo- dia assemblage and machinic nature, but also gy) and to Harley Parker (who pioneered ex- in the broader environment and how it shapes perimental and creative applications)—to re- “our participation in a common situation.” Tis veal the confuence of design innovation in is where animal lives play a role: Berland ar- late-1950s Toronto. Genosko also examines gues that McLuhan’s theory indirectly opens links between father and son, tracing how Har- the door to new forms of human/machine ley and son Blake Parker both experimented

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with the intensities of sensory experience and Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning contributed to installation and performance of the Comic. 1911. Translated by Cloudesley Brere- art. ton and Fred Rothwell, Green Integer, 1999.

Tis fnal essay explores how print-making Betts, Gregory, Paul Hjartarson, and Kristine Smit- processes contributed to the production of ka, editors. Counterblasting Canada: Marshall Mc- “non-books”—monographs conceived and con- Luhan, Wyndham Lewis, Wilfred Watson, and Sheila Watson. U of Alberta P, 2016. structed to disrupt the systematized and linear Gutenberg format. As Genosko observes, “such books may be analyzed as quasi-acoustic Bryant, Levi, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman. spaces, unbound from sound, remaking read- “Towards a Speculative Philosophy.” Te Speculative ing and repositioning the reader, injecting am- Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. Edited by Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek, and Graham Harman, bivalence and retaining tactility and inviting re.press, 2011, pp. 1-18. multi-sensory participation.” Te mosaic-like non-book format pioneered by McLuhan and Campbell, SueEllen. Te Enemy Opposite: Te Out- collaborators sets a compelling precedent for law Criticism of Wyndham Lewis. Ohio University the fractalized form and content of the pres- Press, 1988. ent volume. Cavell, Richard. McLuhan in Space: A Cultural Geog- raphy. U of Toronto P, 2002. Works Cited ___. Remediating McLuhan. Amsterdam UP, 2016. Allan, Kenneth R. “Marshall McLuhan and the Counterenvironment: ‘Te Medium is the Massage.’” Churchward, James. Te Lost Continent of Mu. 1931. Art Journal, vol. 73, no. 4, 2014, pp. 22-45. Paperback Library, 1968.

Baigell, Matthew, and Joel Smith. “Happening in the Crocker, Stephen. Bergson and the Metaphysics of Classroom: Non-Verbal Art Instruction.” Art Jour- Media. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. nal, vol. 25, no. 4, 1966, pp. 370-71. Crow, Tomas. “Cosmic Exile: Prophetic Turns in Baxter, Iain. “Self-interview.” 1965. Box 4, fle 7. Iain the Life and Art of Robert Smithson.” Robert Smith- Baxter& Fonds, E.P. Taylor Research Library and son. Edited by Eugenie Tsai et al., U of California P, Archives, Toronto, ON. Typescript. 2004, pp. 32-74.

Baxter, Iain, to Deborah. April 22, 1966. Box 6, fle Deleuze, Gilles. Bergsonism. 1966. Translated by 6. Iain Baxter& Fonds, E.P. Taylor Research Library Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Zone and Archives, Toronto, ON. Typescript. Books, 1988.

Baxter, Ingrid. “Interview.” 2009, http://vancouver- ___. Te Logic of Sense. 1969. Translated by Mark artinthesixties.com/interviews/ingrid-baxter. Ac- Lester with Charles Stivale, Continuum, 1990. cessed 8 Aug. 2017. Web.

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Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. What is Philoso- ___. “A Light Odyssey: La découverte de la lumière phy? Columbia UP, 1991. comme problème théorique et esthétique.” Le Con- fort Moderne, 1991. Donnelly, Ignatius. Atlantis: Te Antediluvian World. 1882. Dover, 1976. ___. “Of Black Universe in the Human Foundations of Color.” Hyun Soo Choi: Seven Large-Scale Paint- Edwards, Paul. Wyndham Lewis: Painter and Writer. ings. Translated by Miguel Abreu, Tread Waxing Yale UP, 2000. Space, 1991, pp. 2-4.

___. “Wyndham Lewis’s Vorticism: A Strange Syn- ___. Philosophies of Diference: A Critical Introduc- thesis.” Te Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World. tion to Non-Philosophy. 1986. Translated by Rocco Edited by Mark Antlif and Vivien Greene,Tate, Gangle, Continuum, 2010. 2010, pp. 35-45.

___. “Is Tinking Democratic? Or, How to Introduce Fleming, Marie L. Baxter2: Any Choice Works. Art Teory into Democracy.” Laruelle and Non-Philos- Gallery of Ontario, 1982. ophy. Edited by John Mullarkey and Anthony Paul Smith, Edinburgh UP, 2012, pp. 227-37.

Galloway, Alexander R. Laruelle: Against the Digital. U of Minnesota P, 2014. ___. Photo-Fiction, a Non-Standard Aesthetics. Trans- lated by Drew S. Burk, Univocal, 2012. Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Relat- ___. Principles of Non-Philosophy. 1996. Translated by ed Works. Princeton UP, 1998. Nicola Rubczak and Anthony Paul Smith, Blooms- bury Academic, 2013. Hokenson, Jan Walsh. “Comedies of Errors: Berg- son’s Laughter in Modernist Contexts.” Understand- ___. Intellectuals and Power: Te Insurrection of ing Bergson, Understanding Modernism. Edited by the Victim; François Laruelle in Conversation with Paul Ardoin, S.E. Gontarski, and Laci Mattison, Philippe Petit. 2003. Translated by Anthony Paul Bloomsbury Academic, 2013, pp. 38-53. Smith, Polity, 2014.

Kittler, Friedrich A. Discourse Networks 1800/1900. Translated by Michael Metteer with Chris Cullens. ___. Te Concept of Non-Photography. Translated by Stanford UP, 1990. Robin Mackay, Urbanomic/Sequence, 2015.

Lamberti, Elena. Marshall McLuhan’s Mosaic: Prob- Lewis, Wyndham. Men Without Art. Russell & Rus- ing the Literary Origins of Media Studies. U of To- sell, 1930. ronto P, 2012. ___. Te Apes of God. 1930. Penguin, 1965. Laruelle, François. “La plus haute des contempla- tions.” Réfexions philosophiques sur l’oeuvre d’August ___. A Soldier of Humor and Selected Writings. Edited v. Briesen. Fondation Brandenburg-Neumark, 1985, by Raymond Rosenthal, Signet, 1966. pp. 141-73.

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___. Journey into Barbary. 1932. Edited by C. J. Fox, imental Paperback. Editing by Jefrey T. Schnapp Black Sparrow, 1983. and Adam Michaels, Princeton Architectural Press, 2012.

Luisetti, Federico, and David Sharp. “Refections on Miller, Tyrus. Late Modernism: Politics, Fiction, and Duchamp: Bergson Readymade.” Diacritics, vol. 38, the Arts Between the World Wars. Un of California no. 4, 2008, pp. 77-93. P, 1999.

Mackay, Robin, and François Laruelle. “Introduc- Molinaro, Matie, Corrine McLuhan, and William tion: Laruelle Undivided.” From Decision to Heresy: Toye, editors. Letters of Marshall McLuhan. Oxford Experiments in Non-Standard Tought. Edited by UP, 1987. Robin Mackay, Urbanomic, 2012, pp. 1-32.

N.E. Ting Co. Ltd. “Glossary.” 1966. box 5, fle 11. Marchessault, Janine. Marshall McLuhan: Cosmic Iain Baxter& Fonds, E.P. Taylor Research Library Media. Sage, 2005. and Archives, Toronto, ON. Typescript.

McLuhan, Marshall. Counterblast. s.n., 1954. ___. N.E. Ting Co. Ltd., Vol. 1 . Vancouver: N.E. Ting Co. Ltd., 1978. ___. “Te Analogical Mirrors.” Te Kenyon Review, vol. 6, no. 3, 1944, pp. 322-32. Ó Maoilearca, John. All Toughts Are Equal: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy. U of Minnesota P, 2015. ___. Te Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. Vanguard Press, 1951. Pressman, Jessica. Digital Modernism: Making It New in New Media. Oxford UP, 2014. ___. Te Gutenberg Galaxy: T e Making of Typo- graphic Man. U of Toronto P, 1962. Salemy, Mohammad. “Instagram as Non-Photogra- phy.” Tird Rail, vol. 1, 2013, pp. 33-36. ___. Understanding Media: Te Extensions of Man. McGraw-Hill, 1964. Schafer, R. Murray. “Cleaning the Lenses of Percep- tion.” artscanada, vol. 25, no. 4, 1968, pp. 10-12. ___. “Art as Anti-Environment.” Art News Annual, vol. 31, 1966, pp. 55-57. ___. Te New Soundscape. BMI Canada, 1969.

___. “Environment as Programmed Happening.” Smith, Anthony Paul. Laruelle: A Stranger Tought. Knowledge and the Future of Man: An International Polity, 2016. Symposium. Edited by Walter J. Ong, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. Smithson, Robert. “A Museum of Language in the Vicinity of Art.” 1968. Robert Smithson: Te Collect- McLuhan, Marshall, and Wilfred Watson. From Cli- ed Writings. Edited by Jack Flam, U of California P, ché to Archetype. Viking, 1970. 1996.

Michaels, Adam. “Foreword.” Te Electric Informa- tion Age Book: McLuhan/Agel/Fiore and the Exper-

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___. “Entropy and the New Monuments.” 1966. Rob- 2 “McLuhan found himself at odds with the reg- ert Smithson: Te Collected Writings. Edited by Jack nant theories of his time, especially the linguistic Flam, U of California P, 1996, pp. 10-23. metaphor that informed structuralism, post-structuralism and deconstruction” (Cavell, Remediating ___. “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan.” McLuhan 10). 1969. Robert Smithson: Te Collected Writings. Edit- ed by Jack Flam, U of California P, 1996. 3 “McLuhan particularly invoked the new physics as support for his critique of visual space, draw- Teall, Donald F. Te Medium is the Rear View Mir- ing on Heisenberg’s use of the term ‘resonance’ in ror: Understanding McLuhan. McGill-Queen’s UP, his account of quantum mechanics to argue in Te 1971. Gutenberg Galaxy that the random state in physics was cognate with the auditory domain” (Cavell, Re- ___. Te Virtual Marshall McLuhan. McGill-Queen’s mediating McLuhan 93). UP, 2001. 4 “In the beginning there is Black” (Laruelle, “Of Image Notes Black Universe” 2; see also Galloway, “Te Black Universe”; Laruelle, “A Light Odyssey”). Figure 1. IT, Pneumatic Judd, 1965. Courtesy Iain Baxter& and Raven Row. 5 McLuhan’s immanental orientation can also be traced to Scotist elements in the writings of James Figure 2. N.E. Ting Co. Ltd., Dummy Self-Portrait Joyce, also noted by Teall (see Te Virtual Marshall Sculpture, 1971. Courtesy Iain Baxter& and Raven McLuhan 74). An early infuence on McLuhan was Row. the neo-Scotist Catholic poet Gerard Manley Hop- kins (see McLuhan, “Te Analogical Mirrors”). Figure 3. Iain Baxter, Non-Verbal Teaching (“Swim- ming on Dry Land”), ca. 1964-1966. Courtesy Iain 6 “McLuhan, by mid-career…increasingly sought Baxter& and Raven Row. to address himself to artists and, more radically, to be understood as an artist himself” (Cavell, Remedi- Figure 4. N.E. Ting Co. Ltd., “Glossary,” 1966. ating McLuhan 79). Courtesy Iain Baxter& and Raven Row. 7 “[M]odelling the name ‘non-philosophy’ on an Notes analogy with ‘non-Euclidean geometry,’ Laruelle proposes a broadened, pluralistic science of thought 1 “McLuhan obviously is, as he himself declared, and philosophy as well as a major reworking of phil- not a philosopher, a theorist, or a traditional scien- osophical concepts” (Ó Maoilearca, All Toughts Are tist…but rather an artist playing with percepts and Equal 8). afects” (Teall, Te Virtual Marshall McLuhan 13). “We can read [McLuhan] as an artist who creates 8 Smithson’s personal library, preserved today with tools that foreground the ethics of refexive method- his papers at the Archives of American Art, con- ologies” (Marchessault, Marshall McLuhan xix). tains a Signet paperback anthology of Lewis’s writings that includes excerpts from his 1932 Moroccan

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travelogue, Filibusters in Barbary (see Lewis, A Sol- 10 “We call ‘unilateral duality’ or ‘dual’ the identity dier of Humor, Journey into Barbary). without-synthesis of a duality where identity is assumed by the frst term or more precisely its clone, 9 “Well before the invention of the corresponding not by the second, and duality by the second alone technology, a veritable automatism of photograph- and not by the frst” (Laruelle, Principles of Non-Phi- ic repetition traverses western thought” (Laruelle, losophy 130, original emphasis). Photo-Fiction 2).

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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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MANSARAM AND MARSHALL MCLUHAN: COLLABORATION IN COLLAGE ART

ALEXANDER KUSKIS

Abstract | Mansaram is an Indo-Canadian artist who immi- Résumé | Mansaram est un artiste indo-canadien qui a im- grated to Canada in 1966 with a prior interest in the media migré au Canada en 1966 possédant un intérêt antérieur ideas of Marshall McLuhan, sparked by reading about him in pour les idées médiatiques de Marshall McLuhan, suscité LIFE Magazine. In Toronto the media guru soon introduced par la lecture d’articles à son sujet dans LIFE Magazine. À him to Av Isaacs at his Yonge Street gallery, which led to a Toronto, le gourou des médias l’a rapidement présenté à Av 1967 Happening there called East-West Intersect, infuenced Isaacs à sa galerie de Yonge Street, ce qui a mené à un « hap- by McLuhan’s ideas. Between 1966 and 1972 Mansaram pening » en 1967 appelé East-West Intersect infuencé par les worked on his Rear View Mirror series of paintings and col- idées de McLuhan. Entre 1966 et 1972, Mansaram a travaillé lages, to one of which McLuhan contributed several items of sur sa série de peintures et de collages Rear View Mirror, textual content. Collage with its mosaic structures appealed dont une à laquelle McLuhan a apporté plusieurs éléments to McLuhan because he thought it better represented the textuels. Le collage, avec ses structures en mosaïque, plaisait post-literate “allatonceness” of electronic media and acoustic à McLuhan parce qu’il trouvait qu’il représentait mieux la space, which better integrated the full human sensorium and « concordance » postlittéraire des médias électroniques et de called for pattern recognition for comprehension. McLuhan l’espace acoustique, qui intégrait mieux l’ensemble du senso- had a high regard for artists for their integral awareness and rium humain et appelait à la reconnaissance des formes pour sensitivity to changes in sense perception, enabling them to la compréhension. McLuhan avait un grand respect pour les act as a distant early warning (DEW) line against potentially artistes en raison de leur conscience intégrale et leur sensi- harmful efects of technology. He viewed their art as anti-en- bilité aux changements dans la perception des sens, leur per- vironments to the electronic media maelstrom. Mansaram mettant d’agir en tant que réseau d’alerte avancé (DEW, pour has enjoyed increasing recognition through recent exhibi- « Distant Early Warning ») contre les efets potentiellement tions, but some of Canada’s premier art galleries have yet néfastes de la technologie. Il considérait leur art comme des to acquire or recognize his art, although the Royal Ontario antienvironnements au tourbillon des médias électroniques. Museum is planning to do so. Mansaram est de plus en plus reconnu à travers les expositions récentes, mais certaines des plus grandes galeries d’art du Canada n’ont pas encore acquis ou reconnu son art, bien que le Musée royal de l’Ontario ait l’intention de le faire.

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The West shall shake the East awake … proposed theme of the intersection of Eastern while ye have the night for morn … and Western cultures. Tese perceived cultural —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake interactions were a subset of McLuhan’s “global village” metaphor: the people of India and the arshall McLuhan’s corpus of pub- West coming to know each other through me- lished work includes many collab- dia and mutual visitations. Second, collage art orations with associates, including appealed to McLuhan because he associated it MQuentin Fiore, Harley Parker, Wilfred Watson, with the ancient mosaic form, which integrat- Barrington Nevitt, Kathryn Hutchon, Bruce ed the whole human sensorium of vision, hear- Powers, McLuhan’s son Eric, and others. He ing, taste, smell, and even touch, and could bet- published more collaboratively written books ter refect the simultaneity of post-literate elec- than self-written ones. Analogous to his fa- tronic technology, the output of which would vourite method of discovery, which he called require pattern recognition to apprehend. probing, collaboration ofered McLuhan a means or method of dialogical perception that Panchal Mansaram, known professionally as P. is “discontinuous, nonlinear; it tackles things Mansaram or sometimes just Mansaram, im- from many angles at once” (McLuhan and Car- migrated to Canada from India with his wife son 403). Tis essay describes a diferent kind and daughter in 1966. He had a special inter- of artistic collaboration for McLuhan, one that est in the work of Marshall McLuhan, initial- demonstrates his eagerness to understand and ly inspired by reading an article about him in experiment with unfamiliar and new media: LIFE magazine. Te February 25, 1966 issue of his collage art with Indo-Canadian artist Pan- LIFE had published an article titled “Oracle of chal Mansaram. Tis essay describes the col- the Electric Age,” which mentioned that artists, laboration and its artistic outcome, Rear View musicians, critics, and theatre people, partic- Mirror 74 (RMV 74), considering what attract- ularly those in the avant-garde, found McLu- ed McLuhan to the work as well as his more han’s media theories to be artistically relevant general views on art and artists. and exciting, so much so that there had been a Marshall McLuhan-themed Festival of the According to Mansaram in a personal inter- Contemporary Arts at the University of Brit- view by the author of this essay, McLuhan acted ish Columbia the previous year (Howard 91). with “innate kindness and generosity” in help- Intrigued and excited by McLuhan’s ideas on ing him get started in Canada as a newly land- technology and culture, Mansaram wrote the ed Indian artist. McLuhan was likely attracted University of Toronto English professor to con- to working on one of Mansaram’s Rear View vey his admiration for his work. Mirror collages for a couple of reasons. First, from his reading of modernist writers such In 1966, Mansaram immigrated to Canada as Charles Baudelaire, James Joyce, and T.S. with his wife Tarunika and their three-month- Eliot—whose works in some ways anticipate old daughter Mila. Arriving in Montreal, they subsequent East-West artistic interactions and initially explored the city and its Expo 67 exchanges including Te Beatles’ pilgrimage World’s Fair site, then under construction, be- to India and Ravi Shankar’s popularity in the fore settling in Toronto—initially living at the West—McLuhan was keenly interested in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Charles Street. He

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soon contacted Marshall McLuhan, who invit- world-famous flmmaker. Watching Bengali ed him to meet him at his ofce at the Univer- flms created an ambition in Mansaram to be- sity of Toronto, where he was about to be inter- come a flmmaker himself. viewed for French Television. Afer witnessing the taping of this interview, Mansaram went He won a Dutch government scholarship at with McLuhan and a writer friend to Te Isaa- the State Academy of Fine Arts in Amster- cs Gallery at 832 Yonge Street, where he was in- dam during 1963-64, where he started to ex- troduced to its owner, the now legendary and periment with collage art. In 1964, Mansaram recently deceased Av Isaacs. Tis introduction discovered inscriptions on a rock surface while led to a Happening in 1967 at the Isaacs Gal- visiting Greece, which inspired him to intro- lery titled East-West Intersect, produced by duce writing into his collages. His own collage Mansaram and infuenced by McLuhan. style later included pages of printed text, hand- written manuscript pages and notes, and even Early Life in India1 hand-drawn scribbles juxtaposed with canvas fgures and images. Mansaram was born in Mount Abu, a hillside town in Rajasthan, India, where the Maharajas Back in Delhi, he met the English art-crit- owned summer palaces (McGovern, “Collab- ic George Butcher, who had come to India to orative Collage Painting”). His father encour- research his PhD thesis on Modern Indian and aged him to study engineering for its greater Folk Art; he later moved to Montreal. It was employment opportunities, but afer spend- George Butcher who showed Mansaram the ing four years in a science college, he enrolled LIFE magazine article that introduced him to instead in the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School the Canadian media theorist and led him to of Art (ofen shortened as Sir J.J.) in Bombay seek out McLuhan afer arriving in Canada. (now Mumbai), from 1954 to 1959. Working with Marshall McLuhan His artistic talents enabled him to secure free tuition, including free residency in a school In Toronto, Mansaram’s family were befriend- hostel and eventually a gold medal and fellow- ed by and socially engaged with the McLuhan ship to teach at the Art School. He also met his family. Marshall McLuhan sometimes person- future wife Tarunika, who is also an artist, at ally drove over to pick up the Mansarams at the School. In 1959, he won the highest cash their hotel to host them at his home at 29 Wells prize at the Bombay State Art Exhibition, in Hill Avenue. Corrine McLuhan baked cookies competition with numerous professional art- for Mansaram’s daughter, while Marshall en- ists. In Bombay, Mansaram took full advantage joyed tending the freplace while they chatted. of the cultural life of this cosmopolitan Indi- an city, befriending art critics, the editors of During 1966 and 1967, Mansaram painted sev- several magazines, and attending lectures by eral pictures for McLuhan, including a por- the world-famous philosopher, Jiddu Krish- trait of the scholar as a media guru. In the late namurti, who lectured at the Art School com- 1960s, he also created a collage that was used as pound. Afer art school, he moved to Calcutta the cover art for two McLuhan-authored high- for his frst job, where he met Satyajit Ray, the school English textbooks: Voices of Literature,

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Part 1 and Part 2. In 1994, he designed the cov- painter and art historian Allan Kaprow being er art for Who Was Marshall McLuhan? by Bar- a principal proponent of this new theatrical rington Nevitt, a collaborator of both Marshall form (Brockett 625). Happenings appealed to and his brother Maurice McLuhan. Marshall McLuhan’s interest in new artistic forms that asked Mansaram to create collages on their engaged in Figure/Ground analysis of arti- furnace in the basement of their family house; facts in their everyday environments. Kaprow two of the daughters, Elizabeth and Teri Mc- was also interested in the environments sur- Luhan, recollect playing in front of these works rounding art works, arguing that, particular- with their brothers when they were children. ly with performance art, audiences should be (McGovern, “Collaborative Collage”). given assignments and comprise part of the total context. Such performances were typically In 1967, Mansaram made an important career non-linear narratives, with audiences involved move when he accepted a position as a high in the action, and would usually include im- school art teacher with the Hamilton Board of provisational elements. McLuhan encouraged Education, and moved to the Hamilton-Bur- Mansaram to pursue this initiative, despite be- lington area, west of Toronto. He began his ing unable to attend himself, as he was going teaching career at Hamilton’s Central Second- to be a visiting professor at Fordham Univer- ary School with its special art program, which sity in New York during the 1967-68 academ- employed eight art teachers. Te students ic year as the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the spent half of each day studying art and the oth- Humanities. er half on academic subjects. Afer two years, his whole school was moved to a new build- Before leaving for New York, McLuhan sat ing in downtown Hamilton, Sir John A. Mac- down with Mansaram for a short interview donald Secondary School. Afer later transfers during which the artist sought the media schol- to Glendale Secondary, then Barton Secondary, ar’s advice about the production of his East- he took early retirement from teaching in 1989, West Intersect Happening. McLuhan discussed allowing him to concentrate on his artistic en- issues such as the convergence of Western and deavours full time. Eastern cultures in the global village; Eastern elements in the literary works of T.S. Eliot and Mansaram became involved with several James Joyce; the strong Eastern infuence on workshops at McLuhan’s now famous Monday Western culture in the 1960s; the tribalism of Night Seminars at the University of Toronto. hippie culture in Toronto’s Yorkville district at From one of these unstructured and interac- that time; time and space in the Electric Age; tive group discussions came the idea of a Hap- and the efects of TV on oral cultures. Te pre- pening with the intersection of Eastern and viously unpublished interview is available on- Western cultures as its theme. line on the McLuhan Galaxy blog (Mansaram “An Unpublished Interview with Marshall Mc- The East-West Intersect Happening 1967 Luhan”), the ofcial blog of the McLuhan Estate. Popular during the 1960s, Happenings were inspired by the ideas and techniques of Futurists, Te most important cultural takeaway from Dadaists, and Surrealists, with the American Mansaram’s interview with McLuhan and his

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subsequent East-West Intersect Happening is West. The West is so eager to appear McLuhan’s discussion of the convergence of Eastern in everything and is so keen on Eastern and Western cultures. He was aware of the inner trip. In the Electric Age, by the that convergence from his knowledge of how way, in the Electric Age the whole world modernist writers such as Charles Baudelaire, is taking the inner trip; because of the cir- James Joyce, and T.S. Eliot as well as artists such cuit, the feedback, the electric technolo- as Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso includ- gy is psychedelic. So the Western world ed Indian elements in their works. He would is going Eastern in that sense of inner trip. have been aware of the hippie movement’s em- (“An Unpublished Interview with Marshall brace of Eastern religions and its emergence in McLuhan”) popular culture. Toronto’s focal point for hippies during the 1960s was the Yorkville area. Te East-West Intersect Happening was pro- Yorkville Avenue was just six blocks north of duced for two nights in 1967 at the Isaacs Gal- St. Michael’s College, where McLuhan taught. lery. Elements that Mansaram proposed to include in it were a dancing go-go girl juxtaposed McLuhan’s observations about East-West con- with another woman doing a Western concert vergence anticipate such pop cultural events as dance in a cage; a fve-minute 16-mm flm of the Beatles 1968 trip to India (Swanson “His- McLuhan speaking; a Dictaphone-record- tory of the Beatles”) and the growing fame ed interview of McLuhan by Mansaram; talks of Ravi Shankar in the West. McLuhan told by a hippie leader, a theosophist, and a Bud- Mansaram: dhist monk; taped Indian-infuenced West- ern music as well as Western-infuenced In- Well, the simple fact of the matter is the dian music; portions of Western flms; Indian whole world is an East/West happening, flms with little narrative line, but using music, and while the Western world is going Ori- dance, and circus elements; and an installation ental, the Oriental world is going Western. by Peter Sepp and Mansaram. Te Happening This has been going on for a century, and was covered on television by the prime-time so what could be a bigger East/West hap- CBC program Te Way It Is on Saturday night. pening than that? See, all the Western art- Surviving media artifacts from that event in- ists have gone Oriental since Baudelaire, clude: the fve-minute 16 -mm flm of McLu- and all the painters, all abstract art is Ori- han, the recorded interview, the transcript of ental art. (“An Unpublished Interview with the Mansaram interview (Mansaram, “An Un- Marshall McLuhan”) published Interview with Marshall McLuhan”), and Mansaram’s photographs and documenta- McLuhan later connected East-West conver- tion of the event. gence to the hippie movement, with its predi- lection for psychedelic drugs, electronic tech- All the above media artifacts of the original nology and media: Happening of 1967 were resurrected, or in Mc- Luhan terminology, retrieved, in June 2012 by I think the problem about the East/West Ed Video Gallery in Guelph, Ontario for an Happening is that it is very diffcult to exhibition of Mansaram’s collages, paintings, fnd a difference between the East and and media art, including his collaboration

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with McLuhan. Te theme of East-West Inter- Mansaram’s work in a personal letter sent to sect was recapitulated under the title Intersec- Mansaram in 1973, Marshall Mcluhan wrote tion: Mansaram & McLuhan, described on the that, “Mansaram is a kind of two-way mirror, poster as “Collages, paintings, and media art living simultaneously in the divided and dis- by P. Mansaram inspired by and in collabora- tinguished worlds of the East and West.” tion with Marshall McLuhan from 1966 to 2012” (Beedham, “Medium = Message”). The Mansaram-Mcluhan Collaborative Collage

At around the same time, Mansaram started Te title of the collage to which McLuhan add- working on a series of paintings which he tied his touch is Rear View Mirror 74 (RVM 74) tled Rear View Mirror, which became a sus- [Fig. 1], part of Mansaram’s Rear View Mirror taining focus from 1966 to 1972. He produced a series created between 1966 to 1972. Mansaram flm on the same subject in 1966, later re-edited started RVM 74 in 1969 and added several ad- in 2011 for screenings at Ed Video in Guelph, ditional elements over four decades later in Ontario in 2012 and the Experimenta 2013 2011. It was recently acquired by the Royal On- Film Festival in Bangalore, India. Mansaram tario Museum in Toronto (ROM), along with described this project: “As in the case of ‘Rear many of his other paintings, collages, prints, View Mirror’ we are constantly creating our and supporting documents. past, while living in the present. Past appears in present in various forms; paintings, drawings, To appreciate RVM 74, it is necessary to iden- photos, memories, words, sculptures, flms. I tify and interpret the approximately two doz- have woven some of those remnants thru this en images and textual passages introduced by medium” (“Festival Programme 2013”). Te ti- Mansaram and McLuhan. McLuhan added the tle refers to a McLuhan meme, the idea that we six English-language passages. Starting at the drive into the future using only our rear view top of the collage and moving counter-clock- mirrors: “We march backwards into the future. wise, McLuhan’s contributions are as follows:2 Suburbia lives imaginatively in Bonanza-land” (McLuhan and Fiore 74-75). Initially, the paint- 1. NOW THAT LADER’S GONE, ings were displayed at George Rackus’s Picture I MUST LIE DOWN AGAIN Loan Gallery, one of the oldest art galleries in WHERE ALL LADDERS START IN THE Toronto. FOUL RAG & BONE SHOP OF MY HEART

Mansaram also made other experimental flms, Tis is a quotation from W.B. Yeats’s Te Cir- including Intersect (1967), inspired by the flms cus Animal’s Desertion, which, according to of Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, and refect- Eric McLuhan in a personal email to the au- ing his collage work, which combined radio thor of this essay, is ofen cited in From Cli- and television commercials with flm content. ché to Archetype. Tere are errors, no doubt His later flm Devi Stufed Goat and Pink Cloth intentional, in the way it appears on the col- (1979) is another collage made in Mumbai; it lage. In a personal email to the author of this explores the gaze of an Indian artist in Cana- essay, Mansaram stated that McLuhan wrote da looking back at his nation of origin (“Fes- the quotes on the collage in pencil and then tival Programme 2013”). Commenting on

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Mansaram highlighted the letters with a magic LOVELY marker to make them legible. TODAY

2. HOW PIERCEFUL GROWS As Eric McLuhan informed this author in a THE HAZY YON personal email, McLuhan saw this writing on HOW MYRTLE PETERED [unclear] a billboard advertising a junkyard in Toron- THOW UP [unclear] to. In correct grammar, it would read: “Help FOR SPRING HATH beautify junk yards. Trow something love- SPRUNG THE ly away today.” Te quote comes up elsewhere CYCLOTRON, in a moderated conversation between McLu- HOW HIGH BROWSE han, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Norman Mail- THOU, er, the former telling the others that “Tere’s a BROWN wonderful sign hanging on a sign in Toronto, COW? which says, Help beautify junkyards—throw something lovely away today. I think this is a In a personal email to the author of this essay, thought that conservatives need to consider” Eric McLuhan identifed this as being one of (Lennon 134). McLuhan inserted the phrase in the Songs of Pogo on a record by Walt Kelly, an other contexts as well; in this case, Mansaram American animator and cartoonist who initial- applied this McLuhan-supplied phrase to the ly worked for Walt Disney and later created the collage in his hand. Pogo comic strip for Dell Comics (Stern “We Have Met the Enemy”). Te text contains er- 4. THE rors, as Mansaram’s intention was to commu- PARANOIDS nicate the idea that “the medium is the mes- ARE sage”: that the overall form and ground of an AFTER artifact are its transformational elements far ME more than its content. Te last line — “HOW HIGH BROWSE THOU, BROWN COW?”— Tis was a wisecrack that Marshall McLuhan is a take on a speech exercise used in the U.S. thought up, as related to this author by Eric South In the early 20th century, to train a McLuhan in a personal email. Again, McLuhan speaker in forming vowels: “How now brown penciled the quote onto the collage and then cow?” Again, as Mansaram informed that au- Mansaram highlighted it. thor of this essay during a personal interview, McLuhan wrote the quotes on the collage in 5. “H M McLuhan” on the right side of the pencil and then Mansaram highlighted the let- collage and a little above half way up, tilt- ters with a marker to make them legible. ed vertically, is Marshall McLuhan’s signature which he added himself. 3. HELP 6. Time wounds all heals heels BEAUTIFY JUNKYARDS Tis appears on the right side, just above Mc- THROW Luhan’s signature, but the phrase is upside SOMETHING down to the viewer; “heals” is crossed out and

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“heels” is substituted above it. Te phrase is a Te irrelevance of content is also represented rearrangement of the aphorism “Time heals by the text that looks like Hindi or other East- all wounds.” According to the online Quote In- ern script, but is meaningless scribbles, just vestigator Garson O’Toole (“Time Wounds All below the right-hand section of the dark bird/ Heels”), Groucho Marx delivered the phrase in fower motif band along the top. Te same ap- the 1940 flm Go West, but the expression had plies to the upside-down scribbles, just above already been in circulation at least since 1934. the dagger’s handle. Te textual images in English, pseudo-Hindi, and Greek represent Mansaram provided the rest of the collage im- the Gutenberg era of print literacy. In 2011, ages, as well as the non-English texts—almost Mansaram added representations of electron- two dozen elements. Te dark strip of fabric ic media to signify a new communication era: along the top, with its motif of birds and fow- the brown circle below the centre and slightly ers, occupies about 20 percent of the collage, to the lef is a compact disk (CD), below it and representing nature or, in the artist’s words, the to the lef is the frst iPhone, and to its lef is a “master controller of the world.” Farther down pre-Xerox blueprint used by architects. Above on the right side are a peacock, a potted plant, the blue patch and the compact disk are four and another fower, once again symbols of the TV sets in a row. Te frst and third from the natural ecology; another fower occupies the lef display f ower images, a juxtaposition of centre of the collage, to the right of the dome. nature and technology; the second has side Tere are several symbols of the divine: at bot- doors closed over the picture tube, and the tom centre is a representation of the pre-Ve- fourth has a black X over it, again suggesting das Indian god of the wind, Varun; to its lef the irrelevance of the programming that ap- is a generic image of a god; to its lef is a 3-D pears on it—“the medium is the message.” postcard of Jesus Christ; fnally, the dome just to the lef of centre represents temples, syna- Finally, there is a photograph of Marshall Mc- gogues, or churches. Miscellaneous elements Luhan in the centre, smiling and with his right include a sword or dagger, which might rep- hand in a pocket while his lef hand clutches resent defense, justice, or punishment—all of a book. Mansaram took this photo near Mc- which guard civilization; at the bottom, to the Luhan’s Coach House, behind what is now the right of centre, is a segment of text from a To- Kelly Library at St. Michael’s College, Universi- ronto Greek newspaper; immediately above ty of Toronto. Mansaram has signed his work the dome, and slightly to its right, is a large vertically, almost in the centre of the collage, colourful lottery poster from India, depicting with his starting and completion dates indi- pictures of two well-known Indian actresses cated by “69/2011”—spanning almost a half of the time, with rows of little envelopes con- century. taining rewards to be won by shooting a pellet gun at balloons mounted on a board; there is Mcluhan’s Take on the Collage Art Form a manuscript with an X through it to the right of HELP BEAUTIFY JUNKYARDS, with the X On a page that is untitled and unpaginated, pre- signifying the irrelevance of content, in other ceding page one of the Prologue to Te Guten- words, that “the medium is the message.” berg Galaxy (1962), McLuhan wrote of his “mosaic or feld approach,” stating that it represents

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Figure 1. Rear View Mirror 74 (RVM 74) – Collage by Mansaram and Marshall McLuhan (1969, with new elements added in 2011)

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“the galaxy or constellation of events” in a “mo- Gutenberg era of widespread literacy based on saic of perpetually interacting forms that have the dominance of writing and print media in undergone kaleidoscopic transformation— the form of relatively inexpensive books, mag- particularly in our own time.” Tat is an apt azines, journals, and newspapers favoured vi- description for Mansaram and McLuhan’s Rear sual space. Yet what McLuhan called “new me- View Mirror 74, which represents elements dia” favoured the ear via technologies such as from the converging cultures of India and the radio, movies, TV, recorded music, and satel- West, including aspects of their natural ecol- lites, which replaced visual space with acoustic ogies, media ecologies, and religious symbols. space. Te visual aspect still existed in flm and Elena Lamberti argues that meaning from such TV of course, but sight was no longer the most a mosaic assemblage is acquired: dominant of the senses in the new electronic media. … through the interplay with its own ground. By doing so, a pattern gets cre- Marshall McLuhan and Barrington Nevitt ated and in turn revealed through our ac- opined that: tive observation. Pattern recognition is the way we approach all mosaics: we look for Our world … is an invisible Rim Spin—all the overall design that the assemblage of the communication that surrounds us. It the various tesserae brings to light, some- is like a cyclone, a vortex that has trans- thing which transcends their mere sum. formed the old world of visual connec- (xxviii) tions into a new world of audile-tactile resonances: a global theatre of instant Such mosaic structure forces viewers to employ awareness. (Nevitt and Maurice McLuhan pattern recognition, to pay attention to the to- 231) tal design, and to participate in the process of deriving meaning from what they are experi- In a collaborative text with Marshall McLuhan encing. It promotes active engagement, rather frst published in Spanish in Venezuela, D’Am- than the passive and detached observation that ico linked collage and mosaic using McLuhan’s is characteristic of representational art. terminology:

McLuhan appreciated collage art and support- We live in an acoustic space … like discar- ed this aspect of Mansaram’s artistic expression nate minds foating in the magnetic cities because he sensed that this art form better re- of radio, television and satellites. …Our fected the post-literate “allatonceness” (McLu- world is a great multimedia poem. To un- han and Fiore 63) world of electronic media derstand this world we must study its pro- and technology. As Margarita D’Amico argues, cesses, investigate their effects to recog- “In his own published work if McLuhan was not nize their causes: to program our future … the frst to have used collage, [but] it is he who Perhaps our one possible approach may has best captured the totally new character of be of mosaic type or collage, rather than a the new mass means of communication and lineal one of logical demonstration. (Nev- the social impact of new technologies” (Nev- itt and Maurice McLuhan 231) itt and Maurice McLuhan 232). Te superseded

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Te art of the previous Gutenberg era of print Marshall McLuhan, a cultural medievalist by had been mostly representational: street scenes, training, was especially interested in the low- natural landscapes or seascapes, and portraits er three of the seven liberal arts of the medi- that were identifable as such. Te introduc- eval educational curriculum: grammar, rhet- tion of perspective, around the same time in oric, and logic. He was aware of medieval ar- the mid-15th century as Gutenberg’s invention tistic expression beyond the literary, including of moveable type, enhanced the lifelikeness of the pre-Renaissance mosaic art that followed this representationality (McLuhan, Gutenberg the Byzantine practice of decorating walls and Galaxy). Just as the linearity of typeset print- ceilings with tesserae. Art historian Alexander ed pages endowed readers with a fxed point Nagel explains that the medieval mosaic rep- of view, perspective in art made “the single eye resented for McLuhan “a mode of apprehen- the centre of the visible world” with everything sion” that integrated the full human sensorium converging on it “to the vanishing point of in- of vision, hearing, taste, smell, and even touch, fnity” (Berger 16). whereas Western representational art biased perception in favour of the eye and sequential Yet electronic media substituted simultaneity vision: or all-at-onceness for linearity and ABC-mind- edness, and acoustic space for visual space, Mosaics engaged an integrated medieval thus eliminating perspective and the possibil- “sensory ratio” where the visual was not ity of a fxed point of view. Representational disconnected from the other senses and art was no longer refective of electronic media, if anything was subordinated to the “au- satellites, space fight, and new conceptions of dile” and “tactile” forms … [In] The Guten- space/time that they stimulated. Abstract art in berg Galaxy, [he wrote that the mosaic is] its non-representationality provided one solu- “a multidimensional world of inter structur- tion, and the ancient art of collage provided an- al resonance”—in contradiction to modern other. D’Amico explains why mosaic and its ap- perspective, which was “an abstract illu- plication to collage art appealed to McLuhan: sion built on the intense separation of the visual from the other senses. (160) Mosaic emphasizes that all elements together create the total effect. As for col- Indeed, McLuhan found “the mosaic mode of lage, the association, arrangement and being relevant in the new age of electronic me- juxtaposition of objects, phrases, differ- dia, which were exploding the bounds of a me- ent concepts, both heterogeneous and chanically understood world, putting things absurd, that comment upon and infuence once again into multiple relation across space each other, all of this has very close affn- and time” (Nagel 160) . ities with concepts of chance, accident or “serendipity” (making accidental discover- Mansaram also related a relevant side note to ies of valuable, but unsought, knowledge), this essay’s author: at the opening of his 2012 important concepts in present science exhibition of collages at the J.M. Gallery, now and culture. (Nevitt and Maurice McLuhan the Ashok Jain Gallery in New York, Teri Mc- 231-232) Luhan, a documentary flmmaker and daughter of Marshall McLuhan, commented to

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Mansaram, “Tat is how my dad spoke, just across Canada’s Arctic north during the Cold like your collages.” Tose who are still mysti- War. Art as a DEW Line was a powerful met- fed by some of McLuhan’s cryptic and non-lin- aphor during the Cold War with North Amer- ear pronouncements might possibly agree. icans as well as the rest of the world. McLu- han later applied the DEW Line metaphor to Final Remarks: McLuhan’s Take his Marshall McLuhan DEW-LINE newslet- on Mansaram’s Art ter, published from 1968-1970 by Eugene M. (“Tony”) Schwartz in New York. Te of-shoot Marshall McLuhan followed the modernist DEW-LINE playing card deck (1969) similar- writers that he greatly admired—especially ly intended to stimulate problem-solving in a Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Wyn- “thinking-outside-the-box” manner. dham Lewis—in holding artists in high es- teem for their perceptual acuity and “integral Just as he had adopted a broad view of what awareness” (Understanding Media 65), which constitutes a medium, McLuhan considered an equipped them to be what Ezra Pound called artist to be any person “in any feld, scientifc or the “antennae of the race.” In his introduction humanistic, who grasps the implications of his to the second edition of Understanding Media, actions and of new knowledge in his own time” McLuhan explained that art is a kind of radar (Understanding Media 65), including business or “early warning system” that enables the alert scholars such as Peter Drucker and futurists to anticipate social and psychic efects before like Buckminster Fuller. However, McLuhan their potentially harmful consequences (x) and held certain modernist writers and painters to develop appropriate controls. He considered in especially high regard for their capabilities art to be particularly important in the techno- in the training the perception of readers and logical era that he lived in because the efects of viewers. “Integral awareness” implies an inte- the new electronic technologies were sublimi- grated human sensorium in which the other nal but had the efect of altering human “sense senses are not subordinated to the visual sense, ratios or pattern of perception” (Understand- a sensibility that McLuhan attributed to James ing Media 19); users had no resistance because Joyce especially, whom he referenced probably of their lack of awareness. However, what he more than any other artist in his own work. He called the “serious artist” can “encounter tech- sought this Joycean sensibility in the work of nology with impunity, just because he is an ex- visual artists as well, especially in the painters pert aware of the changes in sense perception” and designers in Toronto at the time such as (19). Tis idea of the arts as being defensive and Sorel Etrog, Harley Parker, René Cera, and, of prophetic elevates the importance of the arts course, Mansaram. well above the common idea of its being mere self-expression for artists and aesthetic enjoy- McLuhan also viewed the arts as cognitive and ment for viewers. social correctives to the harmful aspects of electronic media. Artists could help people ad- McLuhan developed his art-as-early-warn- just their perceptual capabilities to the new en- ing-system metaphor into the Distant Early vironments resulting from new media by cre- Warning system, or DEW Line, referring to ating anti-environments with their art works: the defensive system of radar stations installed

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Art as an anti-environment is an indis- unaccustomed to the old environment, pensable means of perception, for en- clearly saw that the Emperor “ain’t got vironments, as such, are imperceptible. nothin’ on.” The new environment was Their power to impose their ground rules clearly visible to him. (qtd. in McLuhan on our perceptual life is so complete that and Fiore 88, original emphasis) there is no scope for dialogue or interface. Hence the need for art or anti-envi- Today, as throughout history, artists are ofen ronments. (E. McLuhan and Gordon 3-4) outsiders to the power and moneyed interests of those who manage, own, and beneft from Infuenced by Edward T. Hall, McLuhan held the global high technology corporations. Like that the “ground rules, the pervasive structure, the “antisocial brat” of Andersen’s story, art- the overall pattern eludes perception” by those ists can see the downsides and the losers of the living in it, “except in so far as there is an an- technological maelstrom. While new techno- ti-environment or counter-situation construct- logical extensions of ourselves generate what ed to provide a means of direct attention” (qtd. McLuhan called “Narcissus narcosis” (Under- in E. McLuhan and Gordon 4). In other words, standing Media 41), numbness, and somnam- those living in any environment are oblivious bulism, artists sharpen our perceptions, mak- to it, as the one thing they can never see is the ing us aware of subliminal technological envi- element through which they move: “we don’t ronments and aiding us in overcoming the dis- know who discovered water, but we’re pretty services of new technologies. sure it wasn’t a fsh” (qtd. in S. McLuhan and Staines 106). How much of what has been described in this theoretical discussion of McLuhan’s views on Anti-environments are important for their ca- the relationship between artists and society pacity to raise subliminal and hidden environ- did the media scholar see in the artistic work ments to conscious awareness, the frst step of Mansaram? Clearly, he principally saw it as in “understanding media” and thereby gain- a convergence of Eastern and Western cultures ing control over them. In a Playboy interview and sensibilities, a subset of his global village (1969), McLuhan urged: “Te central purpose idea that he described in Te Gutenberg Gal- of all my work is to convey this message, that axy: “Te new electronic interdependence rec- by understanding media as they extend man, reates the world in the image of a global vil- we gain a measure of control over them.” Al- lage” (31). As in a village, people were becom- ice Rae notes McLuhan’s use of “Te Emper- ing more aware of each other because of televi- or’s New Clothes” to illustrate the manner in sion, movies, radio, telephones, and afordable which only someone on the outside of an en- global travel: vironment can see it for what it is. McLuhan’s interpretation of the Hans Christian Andersen Ours is a brand-new world of all-at-once- story was that: ness. “Time” has ceased, “space” has vanished. We now live in a “global village” “Well-adjusted” courtiers, having vest- … a simultaneous happening. Informa- ed interests, saw the emperor as beau- tion pours upon us, instantaneously and tifully appointed. The “antisocial” brat, continuously. As soon as information is

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acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by Waste Land. In short, Mansaram is a kind still newer information. Our electrically of two-way mirror, living simultaneously in confgured world has forced us to move the divided and distinguished worlds of from the habit of data classifcation to the the East and West. mode of pattern recognition. (McLuhan and Fiore 63) Mansaram has enjoyed dozens of exhibitions of his art in galleries in both Canada and In- Mansaram’s art is an anti-environment to the dia. Since 2012, he has been gaining greater increasingly technologized culture of North recognition with major exhibitions in Mumbai, America, which Neil Postman, a New York Uni- Bangalore, Guelph, Mississauga, Hamilton, To- versity colleague of McLuhan, would later term ronto, and New York. Although important gal- technopoly: a state of mind that “consists in the leries have acquired some of his paintings and deifcation of technology, fnds its satisfaction collages, the National Gallery of Canada and in technology, and takes its orders from tech- the Art Gallery of Ontario have not yet been nology” (Postman 71). Mansaram’s collages are among them. Recently the Royal Ontario Mu- anti-environments to representational art and seum (ROM) undertook a major acquisition of its recognizable images of external reality. Mc- over 700 of his works. According to Dr. Deep- Luhan especially appreciated Mansaram’s col- ali Dewan, a Senior Curator in the Department lages, which he insisted better refected the of World Culture at the Royal Ontario Muse- “all-at-onceness” of electronic communication um, itemized in a personal email to the author and information. McLuhan later showed his of this essay, this acquisition was comprised approval by writing the following appreciation of 94 works on paper, 11 large paintings or col- of Mansaram’s collage art in a personal letter: lages, 216 prints from his Image India series, 13 black-and-white or hand-painted photographs, The work of Mansaram presents a natu- and 125 supporting documents including ex- ral dialogue between the cultures of the hibit posters, postcards, and pamphlets, with East and of the West. His Oriental frame of more items to be assessed and counted. Why reference and sensibility … brings many this recognition from a museum, rather than forms and many media to participate in Canada’s major art galleries? Te ROM clear- one another. Mansaram’s cosmopolitan ly acknowledges and declares its purpose in its perception enables him to entertain West- mission statement: “to be a champion for the ern leitmotifs easily and naturally. As the natural and cultural worlds; to serve as a fo- West loses its intense visual preference rum for our diverse communities; and to create and enters the iconic world of sculptur- knowledge that contributes to a better future” al and acoustic values, the painterly and (“Purpose and Strategic Objectives”). Canada’s graphic idiom of India gains steadily in major art galleries might still need to do more Western habits of acceptance. The work to acknowledge Canada’s multicultural diversi- of Mansaram brings the mosaic forms of ty through their collections, or so it seems by T.S. Eliot and James Joyce to the Orient in examining the example of Mansaram’s hereto- the very moment and by the same means fore neglect. that Mansaram enables us to contemplate the Orient as a variant modality of The

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Figure 2. Marshall McLuhan & P. Mansaram at the opening of Mansaram’s “Rear View Mirror” Exhibition at the Picture Loan Gallery in Toronto, 1974 Works Cited

Andersen, Hans Christian. “Te Emperor’s New Brockett, Oscar G. History of the Teatre. 2nd ed., Al- Clothes”, http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/her- lyn and Bacon, 1974. sholt/TeEmperorsNewClothes_e.html. “Collage Art.” Encyclopedia of Art Education. www. Beedham, Tom. “Medium = Message.” McLuhan Galaxy, 7 visual-arts- cork.com/collage.htm. Jun. 2012, mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/ medium-message-ed-video-guelph-ontario/. Dewan, Deepali. Message to Alex Kuskis. 18 Novem- ber 2016. E-mail. Belonax, Tim. “Distant Early Warning.” Design Envy, 10 Jan. 2013, “Festival Programme 2013”. EXPERIMENTA 2013, Te International Festival for Moving Image Art in designenvy.aiga.org/distant-early-warning- India, 27 Nov. – 1 Dec. 2013. Bangalore, India, PDF marshall-mcluhan/. Available Here

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Penguin Books, 1977. Howard, Jane. “Oracle of the Electric Age.” LIFE, 25 Feb. 1966. pp. 91-99.

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Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Penguin Books, 1976. — . Understanding Media: Te Extensions of Man. McGraw-Hill, 1964. Kuskis, Alexander. “Distant Early Warn- ing Line.” McLuhan Galaxy, 26 Jun. 2010. mc- — . Te Gutenberg Galaxy: Te Making of Typograph- luhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/ ic Man. University of Toronto Press,1962. the-distant-early-warning-dew-card-deck-1969/.

— . “New Media and the New Education,” edited by J. Lamberti, Elena. “Not Just a Book on Media.” Te S. Murphy, Christianity and Culture, Palm Publish- Gutenberg Galaxy: Te Making of Typographic Man, ers, 1960, pp. 181-190. University of Toronto Press, 2011, pp. xxvi – xlv. McLuhan, Marshall, and David Carson. Te Book of Lennon, J. Michael, editor. Conversations with Nor- Probes. Gingko Press, 2003. man Mailer. UP of Mississippi, 1988. McLuhan, McLuhan, and Quentin Fiore. Te Medi- Mansaram, Panchal. Message to Alex Kuskis. 20 Oc- um is the Massage: An Inventory of Efects. Bantam tober 2016. E-mail. Books, 1967.

— , “McLuhan and Mansaram”. 23 Jul. 2015. Personal McLuhan, Stephanie, and David Staines, editors. Interview. Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews. McClel- land and Stewart, 2003. — , “An Unpublished 1967 Interview with Marshall McLuhan.” McLuhan Galaxy, 7 Jan. 2013. https://goo. Nevitt, Barrington & Maurice McLuhan, editors. gl/Zs5tQQ . Who was Marshall McLuhan? Exploring a Mosaic of Impressions. Stoddart, 1994. McGovern, Scott. “Collaborative Collage Painting: Marshall McLuhan & Mansaram” Nagel, Alexander. Medieval Modernisms: Art out of McLuhan Galaxy, 6 Aug. 2012, mclu- Time. Tames & Hudson, 2012. hangalaxy.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/collaborative-collage-painting-marshall-mcluhan-mansaram/. Postman, Neil. Technopoly: Te Surrender of Culture to Technology. Vintage, 1992. McLuhan, Eric. Message to Alex Kuskis. 7 October 2016. E-mail. O’Toole, Garson. “Time Wounds All Heels”. Quote Investigator, quoteinvestigator.com/2014/09/23/ McLuhan, Eric and Gordon, W. Terrence, editors. heels/. “Te Relation of Environment to Anti-Environment”. Marshall McLuhan Unbound, Gingko Press, 2005. Rae, Alice. “Art (Anti-Environment)”. Light Trough McLuhan, 2010, lightthroughmcluhan.org/art.html. McLuhan, Marshall. Letter to Mansaram. 17 Jan. 1973. “Purpose and Strategic Objectives.” Royal Ontario — . “Playboy Interview.” Playboy, Mar. 1969, pp. 53 – Museum Vision, 23 Jun. 2016, www.rom.on.ca/sites/ 74, 158. Available online www.digitallantern.net/mc- default/fles/imce/policies2016/vision_2016.pdf. luhan/mcluhanplayboy.htm.

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Stern, Alexander. “We Have Met the Enemy, and He is Us: Pogo Possum and Politics in the Funnies”. Notes Times Union, 29 Oct. 2008, blog.timesunion.com/ comics/we-have-met-the-enemy-and-he-is-us-pogo-possum-and-politics-in-the-funnies/94/. 1 Previously unpublished biographical information by Scott McGovern of Ed Video, Guelph from notes Swanson, Dave. “Te History of the Beatles and the supplied by Mansaram. McGovern, Scott. “Col- Maharishi”. Ultimate Classic Rock, 15 Feb. laborative Collage.” McLuhan Galaxy, 6 Aug. 2012, mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/col- 2016, http://ultimateclassicrock.com/the-beatles-in- laborative-collage-painting-marshall-mclu- dia-maharishi/ . han-mansaram/

“Te Beatles and India.” Te Beatles Bible. www.beat- 2 Eric McLuhan kindly assisted in identifying the lesbible.com/features/india/ . quotations on the collage that are in English and were contributed by his father. Image Notes

Figure 1. Rear View Mirror 74 (RVM 74) – Collage by Mansaram and Marshall McLuhan (1969, with new elements added in 2011)

Figure 2. Marshall McLuhan & P. Mansaram at the opening of Mansaram’s “Rear View Mirror” Exhibi- tion at the Picture Loan Gallery in Toronto, 1974

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CRITIQUE, TEXTE ET ART CONTEMPORAIN. REPENSER L’HÉRITAGE DE MARSHALL MCLUHAN AUJOURD’HUI

ADINA BALINT

Résumé | À l’ère d’Internet, quelle signifcation donner en- Abstract | Nowadays, in our interconnected virtual world, core à l’héritage culturel de Marshall McLuhan? Si la ques- how can we rethink Marshall McLuhan’s cultural heritage? tion a inspiré des penseurs français (Michel Serres, Jean Bau- If the issue has already inspired a number of thinkers in drillard, Régis Debray) et canadiens (Derrick de Kerckhove, France (Michel Serres, Jean Baudrillard, Régis Debray) and Pierre Lévy), nous y revenons sous un nouvel angle, en lien in Canada (Derrick de Kerckhove, Pierre Lévy), this essay avec les arts plastiques contemporains. Par l’exploration de approaches the question under new light, in relation to con- trois expositions : Vision trouble d’Annie Briard, Our Land. temporary visual arts. By studying three exhibitions: Vi- Contemporary Art from the Arctic et Superimposition: sion trouble d’Annie Briard, Our Land. Contemporary Art Sculpture and Image, qui se sont déroulées à Saint-Boniface from the Arctic and Superimposition: Sculpture and Image et à Winnipeg, au Manitoba en 2016-2017, nous soulignons opened in Saint-Boniface and Winnipeg, Manitoba (2016-17), la pertinence actuelle des notions d’expérience de la percep- it outlines the current relevance of McLuhan’s concepts, such tion, de mosaïque et de village global de McLuhan. Après as: the sensory experience, the mosaic and the global village. tout, quels liens novateurs s’établissent entre l’art, les nou- Afer all, how do visual arts, new media and critical thinking veaux médias et la pensée, à partir de Marshall McLuhan contribute to redefning Marshall McLuhan’s theories today? aujourd’hui ?

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1/ Critique des médias aujourd’hui… and hence the way we experience the world. Forget the ostensible content, say, ombreux sont ceux qui accusent au- of a television program. All that matters is jourd’hui les médias d’engendrer tous that you’re watching the TV itself, at the ex- les maux de la terre, ou peu s’en faut. pense of some other technology – prob- NOn critique ces outils de transmission de l’in- ably books or the internet. Those medi- formation comme s’il s’agissait de disposi- ums we do choose to spend our time with tifs autonomes, détachés des êtres qui les ont continually modify the way we emphasize créés, qui les animent et les alimentent quoti- our senses – seeing versus hearing versus diennement. L’on se trouverait ainsi confronté touching – on a scale so large and span- à une sorte de machine infernale qui aurait la ning so many centuries that it took at least capacité de se découper de son créateur ou de a decade after Marshall’s death for him to sa créatrice en produisant ses propres signes et be proven right, with the triumph of the signifcations et en devenant sa propre fnalité. internet. (18-19) Son emprise serait quasi infnie, permanente, et l’homme ne parviendrait plus à s’y soustraire. Après tout, cette conception du medium qui supplante le message aboutit-elle à la création Au-delà de quelques griefs communs, la cri- d’un univers privé de toute authenticité ? Un tique à l’égard des médias prend des formes univers balayé par des images vidées de leur es- diverses et variées. À l’instar du philosophe sence, à des jeux d’apparence et à des « simu- français Jean Baudrillard1, théoricien de la so- lacres » ? Oui, selon Jean Baudrillard, qui, dans ciété contemporaine, d’aucuns mettent l’accent son ouvrage Simulacres et Simulation, parle de sur le déplacement qui se produirait du mes- surfaces sans profondeur, de miroirs qui ne ré- sage vers l’instrument de difusion lui-même, féchiraient qu’eux-mêmes et derrière lesquels autrement dit, du contenu vers le contenant2. ne se cacherait aucune vérité. Cette inversion des priorités (le moyen se transformant en une fn en soi) renoue avec le Néanmoins, afn de remonter à l’origine de ces scénario déjà esquissé par le Canadien Mar- réactions critiques, n’oublions pas que dans les shall McLuhan dès les années 1960 : le medium années 1960, McLuhan était le premier à attir- supplante le message – le fameux “the media is er l’attention du monde vers les nouveaux mé- the message.”3 Dans la biographie qu’il consa- dias et à exalter leur toute-puissance, que ce cre à McLuhan en 2009, Douglas Coupland soit la radio, la télévision, le téléphone, le télé- précise ce qui est désormais devenu un cliché : copieur, la presse, etc.. Il est désormais connu que McLuhan a considéré les médias d’une “The medium is the message” means that façon globale et qu’il a été ainsi le chef de fle the ostensible content of all electronic d’une pensée technodéterministe des médias media is insignifcant; it is the medium dont l’infuence se fait encore sentir plus d’un itself that has the greater impact on the demi-siècle plus tard chez des théoriciens au environment, a fact bolstered by the now Canada et ailleurs sur la planète. Dans la lignée medically undeniable fact that the tech- de McLuhan, rappelons les penseurs français nologies we use every day begin, after contemporains Michel Serres ou Régis Deb- a while, to alter the way our brains work, ray et le Canadien Derrick de Kerckhove ou

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encore, Pierre Lévy, dont la notion de “glob- À partir de cette mise en contexte et en nous al brain”4 est une expansion du “global village” penchant sur trois expositions d’art contem- macluhanien, par exemple. porain canadien, nous proposons de réféchir à la pertinence de la pensée de McLuhan au- Que dit McLuhan ? C’est le progrès tech- jourd’hui en vue d’une meilleure compréhen- nologique qui détermine prioritairement la sion du milieu artistique. Comment les nou- forme de civilisation au sein de laquelle l’hom- veaux outils de communication agissent-ils sur me évolue : à l’ère des médias électroniques, les arts plastiques contemporains au Canada ? nous quittons la « Galaxie Gutenberg »5 pour Quelle est l’infuence des divers médias soci- anticiper ce qui deviendra la Galaxie Inter- aux sur les pratiques artistiques ? Ou encore, à net. Ou encore : la roue est un prolongement quel point Internet a-t-il modifé le milieu ar- du pied, le livre un prolongement de l’œil, la tistique, notre façon de concevoir, d’analyser et radio l’extension de l’oreille, le téléphone et la de percevoir les arts ? télévision sont l’extension du système nerveux. L’invention de Gutenberg a développé le sens 2/ Lire McLuhan aujourd’hui de l’abstraction en sollicitant l’œil, notre sens le plus intellectuel ; les mass media, au contraire, Lire McLuhan aujourd’hui, ce serait chercher mettent en valeur nos sens les plus intuitifs et le mot ou la phrase qui à un endroit quelcon- sollicitent l’ouïe, un sens plus archaïque. Et par- que du texte envahit soudain la conscience du adoxe ! Les découvertes de la modernité nous lecteur tel un souvenir auquel il ne s’attendait renverraient à un tribalisme d’antan. pas. L’image que l’on se fait de l’expérience in- térieure change qualitativement. Une sorte de Marshall McLuhan a séduit toute une généra- transparence semble illuminer le texte qu’on tion d’intellectuels et de penseurs qui ont fait de est en train de lire. La mémoire individuelle du la noosphère, du cyberespace, de la logosphère, lecteur cède à une mémoire plus vaste, souc- de la médiasphère, des formules-miracle parce ieuse de ne pas imposer ses préjugés. Ces ré- qu’elles permettent de réduire toute complex- sonnances jettent un déf au discours logique ité du monde à un système de relations codées. et suscitent souvent un espace de percep- Selon ces penseurs, les médias déterminent la tions multisensorielles qui captivent le lecteur. forme de société dans laquelle nous vivons : Cependant, la méthode de pensée dans l’écri- « le village global » est au fond la métaphore ture de McLuhan a ceci de particulier et de de la mondialisation. Les médias contribuent parfois irritant : elle se dispense d’analyse en au nivelage des cultures, annoncé comme la fn fournissant plutôt des synthèses. Disciple des apocalyptique de l’histoire et de la civilisation. artistes et écrivains symbolistes, McLuhan ne Si la pensée de McLuhan a été si bien acceptée semble donner que des conclusions à l’instar par un large public dans les années 1960, c’est des poètes : comme eux, il propose des efets qu’elle surestimait le rôle des médias de masse sans donner les causes. Écrivant à partir de la et établissait la prépondérance des grandes en- synthèse déjà faite, il ne se soucie pas de faire treprises sur les industries culturelles. Mais remonter le lecteur au point de départ d’une si ce système contente du monde, en même pensée. Il l’invite à y faire face d’un coup ou temps, il hypostasie la réalité. à y renoncer. Il place ses phrases en rapport de résonance. Rappelons une technique des

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surréalistes qui consistait à juxtaposer deux à ce qui l’entoure. Ces techniques agissent com- termes naturellement incompatibles pour faire me des « extensions » de nos sens, comme il le surgir un éclat d’intelligence entre eux. Il s’agit souligne dans sa vision du concept de “global d’un mini-happening, au sens d’une perfor- village”, qui est : “a way of paraphrasing the fact mance, d’une pratique artistique. C’est cet efet that electronic technologies are an extension de happening que nous fait ressentir McLuhan of the human central nervous system, and that dans ce passage sur les “hidden efects” dans our planet’s collective neural wiring would cre- *Te Global Village.*6 Dans sa biographie Mar- ate a single 24-7 blobby, fuzzy, quasi-sentient shall McLuhan, Coupland paraphrase : metacommunity” (Coupland 18-19). Là encore, les moyens de difusion se verraient dépouillés If you have ever sat in a hot and airless lec- de leur substance, et la communication s’érig- ture room trying to follow the speaker’s erait en but ultime de la communication, dans line of argument, you have experienced une sorte de tendance autophage. McLuhan ne the psychic nature of a fgure: it is the mo- cesse de poursuivre sa réfexion en concédant mentary area of your mind’s attention. As aux outils technologiques le pouvoir de s’éman- you sit there, you will notice perhaps suc- ciper de leur créateur, puis d’agir à leur tour sur cessively a sudden shift in the air, the radi- lui en produisant des efets imprévus qui mod- ator knocking, an insect buzzing between ifent sa façon d’être et de penser. the screen and the pane, or the pressure of your legs against the chair. Within the Lire McLuhan, c’est aussi essayer – après avoir context of all the things that exist in that été saisi de la synthèse – de la rendre disponible, room, points of awareness (attention) will mais c’est avant tout de la percevoir comme le arise and recede. In a larger sense, noth- but même de la lecture. C’est dans le même or- ing has meaning except in relation to the dre d’idées que Maurice Blanchot souligne, en environment, medium, or context that guise d’avant-propos pour L’espace littéraire : contains it. The type on this page is the fgure against the ground of the blank Un livre même fragmentaire, a un centre qui page. The fgure of the geometric con- l’attire : centre non pas fxe, mais qui se déplace struct is revealed against the void in which par la pression du livre et les circonstances de it is imagined. The left hemisphere of the sa composition. Centre fxe aussi, qui se dé- brain is fgure against the ground of the place, s’il est véritable, en restant même et en right brain in Western culture and the op- devenant toujours plus central, plus dérobé, posite for the Oriental. (18) plus incertain, plus impérieux. (13)

Dans ces quelques propos de Coupland, McLu- Comme ce n’est pas l’espace littéraire, mais l’es- han semble nous inviter à tirer de notre propre pace acoustique qui intéresse surtout McLu- expérience des idées stimulantes : c’est la na- han, son intuition du centre n’est pas d’emblée ture des moyens de communication et non pas basée sur la logique. « L’espace acoustique est leur contenu qui donne du sens au monde dans une sphère dont le centre est partout et la cir- lequel nous vivons ; ce sont les techniques nou- conférence nulle part », écrit-il dans Du cliché velles, non pas d’emblée l’évolution de l’esprit à l’archétype7, en reprenant une idée de Blaise humain, qui font que l’homme prête attention Pascal dans les Pensées (1670). Nous savons que

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l’espace acoustique est une des métaphores les Image à la galerie d’art contemporain, Plug In plus courantes dans l’œuvre de McLuhan. C’est Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). l’espace de la résonance et de la simultanéité globale de toute expérience humaine. L’art en 3/ Vision trouble d’Annie Briard et est une des clefs. l’impact d’Internet sur l’art aujourd’hui

Pourquoi le rôle de l’art est-il crucial pour Mc- Pour Annie Briard, artiste montréalaise qui Luhan ? Rappelons que dans son œuvre-phare, vit à Vancouver et qui a exposé dans de nom- Pour comprendre les médias : les prolongements breuses galeries au Canada et à l’étranger, l’im- technologiques de l’homme, paru au Canada en age est intimement liée au sens de la vue, la anglais en 1964 et traduit en français en 1968, vision étant « le moyen le plus poignant pour McLuhan ne parle pas explicitement de l’art. saisir ce que nous comprenons du monde qui Néanmoins, depuis les années 1950, le théoric- nous entoure ».8 L’artiste s’intéresse aux « actes ien se consacre activement à la compréhension physiques de la lumière » et tente de « compar- des médias comme enjeux épistémologique et er [s]a réalité à la [n]ôtre »,9 ce qui fait, entre artistique. Ainsi, il est possible de synthétiser autres, l’objet de l’exposition présentée du 21 ses idées sur l’art à partir de ce qu’il écrit sur avril au 28 mai 2016 à la Maison des artistes vi- les médias (presse, télévision, radio, livre etc.) suels de Saint-Boniface au Manitoba. et leurs impacts sur le système nerveux. Dans ce sens, McLuhan distingue quatre caractéris- À l’instar de McLuhan qui s’interroge sur l’im- tiques de l’art : 1/ l’œuvre d’art s’adresse d’abord pact des médias sur la vue, Annie Briard ré- aux sens ; 2/ l’œuvre d’art engage le spectateur, féchit à la manière dont l’image infuence entre autres, en exposant le processus de créa- nos regards et le positionnement de nos yeux. tion ; 3/ l’œuvre d’art crée des relations formel- Dans son art, l’image peut être en mouvement, les nouvelles, souvent à travers la mosaïque ; captée, simulée, construite, fxe, et même pro- 4/ l’œuvre d’art représente une énigme : elle va venir de divers horizons : de la mémoire, de ses toujours au-delà du réel. souvenirs, ses rêves, ses fantasmes. Au fond, le parti pris de Vision trouble est de réféchir Qu’est-ce que cela veut dire pour les arts au aux espaces entre le visible et l’imaginaire en Canada aujourd’hui ? En discutant certaines jouant sur l’image et, par le fait même, sur la répercussions d’internet et des nouveaux out- vision. Passionnée de détails et minutieuse ils de communication sur les arts de la franco- dans sa technique, Annie Briard semble piéger phonie contemporaine, nous nous pencherons le regardeur le plus assidu, qui aurait du mal particulièrement sur une exposition qui a eu à déjouer les artifces de sa démarche quand lieu à La Maison des artistes visuels franco- il s’agit de retracer les étapes de son processus phones de Saint-Boniface, au Manitoba : Vi- créatif derrière les séries d’images qui lui sont sion trouble de l’artiste Annie Briard. Ensuite, présentées. Car, pour reprendre McLuhan : nous examinerons la notion de mosaïque à tra- une exposition d’Annie Briard, ça ne se regarde vers deux expositions de Winnipeg : Our Land. pas, ça s’éprouve. Contemporary Art from the Arctic à Winnipeg Art Galery et Superimposition : Sculpture and L’exposition Vision trouble met en lumière, d’une part, la troisième dimension des arts

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plastiques, avec des installations immersives the gaps and intersections between these et des productions utilisant la vidéo, la sculp- models. Our sensorial system – physically ture, le dessin et la photographie, qui nous fallible and infuenced by memory, mood, plongent dans le champ de la phénoménolo- ideology – mediates what we know of the gie de la réception, voire dans celui de l’inter- surrounding world. Sometimes, the limits subjectif et de la relation à l’œuvre. D’autre part, between our ideal and physical visions le montage de Briard se situe dans la fausse become blurred. How, then, does what I troisième dimension, celle de l’illusion optique see compare to what you see? How does rendue possible par l’intermédiaire de lunettes this perception infuence our way of be- 3D devant une œuvre à deux dimensions. Bref, ing in the world, of encountering wonder, nous sommes immergés, « dedans », pour re- and communing with one another? prendre Blanchot. Difcile donc de s’imagin- er cette exposition ; il faudrait, plus que la voir, Les œuvres de Vision trouble relèvent d’une la vivre, l’éprouve de tout son corps pour en « multistabilité dans la perception humaine ».10 déployer le sens. Par ailleurs, Douglas Coup- Suivant ce concept, le monde est “a fctional land, dans sa biographie sur McLuhan, recon- construct, […] where ‘truth’ is always provi- naît l’importance de l’expérience dans la per- sional, subject to interpretation, relative to the ception de l’espace et du volume : “Marshall position of the observer” (Jirgens, “Virtual Re- wasn’t simply discussing the way we perceive alities and Chaos” 148). volume but rather the way those volumes are experienced” (Coupland 147). Il en va de même pour le titre de l’exposition, Vision trouble, où le mot « vision » est au singu- Pour revenir à Annie Briard : elle détient un lier. On pourrait le prendre pour une vérité ob- bac en Beaux-Arts de l’université Concordia jective, mais c’est plutôt une construction dé- et une maîtrise en arts médiatiques de l’Uni- terminée par nos diférentes perceptions. Selon versité d’art et design Emily Carr. Sa pratique cette perspective, on pourrait avancer une idée artistique est fortement engagée dans une rede Gaston Bachelard, pour qui l’œuvre permet cherche formelle et théorique à la croisée de la l’expérience du monde extérieur et intérieur et psychologie, des neurosciences et de la littéra- montre « la correspondance de l’immensité de ture (pensons à son œuvre Le Marronnier, in- l’espace du monde et de la profondeur de “l’es- spirée de La Nausée de Sartre). Nous n’avons pace du dedans” » (Bachelard, La Poétique de pas tort d’afrmer que par l’interdisciplinarité l’espace 186). Le spectateur attentif devant les de ses préoccupations, son travail explore des installations d’Annie Briard remarque que les questions dans la lignée de Marshall McLu- images – sortes de paysages-lumière qui sem- han. Dans son artist statement, Annie Briard blent fxes au premier regard – changent et se afrme: transforment : la lumière du soleil sur les arbres fuctue, l’image prend vie, la tête d’un person- I am interested in the multiplicity of per- nage remue. Certains spectateurs s’en rendent ception paradigms, differing within the compte, d’autres peut-être pas du tout. Entre ce felds of psychology, phenomenology, qu’on perçoit ou non, un objet artistique nous neuroscience and flm theory. There is fait pourtant signe, nous rappelant qu’il y a là space for creative experimentation within quelque chose à voir.

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Si en 1962, Marshall McLuhan, dans son livre conception et réalisation de vidéos, partage de Te Gutenberg Galaxy, soulignait l’évolution de ces dernières sur les réseaux ou en exposition ; l’homme d’une communauté tribale à la mo- mise en service de sites d’artistes en arts visuels dernité en se référant à des cultures orales et avec accès à une galerie virtuelle ; apparition à des cultures mécaniques (“acoustic space” vs. de l’art mobile, qui est toute forme de créativité “mechanical culture”) – aujourd’hui, nous pou- composée à partir d’un appareil mobile, d’un vons mesurer l’impact d’internet, des sites de téléphone ou d’une tablette. partage et des réseaux sociaux en termes de transformation des pratiques artistiques et Au fond, au centre de ce type d’art, l’instanta- d’assurance d’une pérennité des œuvres. Rap- néité, la connectivité et la dimension collective pelons encore Coupland, qui écrit : priment. Ajoutons à cela, la dématérialisation des œuvres et l’hybridation des pratiques. Dans Marshall defned tribal societies as oral tous les cas, nous sommes placés devant l’ex- cultures whose members used emotion- périence ; l’expérience qui était essentielle pour ally laden speech to communicate. These McLuhan et qui a motivé son désir d’analyser non-literate societies were politically en- presque tout ce qui l’entourait.11 C’est ce désir gaged, emotionally charged, tightly wo- d’expérimentation et d’expérience auquel nous ven together, and unifed. They lived in convie également l’exposition d’Annie Briard. what Marshall called “acoustic space.” 4/ Critique et effet de mosaïque dans deux This space was eroded by the phonetic expositions d’art contemporain à Winnipeg alphabet. It stripped speech of its emotional dimension, creating in its Finnega- La contribution la plus marquante de McLu- nian wake linear, individualistic, Western han à l’examen de la pensée occidentale dans Man – “Gutenberg Man”. Beginning in the les années 1960 a été de lui faire prendre con- sixteenth century, the eye overtook the science d’un certain nombre d’impasses, par- ear as man’s dominant sense organ. The mi lesquelles le fait que la logique formelle est printing press was ultimately responsi- remise en cause dans un monde acoustique. À ble for the Industrial Revolution, the mid- cela s’ajoute le fait que l’époque de l’électrique dle class, nationalism, and capitalism, ul- n’est plus celle du raisonnement déductif et de timately creating a “mechanical culture.” l’analyse des opérations élémentaires. Elle est (Coupland 164) celle de la simultanéité, donc celle de la réfex- ion sur les enchaînements et les constructions Il est certain que de nos jours, internet est deve- hybrides. Il est désormais connu que la révo- nu presqu’un passage obligé pour nombre d’ar- lution des médiums bouleverse le sens de la tistes, surtout s’ils tiennent à garder l’attention perception, la notion d’environnement, la ca- sur leur art et s’ils souhaitent privilégier des pacité d’assimilation et la conception des arts rencontres – virtuelles, et pas seulement – avec en général, que ce soit la peinture, la sculpture, d’autres artistes, des collectionneurs, des com- l’architecture, le cinéma, etc., qui deviennent missaires d’exposition, des directeurs de galerie, d’« anciennes » formes d’art par rapport aux des critiques et le public. La présence culturelle nouvelles : la radio, la télévision, la vidéo, par sur internet se traduit de diférentes manières : exemple.

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Dans les années 1960, McLuhan posait une – joyeuses et sombres – d’artistes qui parta- question qui n’a pas perdu de sa pertinence : gent leur art de vivre et de créer, et qui nous les « anciennes » formes d’art, qui ne semblent dévoilent ainsi la grande histoire de leur com- plus génératrice d’avant-gardes, sont-elles con- munauté, celle des Inuit – ces populations qui damnées à perdre de leur importance ? Ou occupent depuis des centaines de générations, bien, continuent-elles à subir des métamor- la vaste étendue de l’Arctique, de la Sibérie à phoses dont on ne cesse de discuter la teneur ? l’Alaska, du Canada au Groenland. Dans le cat- Pour y répondre, sans doute a-t-on besoin de alogue de l’exposition Our Land, on lit : reconnaître le dynamisme des transformations successives qui ont eu lieu dans le domaine des L’art inuit puise dans un riche patrimoine arts plastiques, pas seulement au temps de Mc- culturel. Il a fait naître, autrefois, chants, Luhan mais bel et bien aujourd’hui. C’est ce récits, danses, sculptures et certains ob- que nous allons montrer à partir de deux expo- jets utilitaires d’une beauté remarquable. sitions d’art contemporain à Winnipeg. Aujourd’hui, viennent s’ajouter à ce patrimoine d’expression, la gravure, la photog- Avant de parler de l’exposition Our Land. Con- raphie, la musique populaire et la réalisa- temporary Art from the Arctic, organisée par tion vidéo. (Monroe 24) la Winnipeg Art Galery en collaboration avec le gouvernement de Nunavut et le musée Les œuvres d’art inuit présentées dans l’ex- Peabody Essex en Nouvelle-Angleterre, ar- position : sculptures, gravures, litographies, rêtons-nous un instant sur la manière dont le tapisseries, photographies, vidéos, manteaux penseur québécois Pierre Bertrand conçoit l’aren fourrure portés par les shamans, constitu- tiste. Bertrand écrit : ent une véritable mosaïque de l’univers inuit, et à la fois, elles dépeignent des récits de vie et L’artiste, dans son art comme dans sa le quotidien de ces gens. Les Inuit respectent vie, ne procède pas à partir d’une foi, la parole réféchie et l’écoute, aptitudes qu’ils d’une croyance, d’un principe. Mais c’est estiment essentielles à la cohésion et la survie quelque chose en lui, d’invisible, d’im- collective. Dans cette optique, l’art du récit dé- perceptible qui ne demande qu’à être, à passe le simple divertissement. Il s’agit d’une la source de tous les devenirs, qu’à s’ex- expression privilégiée de transmission des val- primer, à être à la source de toutes les ac- eurs de la collectivité. Avant tout, l’art inuit fait tions. […] Cette force de vie, qui est es- état de l’être. Etre Inuit ne signife pas simple- sentiellement force de joie, est réellement ment parler l’Inuktitut ou maîtriser les com- invisible, imperceptible, elle est même pr- pétences nécessaires à la vie dans l’Arctique. Il esque au-delà de la sensation, de la per- s’agit d’être un Inuk : ception. C’est comme être en vie. […] Tel est le moteur de tout art digne de ce nom, […] un être humain qui incarne la per- y compris bien sûr l’art de vivre. (15-16) spective, l’optique et le regard de l’Inuk sur le monde. Le savoir ancestral inuit, l’In- Pourquoi cette évocation de l’artiste ici ? Parce uit Qaujimajatuqangit, véhicule les valeurs que l’exposition Our Land se présente com- inuites, la vision du monde, la langue, l’or- me une mosaïque d’histoires individuelles ganisation sociale, le savoir dynamique

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de la vie, les perceptions et les attentes. sociaux etc. Dans ce contexte, une exposition (Monroe 24) comme Our Land fait bel et bien fgure d’initiative exceptionnelle de sauvegarde de l’héritage Il est intéressant de noter que dans les années ancestral et contemporain inuit. Il s’agit aussi 1950 et 1960, dans Explorations 8 (1957) et dans d’une belle collaboration entre les gouverne- la version revue de ce recueil, Verbi-Voco-Visu- ments du Canada et du Nunavut, le ministère al Explorations12, parue en 1967, Marshall Mc- de la Culture, de la Langue, des Aînés et de la Luhan s’intéressait déjà aux cultures et aux pra- Jeunesse et le musée Peabody Essex13 pour pré- tiques artistiques des peuples autochtones du server un héritage unique des peuples du Nord Grand Nord canadien, particulièrement aux canadien. Inuits appelés alors Eskimos. Le chapitre “No Upside Down in Eskimo Art” (1-2) est révéla- En outre, l’exposition multilingue (Inukti- teur de ses intérêts. Dans les pas de l’anthro- tut, anglais et français), la référence à la série pologue Edmund Carpenter, avec qui il a col- télévisuelle Nunavut et au flm de renommée laboré, McLuhan reconnaît la force des “Eski- internationale Atanarjuat : l’homme rapide qui mo space concepts, their mechanical skill and a infuencé le montage des œuvres dans l’ex- their power of accurate mapping of islands position, ainsi que la diversité des objets d’art whose shores had not been seen but where the (sculptures, gravures, peintures, tapisseries, sounds of water alone gave them contour” (1). vidéos, etc.) réalisés par des artistes issus de Il est évident que les capacités sensorielles au- diférentes régions polaires : Cape Dorset, Iglo- tant des Inuit que des Eskimos sont remarqua- olik, Panniqtuuq – tout cela nous permet d’évo- bles, ce qui nous permet de souligner la perti- quer la notion de « mosaïque » qu’a explorée nence de l’intuition de McLuhan et Carpenter, Marshall McLuhan dans les années 1960. C’est et l’actualisation de ces réfexions dans des pro- une manière de jeter des passerelles entre le ductions artistiques contemporaines, comme passé et le présent en soulignant l’importance l’exposition Our Land. de la pensée de McLuhan et sa pertinence aujourd’hui en vue d’éclaircir la mise ensemble de Mais quelle est la situation des Inuit aujo- diférents objets dans une exposition contem- urd’hui ? Qu’est-ce que l’exposition Our Land poraine et leurs signifcations. nous apprend sur la vie et l’art des Inuit contemporains ? Après tout, que dit McLuhan sur la mosaïque ? Pour y répondre, contextualisons d’abord la En parcourant l’espace du musée, en lisant les question. Lorsqu’il écrit pour des contempo- extraits de texte disposés sur les murs dans les rains immergés dans une civilisation de l’audio- salles d’exposition, on réalise vite que les Inu- visuel, McLuhan rompt délibérément avec les it d’aujourd’hui, y compris le peuple du Nun- formes de l’écrit linéaires et rationnelles, telles avut, font face à d’énormes défs, bien diférents que les a consacrées l’usage académique. De la des contraintes d’il y a une ou deux généra- sorte, pour mieux rendre compte de la rupture tions. Les préoccupations de sauvegarde de apportée par la « période typographique » dans la langue, des traditions et des savoirs inuits le cours des civilisations, il rédige Te Guten- sont brouillées par une nouvelle réalité où pri- berg Galaxy sous la forme d’une mosaïque de ment la télévision, la radio, internet, les réseaux petits paragraphes, les chapitres étant précédés

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de résumés qui ajoutent de l’information, con- civilisations qui les façonnent. Cela lui per- tribuant à la complexité du total. McLuhan jus- met de repenser une histoire de l’humanité en tife son choix dans ces mots: « La mosaïque trois grandes époques : d’abord, l’ère tribale, où constitue le seul moyen de faire apparaître les dominait la parole, puis, l’ère typographique, opérations causales dans l’histoire » (McLuhan, déterminée par l’imprimé, et enfn, l’ère mod- Te Gutenberg Galaxy 45). erne, retribalisée par les médias électroniques. Cette vision ne fait-elle pas fgure de mosaïque Par ailleurs, McLuhan introduit une perspec- ? Oui, puisque nous pouvons envisager la mo- tive radicalement nouvelle dans la façon de saïque comme « un lieu composite où coexis- conceptualiser les médias. Refusant de se can- tent, de manière irénique (tolérance envers les tonner aux technologies capables de véhiculer croyances diférentes), et non contradictoire, des messages – telles que l’écriture, l’imprimé, toutes les valeurs entassées au cours de l’his- le cinéma ou la télévision – il considère toutes toire » (Dällenbach, Mosaïque 167), selon la les technologies susceptibles de transform- conception de Lucien Dällenbach. er, pour l’homme, l’expérience sensible de la distance et du temps, et donne à la notion de Étant donné que la diversité de l’exposition Our média, une extension considérable : la roue est Land. Contemporary Art from the Arctic porte médiatrice du pied et ainsi son « agent anti-in- sur la multiplicité des productions artistiques, fammatoire » (McLuhan, Te Gutenberg Gal- sur l’hétérogénéité des individus, des popula- axy 45), le vêtement est médiateur de la peau, tions et des histoires de vie, la notion de mo- etc. Comme nous disions plus haut : ces tech- saïque – telle qu’exposée par McLuhan, et plus nologies font sens par elles-mêmes et non par tard, par Dällenbach – nous permet d’envisager le contenu des messages qu’elles véhiculent : l’être-ensemble des diférences dans un montage stimulant et inclusif14. Cette approche C’est une des principales caractéristiques est également celle des perspectives multi- et des médias que le contenu nous en cache transculturelles articulées à la littérature, dans la nature […]. La lumière et l’électricité en la conception du critique canadien Patrick Im- effet sont distinctes de l’usage qu’on en bert, pour qui : « ce qui importe dans les récits fait. Elles abolissent le temps et l’espace multi- et transculturels, c’est justement cet in- dans la société exactement comme la stant plein, complet, mais dans sa dimension radio, le télégraphe, le téléphone et la positive, celle de la reconnaissance de l’autre et télévision et imposent une participation de soi vis-à-vis de l’autre » (Imbert, « Multicul- en profondeur. (McLuhan, Pour compren- turalisme, violence fondatrice et récit 29). Ain- dre les médias 62) si est-il du « coup de foudre » qui agit comme une épiphanie permettant de reconnaître l’al- L’originalité de cette vision est certes rassem- térité positivement et d’aller au-delà du cliché blée dans l’aphorisme : the medium is the mes- ou des situations problématiques. sage. Prenant à contre-pied le schéma linéaire de la communication, McLuhan afrme que L’idée de mosaïque comme cohabitation d’élé- les médias, par leur existence même, et in- ments cosmopolites se retrouve aussi dans dépendamment des messages qu’ils véhiculent, la deuxième exposition qui nous intéres- imposent leur logique de consommation aux se. Cette fois, il s’agit d’une exposition d’art

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contemporain occidental, intitulée Superim- pour donner l’impression d’espace ; pas position: Sculpture and Image, qui a eu lieu à seulement un espace plat, uni-dimensionnel, la galerie Plug In Institute of Contemporary mais tri-dimensionnel. Art de Winnipeg. C’est un montage-mosaïque qui réunit le travail de huit femmes artistes ca- Nadia Belerique, I hate you don’t leave me, 2015 nadiennes et européennes : Nadia Belerique, (4 inkjet photographs mounted to aluminum Valérie Blass, Ursula Johnson, Kelly Lycan, Ur- and Plexiglas; 3 powder coated rolled steel; sula Mayer, Kristin Nelson, Dominique Rey et carpet) Andrea Roberts. Ces artistes (2 francophones, 3 anglophones, 1 autochtone et 2 germano- Valérie Blass, Vices – épater, 2014 (Photograph- phones) travaillent toutes dans l’interdisciplin- ic print on plaster base, pipe, pigment); High- aire : de la sculpture à l’architecture, en passant up, dignitary, panjandrum, high muckamuck, par la photographie, la vidéo, la science-fction, 2015 (Styrofoam, foamcoat, gouache, steel, le textile ou la performance. Par-delà la diversi- rubber, inkjet print on cotton, metal hanging té de leurs préoccupations, ce qui donne l’unité structure). de cette attrayante exposition est la manière dont chacune des artistes et les huit ensem- Ursula Johnson, Ode to Miss Easgle Testickle, ble réféchissent à la capacité de l’homme et de 2016 (yellow/silver birch bark, black ash rib- la femme contemporains de faire l’expérience bon, acid free watercolour paper, PH neutral des objets, des images, des flms et des perfor- adhesive). mances – ce qui rejoint la conception de Mc- Luhan sur le rôle déterminant de la perception Kelly Lycan, Save, 2008 (carpet bench) ; I et de l’expérience dans la compréhension des Walked Into a Moment, 2014 (2 inkjet prints). médias et du monde. Ursula Mayer, Drawing Abdroid 6, 2014 (cast Il y a plus d’une « superposition » (“superimpo- concrete) ; See you in the Flesh 1,2,3, & 4, 2014 sition”) dans cette exposition : entre la sculp- (glass and metal) ; Gonda, 2012 (16mm flm on ture et l’image, entre la photographie et l’in- HD ; 30 min). stallation. Mais ce qui est intéressant, c’est que l’acte de “superimposition” introduit le visiteur Kristin Nelson, A Model for Living, 2016 à un espace en trois dimensions, où il se dé- (porcelain). place et se positionne en sorte que ce qui est caché ou presqu’invisible se dévoile, devient Dominique Rey, Untitled #3 (Photo Assem- visible. Dans cette démarche ludique, s’active blage) (laser cut Plexiglas, inkjet prints, wood) ; ce que Marshall McLuhan nommait expéri- Continental Drif, 2016 (collage) ; Sejourn, dip- menter le monde et l’art par les sensations, et tych, 2016 (collage) ; A Momentary Lapse of non pas d’emblée, par la logique et la raison. Reason, 2016 (assemblage).

En bref, les œuvres de l’exposition : relèvent Andrea Roberts, Te Stridents #1 (sigh, gasp, d’une passion évidente pour le travail sur l’im- hiss, rale), 2016 (mixed-media) ; Te Stri- age et la manière dont diférentes images-mo- dents #2(total insolvency), 2016 (polycotton, saïque entrent en relations et se transforment steel) ; Te Strident #3 (there is gold dust), 2016

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(mixed-media) ; A Mirror for Recluses, 2016 pratiques artistiques des trois expositions d’art (sound installation). contemporain ici convoquées. McLuhan est parmi ces “extraordinary Canadians” – pour Ainsi, par le biais de l’exposition d’art contem- reprendre l’intitulé de la collection où est pub- porain Superimposition: Sculpture and Image, liée la biographie de Dougas Coupland, Mar- nous revenons à McLuhan et à son idée du shall McLuhan – dont l’œuvre simultanée au “the medium is the message”, pour afrmer que développement mondial de la télévision a don- toute œuvre d’art est susceptible de stimuler né lieu à des concepts stimulants et souples, qui notre pensée par elle-même, indépendamment ont permis de penser non seulement les trans- de son contenu. formations en cours dans la société, mais aussi les mutations dans les domaines de l’art et de la 4/Conclusion culture, en général.

Les écrits de Marshall McLuhan ont suscité Finalement, nous n’avons pas tort d’afrmer à la fois passion et critique. On lui a notam- que des notions comme le “global village” ou ment reproché d’être ouvertement détermin- la « mosaïque », par exemple, nous permettent iste et de faire comme si la société était aveu- aujourd’hui de dévoiler de nouvelles signif- gle à elle-même et qu’une élite devait se char- cations dans l’art actuel et de mesurer la force ger de lui révéler ce qui est occulté. Par ailleurs, d’anticipation de la pensée de Marshall Mc- Umberto Eco, dans La guerre du faux15 en Luhan qui, dès les années 1960, semblait nous 1985 a violemment critiqué autant le parti pris avertir à la fois des aspects positifs et des tra- épistémologique – ne pas séparer le message et vers du monde virtuel. le vecteur – que la forme du propos de McLu- han, délibérément obscure, notamment dans l’analyse des médias « chauds », tels l’imprim- Ouvrages cités erie, la presse et le cinéma, capables de per- mettre un détachement critique, et des médias Bachelard, Gaston. La Poétique de l’espace. Quad- « froids », telle la télévision, engageant les sens rige/PUF, 2004. et les facultés du spectateur et produisant une forme d’hallucination. Enfn, on a reproché Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacres et Simulation. Galilée, à McLuhan le fait d’associer étroitement une 1985. époque à un média dominant, ce qui per- mettrait mal de rendre compte de phénomènes Bertrand, Pierre. L’Ar t i s t e . L’Hexagone, 1985. importants comme le réinvestissement de con- tenus d’un média ancien dans un média nou- Blanchot, Maurice. L’Espace littéraire. Gallimard, veau ou les liens entre divers médias à une 1988. même époque. Briard, Annie. Site web de l’artiste. URL : http:// En efet, McLuhan est un de ces auteurs excep- www.anniebriard.com/artist-statement/ tionnels à la pensée aussi créative que décon- certante qui continue à nous interpeller au- Coupland, Douglas. Marshall McLuhan. Penguin jourd’hui, comme le montre l’analyse des Canada, 2009.

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Dällenbach, Lucien. Mosaïque. Seuil, 2001. Pascal, Blaise. Pensées et Opuscules. Éd. Léon Brun- schvicg, Paris, Hachette, 1909. Eco, Umberto. La Guerre du faux. Trad. de l’italien par Myriam Tanant, Grasset et Fasquelle, 1985. Sfez, Lucien, Gilles Coutlée (dir.). Technologies et symboliques de la communication. Presses universi- Imbert, Patrick (dir.). Rencontres multiculturelles. taires de Grenoble, 1990. Imprévus et coïncidences. Chaire de recherche de l’Université d’Ottawa : Canada : Enjeux sociaux et Notes culturels dans une société du savoir, 2013.

1 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacres et Simulation, Paris, Jirgens, Karl E. ‘Virtual Realities and Chaos: Te Galilée, 1985. Fictions of Nicole Brossard, William Gibson, Don DeLillo, Michael Ondaatje and Others.’ Revista Ca- 2 Voir : Lucien Sfez, Gilles Coutlée (dir.), Technol- naria de Estudios Ingleses, no. 39, 1999, p. 136-151. ogies et symboliques de la communication, Grenoble, Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 1990. Lévy, Pierre. Te Semantic Sphere I: Computation, Cognition and Information Economy. London, ISTE, 3 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: Te 2011. Extension of Man, Mentor, New York, 1964.

McLuhan, Marshall. Du cliché à l’archétype, la foire 4 Voir : Pierre Lévy, Te Semantic Sphere I: Com- du sens. Avec Wilfred Watson, trad. de l’anglais par putation, Cognition and Information Economy, Lon- Derrick de Kerckove, Mame/Hurtubise HMH, 1973. don, ISTE, 2011, particulièrement le chapitre : ‘Te prophets of media and the ’global brain’’. —. Te Global Village. Transformation in World Life and Media in the 21st Century. Oxford University 5 Voir : Marshall McLuhan, Te Gutenberg Galaxy, Press, 1989. Toronto, Te University of Toronto Press, 1962.

—. Te Gutenberg Galaxy. University of Toronto 6 Voir : Marshall McLuhan, Te Global Village. Press, 1962. Transformation in World Life and Media in the 21st Century, New York, Oxford University Press, 1989. —. Pour comprendre les médias : les prolongements technologiques de l’homme. trad. de l’anglais par J. 7 Marshall McLuhan, Du cliché à l’archétype, la Paré, Seuil, 1968. foire du sens, avec Wilfred Watson, trad. de l’anglais par Derrick de Kerckove, Montréal/Paris, Mame/ —. Understanding Media: Te Extension of Man. Hurtubise HMH, 1973. *Il existe dans les Pensées Mentor, 1964. de Blaise Pascal une comparaison devant laquelle depuis deux cents ans s’extasie la critique : Pascal —. Verbi-Voco-Visual Explorations. Something Else parlant de ce monde visible qui n’est qu’« un trait im- Press Inc., 1967. perceptible dans l’ample sein de la nature », ajoute, sans aucune référence – « C’est une sphère dont le Monroe, Dan. (ed). Our Land. Contemporary Art centre est partout et la périphérie nulle part » (Éd. from the Arctic. Peabody Essex Museum, 2004. Léon Brunschvicg, Section II, 72).

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8 Propos de l’artiste cités sur les murs de l’exposition.

9 Ibid.

10 Dépliant de présentation de l’exposition.

11 En parlant de McLuhan, Coupland écrit: “As for an anthropologist, any artifact that might represent a culture was up for analysis” (116).

12 New York/Frankfurt/Villefranche-sur-Mer, Something Else Press, Inc., 1967.

13 Voir le catalogue de l’exposition. Our Land. Con- temporary Art from the Arctic, op.cit., p. 24.

14 Lien avec le multiculturalisme canadien.

15 Umberto Eco, La Guerre du faux, trad. de l’italien par Myriam Tanant, Paris, Grasset et Fasquelle, 1985.

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JESSICA JACOBSON-KONEFALL MAY CHEW DAINA WARREN

Abstract | Marshall McLuhan’s ideas have been founda- Résumé | Les idées de Marshall McLuhan ont été fonda- tional in shaping understandings about the role of media mentales dans l’élaboration des compréhensions sur le rôle and mediation in landscape, identity, and nationhood. At des médias et de la médiation dans le paysage, l’identité, et the same time, his theories remain tethered to a liberal hu- l’idée de la nation. En même temps, ses théories restent at- manist schematic of citizenship and technological modernity, tachées à schéma humaniste libéral de la citoyenneté et de la which advances—implicitly or not—colonial constructions modernité technologique qui avance, implicitement ou non, of the land as terra nullius, and thus severely limits or frus- les constructions coloniales de la terre comme terra nullius, trates attempts to enlist them in anti-colonial analyses. In et limite ainsi ou freine sévèrement les tentatives de les en- response, this paper places McLuhan into dialogue with Cree rôler dans des analyses anticoloniales. En réponse, cet ar- artist and scholar Cheryl L’Hirondelle, arguing that such a ticle établit un dialogue entre McLuhan et Cheryl L’Hiron- move can begin to disrupt the settler underpinnings in Mc- delle, artiste et universitaire crie, soutenant qu’un tel mou- Luhan’s ideas, and also broaden the potential for these ideas vement peut commencer à perturber les fondements qu’ont to be applied within contemporary queries into decolonial les colons des idées de McLuhan, et également élargir la pos- citizenships on Turtle Island. Our paper focuses on L’Hiron- sibilité que ces idées soient appliquées dans les requêtes con- delle’s nikamon ohci askiy (songs because of the land). An temporaines de décolonisation des citoyennetés sur l’Île de interactive digital platform framed through Cree cosmolo- la Tortue. Notre article se concentre sur les nikamon ohci gy, nikamon ohci askiy is a multilayered work that explores askiy de L’Hirondelle (chansons à cause de la terre). Plate- technological mediations of nation, land, and Indigenous cit- forme numérique interactive encadrée par la cosmologie crie, izenship. Similar to other Indigenous theories of new media, nikamon ohci askiy est un travail complexe qui explore les this work challenges the view of land as barren/hostile, in médiations technologiques de la nation, de la terre, et de la particular by emphasizing land-based animate relationships. citoyenneté autochtone. Comme d’autres théories autoch- Ultimately, this paper argues that the new media ecologies tones sur les nouveaux médias, ce travail remet en question profered through L’Hirondelle’s work contest settler liberal la vision de la terre comme stérile/hostile, en particulier en citizenship, and reorients understandings of “networks” and mettant l’accent sur les relations animées terrestres. En fn de “the digital” as crucially grounded in Indigenous notions of compte, cet article soutient que les écologies des nouveaux reciprocality and relationality médias véhiculées par le travail de L’Hirondelle contestent la citoyenneté libérale des colons et réorientent la compréhen- sion des « réseaux » et du « numérique » comme fondamen- talement ancrée dans les notions autochtones de réciprocité et de relationnalité.

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…we stake a claim here too as being Indigenous Media Art and Civic Ecology: an intrinsic part of this place—the very nikamon ohci askiy: songs because of the land roots, or more appropriately routes. So let’s use our collective Indigenous un- Te accounts and works of Indigenous the- conscious to remember our contribu- orists, artists, and media technologies difer tions and the physical beginnings that from their presentation in McLuhan’s argu- were pivotal in how this virtual reality ments, although Indigenous articulations of was constructed. new media do resonate at times with his vision -Cheryl L’Hirondelle, “Codetalk- of a global—though Eurocentric and colonial— ers Recounting Signals of Sur- framing of the return of tribal man through vival,” Coded Territories media (Lof, “Mediacosmology” 181). McLu- han does not emphasize the situated colonial n nikamon ohci askiy: songs because of the national context of his perspective and writ- land, Cree new media artist Cheryl L’Hi- ing. His argument around processes of what he rondelle highlights Indigenous practices calls “retribalization” places attention on the Iof decolonization in the arts, challenging as- potential for “the primitive role of art” to serve sumptions about nation, liberal citizenship, as “consolidator and a liaison” with the cosmos land, and technological modernity. L’Hiron- (qtd. in Lof, “Mediacosmology” 181-2). In this delle’s theoretical and artistic works advance specifc aspect, Mohawk scholar and theorist Indigenous citizenship networks towards a of new media art Steven Lof writes that McLu- decolonized civic ecology. L’Hirondelle’s work han “nails it” as regards Indigenous praxis and nikamon ohci askiy: songs because of the land cosmology (181). Yet McLuhan’s formulation presents a peopled landscape resonant with is overly abstract; his “tribal” media argument voices and histories. nikamon ohci askiy: songs presumes an unmarked world citizen with- because of the land demolishes the settler my- in an undoubtedly abstract and liberal frame- thology of land given to us by canonical na- work that, while it dissembles back into the tional thinkers including Marshall McLuhan “primitive” (181) is not grounded, as Indigenous and George Grant, who ofer its understanding media theory is, in the specifcity of relation- as a barren and hostile challenge to overcome ships in specifc lands within which technology in the liberal humanist trial of Canadian citi- is fgured in Indigenous ontological contexts. zenship. As an iconic Canadian media theorist, McLuhan shaped views of land, national iden- Winnebago scholar Renya Ramirez provides tity, and citizenship through the lens of media. a context for discussing Indigenous media art By delineating and embodying Indigenous his- when, drawing on Indigenous women’s expe- tories of land and networked subjectivity in riences, she writes from the ground up against media arts, L’Hirondelle fgures technological settler-colonial frameworks of liberal human- relationships from Cree perspectives that dif- ist citizenship such as McLuhan’s. Ramirez ar- fer from those of McLuhan’s arguments about gues that urban Native peoples practice rela- Canadian nationhood and the technological tional citizenship by composing “hubs” formed individual. by cultural processes and geographic places, including the use of technology, thereby “re-member[ing] the native body torn apart by

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colonization” (23, emphasis added). For Dene how media has functioned for Indigenous peo- theorist Glen Coulthard, this Indigeneity: ples in ways that are consonant with the functions of cyberspace and digital forms with- is deeply informed by what the land as in it, such as hypertext (172). For example, he system of reciprocal relations and obliga- cites Angela M. Haas, who describes wampum tions can teach us about living our lives precisely as hypertext, citing it as “an Ameri- in relation to one another and the natural can Indian intellectual tradition of multimedia world in non-dominating and non-exploit- theory and practice” (77-100). Not only are the ative terms; [a] place based foundation of forms and concepts that undergird, support, grounded normativity…[underlies] the and materialize new media consonant in un- modalities of Indigenous land-connected interrupted lines of continuity through Indig- practices and longstanding experiential enous media ecologies, but, as L’Hirondelle knowledge that inform and structure our notes, the movement pathways of Indigenous ethical engagements with the world and ancestors across the land of North America our relationships with human and nonhu- provide the routes on which settlers built their man others over time. (13) roads, and these ancient Indigenous routes are the infrastructure for the electrical lines along Ramirez and Coulthard focus on contemporary which digital data travels (L’Hirondelle 152-53). translocal and land-based relationships and Indigenous thoroughfares, based on relation- their longstanding forms. Unlike for McLuhan ships with the land and animal nations, form in his famous formulation, content here is as the material networks of movement for new signifcant as form. Hubs embody land-based media forms. L’Hirondelle argues that under- relationships between city and reserve spaces, standing Indigenous sovereignty, especially in between Indigenous nations, and between set- relation to media art, requires an awareness of tler and Indigenous peoples (Ramirez). Indige- the material ground as it articulates within In- nous citizenship practices, oppositional to set- digenous ontologies. tler framings of the concept, originate from the grassroots practices of Indigenous communi- Within Indigenous media histories, land, and ties on their own terms. Indigenous media art its animacies are content, and form follows in is produced in the longstanding and unfolding a relational equilibrium. As Ahasiw Maskeg- context of these land-based relationships. on-Iskwew writes, “the ancient process of… innovating the application of best practices to Lof takes a genealogical stance in relation to suit complex and shifing fows—from a posi- the term new media art, situating it in the function of equality and autonomy within them, is tion of media within Indigenous cosmologies the macro and micro cosmos of contemporary that are always in fux and, most important- Indigenous cultures: a truly networked way of ly, connected to the land. Lof discusses what being” (n.p.). L’Hirondelle’s work is inextrica- he calls the media ecologies (Cubitt; Fuller; ble from its cultural and land-based specifcity Strate)1 of Indigenous art as longstanding in In- in the eyes of those who remember land-based digenous societies, citing “winter counts, birch Indigenous histories. As Lof argues: bark scrolls, and the Aztec codices” as a few examples (“Mediacosmology” 172). Lof shows

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The phrase “all my relations” is often used expansive and agential ecological frameworks to explain the interaction of all things of Indigenous land. within an evolving, ever changing social, cultural, technological, aesthetic, political, L’Hirondelle’s interactive website, nikamon and environmental intellectual framework ohci askiy: songs because of the land, is a mul- (what I would refer to as the cosmologi- tidisciplinary work that engages technological dynamic) and can certainly be applied cal mediation of nation, land, and citizenship, to the landscape of media. Cosmologi- including bodily comportment and material cal intellectual ecosystems exist as media, and technological relationships. It elucidates as message, and as a form of knowledge a Cree cosmological philosophy conceptually transferal. They are epistemological [on- far from the Narcissus myth: that of the teepee tological] environments wherein notions pole teachings. Te piece began as a technolog- of nationhood are interspersed with, con- ically recorded performance of L’Hirondelle’s nected to, and integrated with a larger walks through Vancouver city spaces in 2006 sense of the plurality of life. (“Decoloniz- and continues as an interactive website: www. ing the Web” xvi) vancouversonglines.ca.

Indigenous aesthetics emphasize experien- Grunt gallery, which funded the work, refects tial land-based knowledge. Media arts shape upon the complex layers of this project in its conditions of perception in relationship with publication, brunt magazine. Te work began the land, as they have from time immemorial. as a mobile communication arts project with Indigenous media, on and with the land, ad- various conceptual parts developed through- vance Indigenous knowledge that is embodied, out including: “performance art, concept art, material, animate, relational, and land-based. an interactive web-based installation, musical Coulthard situates emphatically land-based, composition, musical performance, compact spatial, and ecological grounded normativity disc recording, DVD, web 2.0 exhibition (via of Indigenous worldviews against the tempo- YouTube, Twitter, Blogger and MySpace), and ral context of possessive colonial perpetuity in [a] spirit quest” (Boyce 43). Tis paper focuses the theories of the Western lef. In many West- on the website and the various performative/ ern media theories, for example, theorists fol- musical parts directly connecting to the online low Marx in measuring oppression by thef of project. workers’ time and labour, now understood as “attention” (Crary). We can observe this orien- Te interactive website embodies and extends tation in McLuhan’s use of the Narcissus myth L’Hirondelle’s projects, which are described on to analyze technological subjectivity: Narcissus grunt gallery’s website: dies because time passes; in his hypnotic stupor, he starves. Land is absent from this story. During the month of December 2008, the Indigenous media arts frequently rearticulate artist will make daily journeys throughout mainstream liberal humanist theorizations of Vancouver and “sing” the landscape she embodiment, technology, and citizenship: the encounters. These encounters will be cap- screen-based works capture the viewer; the tured by mobile phone by the artist and “time” of attention is held by the priority of the whatever other technologies are made

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available by participating viewers/audience (video, photo, audio)… .During the live performances, Cheryl will sing, record and upload audio clips to an online database. Each audio clip will be tagged to one or more of the 16 Cree values. The clips will automatically be available to online audiences interactively through a rich online media experience available at Van- couverSonglines.ca. (n.p.)

Tese sound samples are a compelling aspect of the work, representing her musical communication with her environment, a self-made Cree mapping of place. She explores various downtown urban environments and simultaneously records who, where, and what was immediately surrounding her through impromptu singing into her cell phone (Figure 5). Tis musical mapping not only became an outlining of the city’s urban space, but also a daily or weekly diary of her world as she describes it through city-inspired lyrical and oral history. Glenn Al- teen, curator to the project, further explains:

During its development nikamon ohci askiy (songs because of the land) has moved around a lot. It was always about the city and how it was used but we never exactly knew where it started. Figures 1 and 2. Cheryl L’Hirondelle, nikamon ohci askiy: songs because of the land, grunt gallery, http:// So we started taking walks. Much of what this www.bruntmag.com/issue5/cheryl-lhirondelle.html. project became was envisioned during those walks or because of them. Walking the city L’Hirondelle’s actions, engaging with the con- with Cheryl continued over many months… cept of Australian Aboriginal Songlines, map .In the genesis of this project for Cheryl was the world through an Indigenous perspec- the idea of songlines, an essential part of Aus- tive and provide an organic, sonic visualizing tralian Aboriginal culture. According to their of the landmass and its inhabitant animacies. beliefs ancestral totemic beings sang the land- In Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems: Principles scape into existence and these songs are still and Practices, Leonie Sandercock applies the used to navigate a territory. Cheryl had just Indigenous perspective of Songlines to urban moved to Vancouver and wanted to navigate space. She later expounds on how “Songlines her new city through songs and audio (n.p.). can take many forms in today’s digital world. … Tey can facilitate connections between city

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dwellers and their bioregions, linking city and and human perceptual. As Warren writes, “the country, and providing a tangible broader con- worldviews conceptualized [in the artists’ proj- text for city life” (154). Te work, although in- ects] rebuild the integrity of [an Indigenous formed by several various outside infuences, is environment] for peoples within the particular undergirded by Cree cosmological structures situations and frameworks defned by the art- in which each sound sample attributes to a val- ists’ projects” (4). Further, they actively decolo- ue of the teepee pole teachings.2 nize conceptions of technology and citizenship framed within the lens of humanism. L’Hiron- Indigenous new media artists merge person- delle’s artistic contention is an act of citizen- al experiences, Indigenous tradition, technol- ship that participates in constituting peoples ogies, and ecologies. Coulthard makes clear eschewing state-based politics of recognition, that settler exploitation of Indigenous peoples instead afrming themselves in intergenera- through technology is a thef of land, or spa- tional relationship, in relational and contextu- tial dispossession—what McLuhan’s theories al practice on the land. Indigenous media, in render invisible or posit as empty. Indigenous Taiaiake Alfred’s phrase, creatively contends new media arts focusing on civic spaces assert with and in the city. grounded normativity against settler confgurations of technology in practices, theory, and Te vancouversonglines website tags the au- ontology. Indigenous new media arts prefgure dio-clips with 16 Cree values associated with spatial, relational, and ecological forms of In- the teepee pole teachings, interactively visu- digenous nations in multifaceted relationships alized on the site’s page. Te frst page pres- that challenge the conventional, temporal- ents the viewer with a large black background ly, and acquisitively oriented settler gaze, and with three light-blue animated icons: a teepee, humanistic settler sensorium in technology, branches for a fre, and a button “go.” Each icon, through what Steven Lof, Melanie Townsend, when clicked, leads visitors into the teepee and Dana Claxton discuss as Indigenous me- teachings. Down to the bottom right, one can dia and cosmology in their collection, Trans- see three branches, and an animated blue hand ference, Tradition, and Technology: Native New takes one of the branches and drags it to the Media Exploring Visual and Digital Culture. lef where three slender poles are being erect- ed over a fre. Te hand drops the stick into L’Hirondelle’s work alters perspectives on Van- the fames and embers rise from the fre, afer couver and urban space broadly, rearticulat- which the hand turns into a selection tool and ing the boundaries between the city and oth- the pointer fnger touches on one of the rising er urban and non-urban Indigenous spaces embers. Tis animation repeats until the view- through a website enabling online interactivity er clicks on the word “go,” at which point they and collective praxis through Cree citizenship enter into the body of the website (Figure 3). forms. In contrast to McLuhan’s views that Ca- nadian land is “empty space” that functions as A second page presents the words “choose 3,” passive content for media forms, these stand- which slowly fade as a third page uploads. As points afrm that colonial and sovereign Indig- a black background transitions to dark grey- enous materiality (content) are just as signif- green hues, sixteen Cree syllabic words pres- cant as the discursive, narrowly technological, ent in a loose grouping: each word blurs and

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appears, as if waiting for the viewer. When moving, the viewer can select any three words. Once all three are selected, each statement turns into a wood-like pole and the perspective moves downward on the screen. We are then taken into a darkened landscape that contains a forest, a teepee-like structure, a fre pit, a pile of small logs. One discerns in the right- hand area of the page a distant wolf’s silhouette, the Lion’s Gate bridge, and obscured mountain ranges (Figure 4).

Following the frst page’s directions, we raise Figure 3. Cheryl L’Hirondelle, nikamon ohci askiy: songs because of the land, grunt gallery, http://www.bruntmag.com/issue5/cheryl-lhirondelle. the teepee poles over the fre. White markings html. then appear on the upper areas of the poles. Se- lecting one of these markings, we can see that the pole represents one of the words that we had previously chosen. Each selection causes a digital sound sample of the artist singing a mel- ody. When one adds a few logs from the pile into the fre, the fre gets brighter and embers begin to foat out of the pit. By selecting several of the embers, we participate in an interactive self-directed digital sound mixing. On the lower lef of the web screen, there is a “reset audio” button, which ceases the digital sound samples when pressed. Selecting another pole builds up the fre once again, adding more embers to Figure 4. Cheryl L’Hirondelle, nikamon ohci askiy: songs because of the land, grunt gallery, http://www.bruntmag.com/issue5/cheryl-lhirondelle. create an entirely new sound composition that html. connects the theory and practice of songlines to the relational praxis of teepee pole teachings. interact or engage within community or communal situations. For L’Hirondelle, “[t]he very By developing her musical mapping into a web- act of erecting a tipi is a ceremony” (157). Tese site and DVD, L’Hirondelle underlines how all sacred technologies animate in virtual spaces of her artistic processes refect accountability that are composed of the Indigenous material to her community. She places herself and the infrastructure of lands and routes. participants that she encountered on the city streets in relationship with online users, cre- L’Hirondelle’s website-as-participatory-art- ating “place” or an embodied and land-based work allows the visitor to create their own communal environment framed through Cree non-linear perspective of Vancouver and per- cosmology. Te teepee pole teachings become sonal relationship with Cree teepee pole teach- a structure assisting individuals in how to ings. Her singing honours her own body in and

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with the land, while the media work extends technological nationalism constitutes the na- this perspective to other Indigenous peoples tion as refective surface, or “common carrier” who interact with the site. Visitors can explore of foreign signals and content (Charland 198). and create their own recursive and shared Such constructions of Canada as empty carri- experience of Vancouver’s time and space er point toward the nation as the triumph of through Cree relationship paradigms. In many form or mediation. To adapt McLuhan’s phras- ways these could not be farther from those ar- ing, it is medium trumping content. Te “ab- ticulated by McLuhan on media and “the Ca- sent nation” expresses ambivalence about Can- nadian question.” ada’s technological sovereignty, highlighting colonial exertion wherein the terrain of “na- McLuhan’s Themes: Land as “Empty,” Sensorial tion” becomes a backdrop for the exercise of Extension, and Settler Colonialism individual will. Te lack of content reveals the power of the technological capitalist structures In, “Canada and Counter-Environment,” one and the self-sustaining exercise of formal se- of his rare undertakings of the Canadian ques- ductions carried ever forward and onward to- tion, McLuhan argues that the Canadian spirit wards totality. inherits a “war on empty wilderness” from its settler ancestors. Antagonistic relations with McLuhan’s absent nation, as technological the brutality of nature defned a population, drive, refects colonial constructions of the forging a particular type instilled with “ini- land as terra nullius, land passively “empty” of tiative amidst solitude” (“Canada and Count- its original inhabitants and available for set- er-Environment” 75). For McLuhan, the “emp- tlement. In this vision, technological, materi- tiness” of nation refects Canada’s oscillation al, juridical and imaginative apparatuses “clear” between the ballast of British tradition—from the land, making it an amenable ground for the which it is alienated—and the lure of Ameri- fowering of European civilization. Tis absent can futurity, which it observes as a “spectacular nation may be an unintended symptom of the light show from afar” (Marchessault 81). Mc- conditions for Canada’s existence, according to Luhan claims that Canada is a “counter-envi- Charland. Under the lens of settler colonial- ronment” that functions as the “psychic theme ism, however, it refects an active and willful park” for the U.S., “something like a Holly- imperial landscaping. Tis process embodies wood set that simultaneously links the past Patrick Wolfe’s concept of the “logic of elimi- with the present, a city with the wilderness” nation,” describing the mechanisms of settlers’ (“Canada and Counter-Environment” 73). He violent incursions into Indigenous land and references the installation of the United States’ communities in order to claim these as their Distant Early Warning system (DEW line) in own. Wolfe distinguishes settler colonialism the Canadian north to argue that Canada is as structure rather than event, reverberating an “anti-environment” that provides a neu- Charland and McLuhan’s arguments regarding tral setting for the working through of “other the “empty nation” predicated through form people’s fantasies” (73). McLuhan’s argument is over content. Elimination becomes the “or- similar to Maurice Charland’s on technological ganizing principal of settler colonial society nationalism; rather than providing “substance rather than a one-of (and superseded) occur- or community” for the construction of a polis, rence” consigned to a distant past (Wolfe 388).

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In Wolfe’s view, settlers must perpetually enact and creativity can be unleashed through new the logic of elimination, at both structural and media, but also that true human potential is individual levels, in order to naturalize Europe- to be achieved not “‘outside’ the technological an settlement and render its mechanisms invis- experience, but…’inside’ the feld of technolo- ible. Te analysis of the “absent nation” here is gy” (Kroker 64). McLuhan’s vision of sensorial not motivated by mournful clarions to replen- extension in technology is hopeful, even cele- ish an impotent nation/alism. Instead, the con- bratory. However, his reference to the myth of cept hints at how colonial national narratives Narcissus shows that he also sees that technol- are mobilized through form, medium, and ogy can dominate the individual subject. structures of feeling. Tese key themes infect McLuhan’s idea of sensory extension through McLuhan believes that exteriorization induces technology, which, while it does not explicitly a state of narcosis—and failure of self-recogni- centre Canada as a foundational context, none- tion—wrought through the traumatic ampu- theless refects settler-colonial logic. tation of the self in technology. Tis perspective relies on the notion of the liberal subject’s Te sensory extension of man through tech- boundaried body, again a historically specifc nology is one of McLuhan’s most infuential paradigm of “the human.” McLuhan points out ideas. In Understanding Media, McLuhan ex- that Narcissus comes from narcosis, or numb- amines how various media—ranging from the ness. His recounting of the myth infects less printed word, clothing, the light bulb, and tele- the infatuation with the repeated image so vision (to name but a few)—function as pros- much as the stupor induced through this repe- theses for our bodies and their sensory capac- tition. For him, bodily and sensory extensions ities to extend into the world: “[t]oday, afer involve narcosis or numbness, because “ampli- more than a century of electric technology, we fcation” through extension/amputation pro- have extended our central nervous system it- duces a shock that the body then seeks to al- self in a global embrace, abolishing both space leviate through a denial of recognition. Tere- and time as far as our planet is concerned” (19). fore, conceiving of extension as merely ecstatic Here, McLuhan’s liberal humanism is on bold embodiment misses McLuhan’s point regard- display; the “extension” of man assumes the on- ing auto-amputation as the body’s attempt to tological category of “man” tied to the notion bring an overstressed and overstimulated sys- that man’s body (and its sensory amplitude) tem to equilibrium. While this stress and stim- can undergo hypnotic externalization and be ulation inheres in McLuhan’s theory of technol- mirrored forth in cosmic perpetuity as the ex- ogy, it also resonates with his fgure of Cana- tension of man’s “fnal phase” (Kroker 19).33 At dian man, individually struggling in a hostile the same time, McLuhan tempers the human- and barren circumstance wherein technology ist subject by suggesting that, while electron- becomes the form through which it is possible ic media extend man’s central nervous system to extend subjectivity and embodiment, while out into world, technology also reshapes man, at the same time numbing and misrecognizing. “incorporate[ing] the whole of mankind in us” He emphasizes reciprocity with “man’s” own (20). While George Grant views technology as technologies rather than with the land or its a force of domination and subjugation, Mc- peoples. Luhan believes not only that human freedom

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McLuhan’s argument on the technological ex- futurity that moves past the original trauma of tension and amputation of limbs and nervous technological articulation of the self. systems usefully shades the questions of Cana- dian national identity and belonging through In the context of the sovereignty of Indigenous the lens of media as liberal humanist and set- citizenship and attendant media arts, Indige- tler colonial. He argues that man’s extension nous lands provide the material support and a and amputation (and attendant hypnosis) can- key foundation for digital networks as demon- not easily be pried apart. Ecstatic declarations strated in L’Hirondelle’s work. Arts-based ap- of technological amplifcation function as in- proaches to relational urban civic ecology are tended cures for an overstressed system as well oriented through Indigenous relationships to as narcissistic-narcotic yearning to confrm the land, which Coulthard calls grounded norma- uncertain body—or Canadian settler subjectivity. Tese foundations accord with techno- tivity, citizenship, and nation. logical relationships, where Indigenous arts posit the priority of land-based relationships Conclusion and decolonize media theories that fgure abstract form over animate material content. Mc- Indigenous theorists of technology in media Luhan’s media theories do not attend to land as arts emphasize ongoing land-based animate the material and animate space of relationship relationships. We extend these elaborations to or as an agent in relationships. Media artworks show how they infect accounts of Indigenous such as L’Hirondelle’s songs because of the land land-based citizenship, opposing McLuhan’s articulate land-based relationships as Indige- notions of the “empty” nation. Marshall Mc- nous citizenship. Luhan’s media theories rarely engage with the question of Canadian identity and nationhood directly, but when they do, McLuhan describes Works Cited technology as a means for overcoming a hostile empty landscape—not only for heroic Canadi- Alfred, Taiaike. Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Ac- an settlers who would prevail over this hostility tion and Freedom. Broadview Press, 2005. through the use of technology as colonial en- deavour but also for ambivalent settlers caught Alteen, Glenn. “Moving in, Moving out—nikamon in an embarrassing crux between the nostalgic ohci askiy (songs because of the land).” Grunt gallery, bombast of Britain and the American “spec- 2008. http://www.vancouversonglines.ca/curator. pdf. Accessed 31 March 2012. tacular light show from afar” (Marchessault 81). McLuhan’s theories of empty space and the sensorial extension of man in technology rati- Boyce, Michael. “Reviewing Because of Songs by fy a settler-colonial humanism that ignores the Cheryl,” brunt Magazine, 5 October 2009, pp. 43. land and other-than-human animacies, while also positing technology as a teleological tool Charland, Maurice. “Technological Nationalism.” for human beings (settlers) to extend them- Canadian Journal of Political and Social Teory, selves indefnitely, to re-tribalize, to be reborn vol. 1-2, 1986, pp. 196-220. in an ultimate, cosmic, end-time, technological

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Claxton, Dana, Melanie Townsend and Steven Lof, McLuhan, Marshall. “At the moment of Sputnik the editors. Transference, Tradition, and Technology: Na- planet became a global theater in which there are no tive New Media Exploring Visual and Digital Culture. spectators but only actors.” Journal of Communica- Walter Phillips Gallery Editions, 2005. tion, vol. 24, iss.1, 1974, pp. 48-48.

Coulthard, Glen. Red Skin White Masks: Rejecting —. “Canada as Counter-Environment.” Canadi- the Colonial Politics of Recognition. University of an Cultural Studies: A Reader, edited by Sourayan Minnesota Press, 2014. Mookerjea, Imre Szeman, and Gail Faurschou, Duke University Press, 2009, pp. 71-86.

Isin, Engin. Recasting the Social in Citizenship. Sage, 2008. —. Understanding Media: Te Extensions of Man. Sig- net, 1964. Kroker, Arthur. Technology and the Canadian Mind: Innis/McLuhan/Grant. New World Perspectives, Navaching. Songlines. http://www.navaching.com/ 1985. hawkeen/sline.html. Accessed 31 March, 2012.

L’Hirondelle, Cheryl. Nikamon Ohci Askiy (songs Ramirez, Renya. Native Hubs: Culture, Community, because of the land). Vancouver, BC: grunt gallery. and Belonging in Silicon Valley and Beyond. Duke http://vancouversonglines.ca. Accessed 31 March University Press, 2007. 2012.

University of Regina. “Heart of the Nation’s Learn- —–“Codetalkers Recounting Signals of Survival.” ing Community: 8.4 Tipi Teachings.” Heart of the Lof and Swanson, pp. 147-168. Nations. http://heartofhenations.uregina.wikispac- es.net/8.4+-+TIPI+Teachings. Accessed 31 March 2012. Lof, Steven. “Introduction: Decolonizing the”Web“.” Lof and Swanson, pp. xv-xvii. Warren, Daina. Cree Cultural Cosmologies in Con- temporary Arts. Master’s Tesis. University of Brit- —– “Media Cosmology.” Lof and Swanson, ish Columbia, 2012. pp.170-186. Wolfe, Patrick. “Settler Colonialism and the Elimi- Lof, Steven and Kerri Swanson, editors. Coded Ter- nation of the Native.” Journal of Genocide Research, ritories: Tracing Indigenous Pathways in New Media vol. 8, iss. 4, 2006, pp. 387-409. Art. University of Calgary Press, 2014. Wollen, Peter. Paris Manhattan – Writings on Art. Marchessault, Janine. Marshall McLuhan: Cosmic Verso, 2004. Media. Sage, 2005.

Maskegon Iskwew, Ahasiw. “Editorial.” Drumbeats to Drumbytes: Te Emergence of Networked Indig- enous Art Practice. http://www.conundrumonline. org/Issue_1/drumbytes2.htm. Accessed 31 March 2012.

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Image Notes Notes

Figures 1 and 2. Cheryl L’Hirondelle, nikamon ohci 1 Lance Strate described media ecology as “the askiy: songs because of the land, grunt gallery, http:// study of media environments, the idea that tech- www.bruntmag.com/issue5/cheryl-lhirondelle.html. nology and techniques, modes of information and codes of communication play a leading role in hu- Figure 3. Cheryl L’Hirondelle, nikamon ohci askiy: man afairs,” “Understanding MEA,” In Medias songs because of the land, grunt gallery, http://www. Res 1 (1), Fall 1999. Indigenous conceptions of me- bruntmag.com/issue5/cheryl-lhirondelle.html. dia ecology difer, decentering the human. See also Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew, “Storm Spirits: Te Cul- Figure 4. Cheryl L’Hirondelle, nikamon ohci askiy: tural Ecology of Aboriginal New Media Art,” Storm songs because of the land, grunt gallery, http://www. Spirits — Aboriginal New Media Art. Artist’s State- bruntmag.com/issue5/cheryl-lhirondelle.html. ment, 2005. http://stormspirits.ca/English/curatorial.html (Accessed May 4, 2012).

2 Glenn Alteen argues L’Hirondelle’s work can be compared to that of the Situationist movement in the 1950’s: “In the 1950’s the Situationists explored notions of Psycho-geography and central to this was the practice of ‘derive’ translated in English as drif- ing. It meant to walk through the landscape with no purpose or destination” (n.p.).

3 Kroker argues that the technological humanism espoused by McLuhan is “expansive, pluralistic, uni- versalistic, and creative” precisely because it is rooted in the perceived alliance between technology and the potential for freedom (14).

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TOM MCGLYNN

arshall McLuhan would ofen ini- network-as-verb of modern communicative tiate discourse simply to see where media. McLuhan, ultimately, was never afer the conversation would take him. any literal meaning but more a fgurative vi- MHis abiding interest was the perpetual advent sion of language as projected sense. He would and expanding potential of human commu- rather play with language than have its force of nication—its twists and turns of phrase, rath- naming constitute “the wretched mesh or sieve er than any point to be made (what one has to of our (private) attention” (Te Gutenberg Gal- say) or any ideological resolution. He was fond axy 249), which tends to limit the phenomenal of interjecting at his public lectures, “I’m put- richness of mutable experience. ting you on” (“Te Medium is the Message”), intentionally deploying the term in a playful In perpetuating my photographic project I misdirection, as Joyce might signify a specifc consider incidental topographies in street fur- turn of a colloquial Irish phrase with a tran- niture, infrastructural anomalies, walls, trees, scendent epiphany, both as a fool’s game to get roads, buildings, and people that occur in in- the language fowing. McLuhan’s fooling was terstitial rambles through both urban and ru- akin to the court jester who creatively express- ral contexts. I take in partial instantiations of es a transgressive grievance to the accepted these worlds. Te object of my photographic rule by making his statements transcendently project, therefore, is never meant to be a clas- equivocal and therefore universal. McLuhan’s sically-completed subject. My aim is rather to wide-angled lens worked many angles. Te create an objective topology of subjective parti- residual relevancy of McLuhan’s work derives tion. Te private, in this sense, is always already from his ability to look at the kaleidoscopic subsumed within the statement of an exterior- big picture without getting hamstrung by the ized feld. McLuhan described how, “confer- delimiting perspective of the historically de- ring the means of self-delineation to objects, of termined, private subject. His work predicted ‘statement without syntax,’ photography gave today’s de-subjectifcation of private identity the impetus to a delineation of the inner world. in social media and the confounding logic of Statement without syntax or verbalization was the private subject-as-object within the public really statement by gesture, by mime, and by

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gestalt” (Understanding Media 181). Contempo- McGlynn, Tom. Manila St. news boxes, Jersey City, rary photographic gestalt has become the pan- 2015. optic theater of exteriorized reason, a reason that paradoxically “fxes” the external in the McGlynn, Tom. metal pre-fab building, Judique, darkroom development of the erstwhile pri- Nova Scotia, August 2013. vate soul. If McLuhan has anything relevant say about this, it is probably found in his statement McGlynn, Tom. Montreal (McGill) block and sign, “Te immense tidying-up of our inner lives (is 2015. maximized by)the new picture gestalt culture” (Understanding Media 177). In light of the ev- McGlynn, Tom. New Jersey Turnpike weeds, 2016. er-accelerating efciency of our photographic tidying-up devices distributed in hyper-net- McGlynn, Tom. NYC car with body spot, 2015. worked and increasingly fuid platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, my in- McGlynn, Tom. painted over crosswalk, Jersey City, tent at working toward the elucidation of a sub- 2016. jective “objecthood” in the virtual gestalt of the photographic realm might seem a fool’s wager, McGlynn, Tom. sunset park Brooklyn painted ste- but then again that would most likely be a bet reo speaker, 2016. that Marshall McLuhan would have very famil- iarly “put” on. McGlynn, Tom. west side Manhattan silver van and dirty snow bank, 2014.

Image Notes McGlynn, Tom. yellow loading dock, New Jersey, 2015. McGlynn, Tom. Bangor, Maine, Goodwill Furniture, 2013. Works Cited

McGlynn, Tom. Benches at Horseshoe (Canadian) McLuhan, Marshall. Te Gutenberg Galaxy. U of T Falls, 2015. Press, 1966.

McGlynn, Tom. Kalamazoo mailboxes, January —. “Te Medium is the Message.” Monday Confer- 2016. ence, ABC TV, 1977.

McGlynn, Tom. Lower East Side grocery awning, —. Understanding Media. McGraw Hill, 1964. NYC, 2015.

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Tom McGlynn. Bangor, Maine, Goodwill Furniture, 2013.

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Tom McGlynn. Benches at Horseshoe (Canadian) Falls, 2015.

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Tom McGlynn. Kalamazoo Mailboxes, January 2016.

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Tom McGlynn. Lower East Side grocery awning, NYC, 2015.

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Tom McGlynn. Manila St. news boxes, Jersey City, 2015.

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Tom McGlynn. metal pre-fab building, Judique, Nova Scotia, August 2013.

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Tom McGlynn. Montreal (McGill) block and sign, 2015.

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Tom McGlynn. New Jersey Turnpike weeds, 2016.

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Tom McGlynn. NYC car with body spot, 2015.

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Tom McGlynn. painted over crosswalk, Jersey City, 2016.

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Tom McGlynn. sunset park Brooklyn painted stereo speaker, 2016.

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Tom McGlynn. west side Manhattan silver van and dirty snow bank, 2014.

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Tom McGlynn. yellow loading dock, New Jersey, 2015.

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L(A)YING WITH MARSHALL MCLUHAN: MEDIA THEORY AS HOAX ART

HENRY ADAM SVEC

Abstract | Tis artist-response essay examines some ethical Résumé | Cet essai et réponse d’artiste examine quelques and aesthetic contours of media-theoretical hoaxes (and of a contours éthiques et esthétiques des canulars médiatiques hoaxing media theory). I accomplish this through an explor- (et d’une théorie des canulars médiatiques). J’accomplis atory refection upon my own experiences and dilemmas as cela à travers une réfexion exploratoire sur mes propres ex- a media hoax artist, a vocation that has been infuenced by périences et dilemmes en tant qu’artiste de canular média- Harold Adams Innis’s “authentic” scholarly persona as well tiques, une vocation qui a été infuencée par la personnalité as by McLuhan’s “probing” methods. Whereas recent work académique « authentique » d’Harold Adams Innis ainsi que in the feld of hoax art has tended to rely on the eventual par les méthodes « exploratoires » de McLuhan. Alors que les text-bound revelation of the truth of the situation, my Mc- travaux récents dans le domaine de l’art du canular ont eu Luhanite method aims rather towards magic and mediation. tendance à dépendre de la révélation éventuelle de la vérité de la situation, ma méthode McLuhanite s’appuie plutôt sur la magie et la médiation.

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It’s a commentary on our extreme cul- never meant to bamboozle. I have just en- tural lag that when we think of criticism joyed the ways that things can get in the of information fow we still use only way—on stage, on record, online, on the the concept of book culture, namely, Iair, on the street. Possibilities can be opened how much trust can be reposed in the and unexpected pathways can be paved; direc- words of the message. tions one never thought possible can be made – Marshall McLuhan (Counterblast 119) to cascade out into blooming black tops. I have not meant to conceal (I would not know where The content of every Harold Adams In- to start) but rather to embrace, which ofen innis is always another Marshall McLuhan. volves only desiring and wondering: Wouldn’t – Staunton R. Livingston it be fun?

The world itself has become a probe. Marshall McLuhan’s mischievous printed mat- – Marshall McLuhan (From Cliché 12). ters and performances have ofered insight and inspiration. Although notions of “the real” and “the true” ironically haunt contemporary hoax

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artists, the approach that I have borrowed re- recorded in the 1970s by “Staunton R. Living- imagines the rules of this game—which can ston,” the iconoclastic Canadian folklorist who measure less than they engender and can sig- believed that culture was common property— nify less than they amplify. McLuhan ofers a and also believed that, if one wanted to docu- light for hoax artists who want not to lie but ment authentic Canadian folklore, one would merely to have lain with others across the tech- need to scour the teams of the Canadian Foot- no-cultural termini of all that might be, or be- ball League for the players’ tales, legends, and come, or have been becoming.1 songs. (I could not have been sure why “Liv- ingston” believed this, because he did not write A Hoaxer’s Dilemma or publish, but he was committed to the be- lief as far as I could discern.) Wouldn’t it be First there was Henry Tomas, the actor who fun if these folk songs of the Canadian Foot- played “Elliott” in ET: Te Extra-Terrestrial, ball League evinced a remarkable perspicaci- who I decided not to research except for the ty regarding the universality of boredom and sparsely narrated flmography I found on the drudgery, yet also the possibility of redemp- Internet Movie Database. I knew only his im- tion via solidarity, under late capitalism? Fun, age—a sweet face and voice that could have too, if some of the coaching staf of the Univer- been mine, more or less, from a certain dis- sity of Toronto varsity football team came out tance. Wouldn’t it be fun if “Henry Tom- to a performance, curious about this historical as” was from Southwestern Ontario and has wormhole, asking excellent questions afer the decided to move back home to focus on his show? It was, indeed, very fun (see www.thec- songwriting? Te Boy from ET was not a mat- fsessions.ca). ter of obscuring, concealing, and then revealing. I saw myself rather putting into motion My dreaming has most recently been pulled by branching streams of possibility, joining my- the possibility of an intelligent machine having self up with an image and rummaging around, decisively passed the Turing Test in Dawson scavenging what I could and fabricating what City, Yukon (see www.folksingularity.com).3 I could not, and placing my fnal fndings for With the help of Czech computer programmer pleasure within the reach of others.2 When “Mirek Plíhal” and Canadian songwriter Mathi- “Henry Tomas” proper messaged me through as Kom, I desired to have constructed an arti- MySpace and asked me to stop, I learned that fcially intelligent database of folksong that can his own version of “Te Boy From ET” was both comprehend the totality of the Canadian also trying to make it as a singer-songwriter, folk archive and simultaneously generate new which is an incredible coincidence. I eventual- yet hyper-authentic works based on the source ly obliged him by adding a disclaimer and we data. (In honour of my favourite communist both went onto our separate ways (see www. folklorist, we named this machine LIVING- myspace.com/theboyfromet and www.mys- STON™.) Tere were some glitches and errors, pace.com/henrythomasmusic). to be sure, but we nonetheless managed to redirect media evolution towards less spectacular In 2010 my interests shifed from former child and more egalitarian (and weirder) ends, a task stars to the concept of the folk. I wondered as difcult as it was fun (see Svec, “From the if it would be fun to have discovered tapes Turing Test”).4

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Obviously, there can be multiple yearnings in- serve print-oriented logics. At least, he would volved in any act of communication, including prefer not to. a hoax performance, and for me they have not always aligned. For instance, once, in Toronto, As Glenn Willmott’s book on the character and I was kicked in the leg by a well-known play- context of McLuhan’s proto-postmodernism wright when I let it slip, afer a show, that I was has demonstrated, McLuhan’s inconsistencies not actually an accredited folklorist and that and media games can be generously viewed as there was not actually a basement in what I had a performative embodiment of his analysis of been calling “Te National Archives”.5 Anoth- contemporary media culture: “McLuhan be- er time, in North Bay, on the day afer I had came less and less, let us say, sincere. He be- autographed several CDs for artifcially intel- came increasingly the mask-wearer of post- ligent Canadian folk music fans at the White modern satire, a master of the ‘put-on’” (172). Water Gallery, I received an email from some- Tus, as McLuhan himself had already gone to one who had heard that my explanation of ar- great pains to remind his readers in many of tifcially intelligent folk music given in North his books, his work should not solely be judged Bay was an elaborate hoax and would I please from within the conventional paradigms of clarify. I wrote back that I would not describe it scholarly practice in the humanities. As Will- that way, and we lef it at that. But I was strick- mott describes: en with grief and with shame: my hard work of guiding others through felds of possibility had To [the “irrational” grammar of modern been ricocheted back to me, reappearing now existence], McLuhan submitted himself, only as obstruction or shroud. Having recently in his postmodern masquerade as the received a doctorate for a not-entirely-unrelat- frst imaged, incorporated, commodifed, ed body of researches, I felt guilty in North Bay, and disseminated ‘Pop’ philosopher… . even if the presentation I had ofered occurred When “total” is worldwide and technolog- on stage in an art gallery and not in a universi- ical, rather than tribal and verbal, the self ty or at a folklore conference.6 can no longer hope to recognize itself in an ontological mirror projected upon it: Authenticity and Media Theory the individual boundaries and coherence of the self are increasingly problematized In one of Marshall McLuhan’s many media ap- as a collective techne penetrates and ab- pearances, he is especially elusive. Audience sorbs everything in sight. (134) members pose questions about the sage’s controversial and famous pronouncements, while Te corporeal and inter-subjective modes of the English professor slowly spins in his chair, communication and awareness fostered by lobbing probes: “I have no point of view. See, “cool” media demand multiplicitous modes for example, now, I couldn’t possibly have a of perception and exposition (see McLuhan, point of view—I’m just moving around,” he Understanding), which McLuhan’s complex more or less explains (globalbeehive). McLu- personae, performances, and texts aim to open. han makes the non-articulation of a clear po- As McLuhan himself put it in Te Medium is sition into a playful Great Refusal. He will not the Massage, “Te main obstacle to a clear understanding of the efects of the new media is

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our deeply embedded habit of regarding all edited collections, conferences, and centena- phenomena from a fxed point of view” (68). ry celebrations), it has seemed to me that, at least in water-cooler discussions in subterra- Yet McLuhan’s splintered optics and playful nean folk-music archives, one of the two pro- modes of exposition, if logically consistent genitors of Canadian media theory is rendered and rhetorically necessary, famously sat unwell as committed intellectual, the other as celebri- with many of his contemporaries, despite (or ty sellout. One toils away in relative obscurity, perhaps because of) McLuhan’s mainstream bucking trends and pursuing truth, the other successes. As Teodore Roszak declared, “Mc- riding his predecessors’ coattails, making cam- Luhan’s assertions are not, he would have us eo appearances in flms and spinning in his believe, propositions or hypotheses. Tey are chair on television. I am not endorsing these ‘probes.’ But what is a ‘probe’? It is apparently judgments but am merely pointing out that any outrageous statement for which one has they have had some weight, durability, as Innis no evidence at all or which, indeed, fies in the himself observed of oral dialogue in Te Bias of face of obvious facts” (268). McLuhan’s meth- Communication. od from this angle seems nothing but charla- tanism—a spectacular show for the spotlight. However, personas and the afects they let loose, like arguments articulated in academic Even critics sympathetic to Canadian media monographs or journal articles, are raw mate- theory sometimes prefer to see McLuhan as rials for the hoax artist. Tus, both ideas and an inauthentic echo of the originary source, performances are to be found in the “Toronto Harold Adams Innis. Such distinctions appear School” of Canadian media theory, both con- both intellectual and personal. Consider James tent and media, which just so happen to have W. Carey’s opening to his infuential essay on drawn me out of the ethical impasse I encoun- Innis: “During the third quarter of this century, tered in North Bay. Innis’s and McLuhan’s con- North American communications theory—or vergent theoretical propositions and their di- at least the most interesting part—could have vergent styles of being and thinking togeth- been described by an arc running from Har- er make up a palette of signals and noises in old Innis to Marshall McLuhan. ‘It would be which we can fnd both truth and hocus-po- more impressive,’ as Oscar Wilde said while cus, both authenticity and that against which staring up at Niagara Falls, ‘if it ran the oth- it has historically been defned, and in potent er way’” (109). Carey goes on to render Inn- combinations.7 is as an un-commoditized hero with integrity, swimming against fashions, currents, and Authenticity, Media, and the Folk colleagues. Using words and phrases such as “commitment” and “revolt” and “ransacked I had already been toying with Innis’s work and experience without regard to discipline” and with the myth of the committed rebel-scholar. “rescued” and “freed” and “attempted to restore” Consider the biographical details of “Staunton (114), Carey paints Innis with vigor and virility. R. Livingston,” the character whose recordings of CFL players singing authentic Canadian folk Although McLuhan has been given his due songs I claimed to have found in the basement since the backlashes (we have recently seen of “Te National Archives,” and afer whom I

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named my artifcially intelligent folk database, Sessions we can hear the singer become some- LIVINGSTON™. Staunton R. Livingston was thing other than a mere channel of a message; born and raised in Windsor, Ontario (is there we can hear the singer reach towards commu- a more authentic city?); he was an autodidact nion—an instrument for itself and yet longing who briefy studied at the University of Toron- for others. to but who dropped out before taking his degree (Innis was one of his teachers); he was a Sound, in this light, has a utopian ringing built communist folklorist who did not publish or into it, which magnetic tape recording has a hold an academic position; and he died in 1977 unique ability to locate and magnify. Living- in Trois-Rivières, QC of heart failure. Like Inn- ston’s use of phonography—given that he did is, Livingston was a “marginal man” (Watson), not record for a record label or even for a pub- on the outside looking in, paying little atten- lic institution—can thus be understood as a tion to disposable and external processes of folk approach to folksong collecting: he fgured validation or accreditation. Livingston was a himself as a pure reservoir for pure reservoirs, truthful seeker of truth, a capturer and assem- a clear window for clear windows. So the leg- bler of real voices; he refused even to write or end goes, I claimed. to publish, thoroughly committed as he was to the arts of orality and phonography. Audiences Signals can get crossed, however. Clearly smit- seemed to love this side of our hero and to de- ten with Livingston’s life and methods, I my- sire more reliable information. self (Livingston’s legacy’s caretaker) tended to misuse my sources, variously reading too far Consider too Livingston’s approach to his folk- and not far enough (see www.folksongsof- loristic arsenal of tools, in particular the mag- canadanow.com/). In speaking and in making netic tape recorder, which was marked for him digital archives, and in writing and singing, I by an insatiable desire for presence, touch, tended to get in the way. Te work of a “Guten- and time; Livingston sought to dig below con- berg man [sic]” (McLuhan, Gutenberg), my ac- sciousness and meaning, down to the funda- ademic discourse contended with Livingston’s mental grounds of authentic existence.8 As I implicit pleas for being together, for I essayed rendered his folkloristic method in my play On too much (see http://www.folksingularity.com/ Livingston’s Method: faq.html). I could ofen see it in my audience’s glazed-over eyes—could feel the disdain and, If you were to take the tapes that Livingston sometimes, contempt for their too-tight relay. made of CFL players in the 1970s, if you were Tey wanted Livingston, and his Folk, but were to lay these tapes across the ground, and if it stuck in the middle with me. were possible to see on tape the grain of the music, you would see nothing but this grain on And yet, in spite of the calculated incompe- Livingston’s tapes. It would not be possible to tence of his progeny, even and perhaps espe- see, there, the lack that is the opposite of the cially when our “cover” was blown, Livingston’s grains of music. Tis means that to listen to method functioned across both time and space. Te CFL Sessions is not to hear a singer who Some kind of authenticity echoed out and away is simply passing on a song. If we follow the from our ceremony (and from all its other in- path Livingston has laid out for us, in Te CFL carnations), in which folk-singing footballers

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can sing and revel and make poetry, and in educative type of text or performance: “Like which technology can be recalibrated towards irony, the hoax means the opposite of what it human and un-commoditized ends. “Don’t let says and its ultimate truth, if we are still brave the sound of your own wheels make you crazy,” enough to talk in these terms, depends on its as the machine LIVINGSTON™ wrote in “Take falsity being taken for truth. Te deception, in It Easy But Take It to the Limit,” ironically en- this respect, is temporal and temporary—the tranced therein by its own powers of composi- hoax is no good if it cannot, at some stage, be tion. Which is to say that in spite of the glitch- revealed (unless, of course, the aim is simply es and noise communion was made to happen. to defraud)” (48). Fleming’s and O’Carrol’s the- No lie. I could feel it. orization of the hoax draws on Jacques Der- rida’s engagement with J.L. Austin; although Hocus Pocus they acknowledge that hoaxes operate across numerous genres and can exist as texts or per- In my experience, it is impossible to predict formances, they see the hoax as a primarily how an audience will react, but it seems to parasitical (and inherently discursive) form me that ideal auditors have suspected, doubt- of communication. “Hoaxes are at once textu- ed, believed, wondered, accepted, delighted, al and metatextual in their strategies of attack” and revolted altogether. As the contemporary (57), they write. McLuhanite media theorist Siegfried Zielinski puts it, “It is of vital importance to know that Some of the most high-profle hoax artists of a magical approach toward technology contin- late would seem to agree with Fleming and ues to be possible and to be reassured that in- O’Carrol about the inherent textuality and vestment in it is meaningful” (Deep Time 255). metatextuality of the form as well as its edu- Tus for me it was important not to include cative function of writing truth to falsity. One in my work a hoaxer’s reveal. Zielinski again: of the most visible practitioners, Te Yes Men, “When the spaces for action become ever small- have especially required moments of unmask- er for all that is unwieldy or does not entirely ing in which their deconstructive intentions ft in, that is unfamiliar and foreign, then we have been revealed. Tey spend weeks or must attempt to confront the possible with its months or days joining up with and inhabit- own possibilities” (Deep Time 11). Livingston’s ing various media apparatuses and ideologies; radical phonography and LIVINGSTON’s au- setting truth and representation aside, they thentic archive are only two possibilities with- meld their bodies and clever faces with the in late-modern media culture, but I wanted to military-industrial-entertainment complex in foreground them—and to make them both real a way that foregrounds and heightens its ab- and durable. surd logics and tendencies (see Hynes, Sharp, and Fagan). But the satirical function of Te Yet, “hoax art” has ofen tended to require a Yes Men’s performances requires a moment moment of unmasking, a moment at which at which we realize that it has all been a po- the personas are defated and at which the true lemical act: masks are stripped away, costumes meaning or intentions of the artist are revealed. discarded, and they fnally help us to see their According to Chris Fleming and John O’Car- point of view on the global consequences of rol, this strategy makes hoaxes an inherently various neoliberal policies. In other words,

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despite their clear knowledge of and invest- I admire both Te Yes Men and Iris Häussler ment in the tactical guidelines of media theory, (and even Alan Sokal), and also recognize that the knowledge that Te Yes Men have to ofer they are in diferent leagues than my poor folk. is a print-based and visual knowledge. In their But for me the hoax is not a text, nor should frst documentary Te Yes Men (2003), for ex- it end with one. It is ritual, enchantment, and ample, while explaining their mission and role community. It is a bringing together and a one of Te Yes Men points to stacks of printed making possible, not a lie but a kind of ho- newspapers and magazines that have covered cus-pocus, which is the originary meaning their antics, implying that their real work is the of “hoax.”9 According to Fleming and O’Car- drawing of attention (using media stunts) to- roll, many contemporary media and academ- wards print-based argumentation. ic hoaxes have an educative function: “[Te hoax] commences with the premise that it has Another infuential and famous hoax artist, Iris superior knowledge of some kind” (57). How- Häussler, has also required a moment of un- ever, following McLuhan’s lead(s), my kind of masking, though as a visual artist she is moti- hocus-pocus is not so severe or print-dominat- vated by a diferent set of disciplinary concerns ed, because it does not reveal superior, discrete than Te Yes Men. Gilles Deleuze’s claim that knowledge from an authentic margin, or even “[e]very actual surrounds itself with a cloud of articulate a point of view. I am rather joining virtual images” is concretized in her expansive up with others, including machines, and ex- artworks (Deleuze and Parnet 148), which in- panding, multiplying, and thickening (or at vite the viewer into apparently limitless worlds. least trying). “A moment of truth and revela- I had the good fortune of attending Häussler’s tion from which new form is born,” as McLu- He Named Her Amber (2010) at the Art Gallery han observes of media hybridization in general of Ontario. Afer being led through an exqui- (Understanding 80). Similarly, the unrevealed sitely detailed excavation site at Te Grange by hoax is not necessarily untrue, and does not a guide who explained and recounted the most need to be framed as such. It is rather a new fanciful of historical tales in a way that made form of truth—a new kind of revelation. the story feel all-too-real, we were given a letter by our tour guide and sent on our way. It was in Conclusion this letter, on this page, that we learned of the artist’s imprint on the site and narrative: “Fi- It might seem like a paradox, or entirely in- nally revealing the fctitious nature of Amber’s authentic, that I am following up an allegedly story—afer a time of refection—is absolutely McLuhanite, mixed-media hoax project with as much a part of my artwork as constructing a peer-reviewed “artist response” essay on the the story is in the frst place” (Häussler, “Dis- work. It is, in a way. Certainly the communist closure” n.p.). In reading the artist statement, folklorist Staunton R. Livingston—who, again, which according to Häussler is necessary, the never wrote or published—avoided such indul- expansive “cloud” of virtualities were thus cast gences. But this article is merely a component into the dustbin of the individual imaginary of pointing throughout to others (e.g. www.lost- a single creator. stompintomsongs.com), a meeting place for the hybrid media assembled by my comrades and me. Which is to say that this document

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does not contain the fnal word but perhaps globalbeehive. “Marshall McLuhan: Te World is just the frst one, which leads to others (and Show Business.” YouTube, 27 April 2010, not just words) even more real. Such as the output of LIVINGSTON™, the artifcially in- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P8gUNAVSt8. telligent archive of Canadian folk music that I built in Dawson City, Yukon: Häussler, Iris. “Disclosure (Excavation Notes 01/2009).” Iris Häussler, http://haeussler.ca/amber/ I’m gonna burn all my bridges artist.html. Accessed 10 October 2016. But can I get a witness? I’ve got a shovel. —. He Named Her Amber. Toronto: Art Gallery of I’m gonna dig a tunnel. Ontario, 2008-2010. It ain’t gonna be long but It’s going to carry my song. (“Win- “Henry Tomas.” Te Internet Movie Database. ter Is Cold and Good”) IMDb.com, Inc, n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2017. . Who will join in this ceremony of witnessing, digging, singing, and sounding? Who will join Hynes, Maria, Scott Sharpe, and Bob Fagan. “Laugh- in this ceremony of burning? ing with the Yes Men: Te Politics of Afrmation.” Continuum, vol 21, no. 1, 2007, pp. 107-121.

Image Notes Innis, Harold Adams. “A Plea for Time.” 1951. Te Bias of Communication. U of Toronto P, 2003, Featured Image: Kate Beaton, Te Song Collector 2011. pp. 61-91.

Works Cited —. Empire and Communications. U of Toronto P, 1972.

Bendix, Regina. In Search of Authenticity: Te For- Innis, Harold Adams. Te Bias of Communication. mation of Folklore Studies. U of Wisconsin P, 2009. 1951. U of Toronto P, 2003.

Carey, James W. Communication as Culture: Essays Keightley, Keir. “Reconsidering Rock.” Te Cam- on Media and Society. Routledge, 1992. bridge Companion to Pop and Rock. Edited by Simon Frith, et al., Cambridge UP, 2001, pp. 109-142. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Tousand Pla- teaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by LIVINGSTON™. “Take It Easy but Take It to the Brian Massumi, U of Minnesota P, 1987. Limit.” Artifcially Intelligent Folk Songs of Canada, Vol. 1. Independent, 2014 [www.folksingularity.com]. Deleuze, Gilles, and Claire Parnet. Dialogues II. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Hab- —. “Winter Is Cold and Good.” Artifcially Intelli- berjam, Continuum, 2002. gent Folk Songs of Canada, Vol. 1. Independent, 2014 [www.folksingularity.com]. Fleming, Chris, and John O’Carrol. “Te Art of the Hoax.” Parallax 16.4 (2010): 45-59.

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Miller, Karl Hagstrom. Segregating Sound: Inventing —. On Livingston’s Method. Te Rhubarb Festival. Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow. Duke Buddies in Bad Times Teatre, Toronto, UP, 2010. —. “Pete Seeger’s Mediatized Folk.” Journal of Popu- McLuhan, Marshall. Counter-Blast. McLelland and lar Music Studies, vol. 27, no. 2, 2015, pp. 145-162. Stewart Limited, 1969. Te Yes Men. Dir. Dan Ollman, Sarah Price, and —. From Cliché to Archetype. Te Viking Press, 1970. Chris Smith. Perf. Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichl- baum, United Artists, 2003. —. Te Gutenberg Galaxy: Te Making of Typographic Man. U of Toronto P, 2011. Turing, Alan M. “Computing Machinery and Intelli- gence.” Mind, no. 49, 1950, pp. 433-460. —. Understanding Media: Te Extensions of Man. 1964. Edited by W. Terrence Gordon, Ginko Press, Watson, Alexander John. Marginal Man: Te Dark 2003. Vision of Harold Innis. U of Toronto P, 2006.

McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore. Te Medi- Willmott, Glenn. McLuhan, or Modernism in Re- um is the Massage. 1967. Ginko Press, 2001. verse. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,

Peterson, Richard A. Creating Country Music: Fabri- Zielinski, Siegfried. Audiovisions: Cinema and Tele- cating Authenticity. U of Chicago P, 2013. vision as Entr’actes in History. Amsterdam Universi- ty Press, 1999. Roszack, Teodore. “Te Summa Popologica of Marshall McLuhan.” McLuhan: Pro & Con. Edited —. Deep Time of the Media. Te MIT Press, 2006. by Raymond Rosenthal, Funk & Wagnalls, 1968, pp. 257-269. Notes

Sterne, Jonathan. Te Audible Past: Cultural Origins 1 In addition to McLuhan, my methods owe much of Sound Reproduction. Duke UP, 2003. to the “imaginary” media research of Siegfried Zie- linski (Audiovisions; Deep Time), who runs very far Svec, Henry Adam. “FCJ-183 iHootenanny: A Folk with the media-theoretical maxim that our commu- Archeology of Social Media.” Te Fibreculture Jour- nicative ecologies are contingent and thus could be nal, vol. 25, 2015. otherwise. Perhaps not surprisingly, as Zielinski’s frst major book Audiovisions made clear in a way —. “Folk Media: Alan Lomax’s Deep Digitality.” Ca- that his more recent researches have not, he is a nadian Journal of Communication, vol. 38, no. 2, card-carrying McLuhanite. 2013, pp. 227-244. 2 Te work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari —. “From the Turing Test to a Wired Carnivalesque: also informed my early attempts at hoaxing, in par- On the Durability of LIVINGSTON’s Artifcially In- ticular A Tousand Plateaus as well as Deleuze’s telligent Folk Songs of Canada.” Liminalities: A Jour- “Te Virtual and the Actual,” an essay in his book of nal of Performance Studies, vol. 12, no. 4, 2016, pp. 1-7. interviews with Claire Parnet, Dialogue II (148-59).

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3 Alan Turing’s famous examination is won when 6 For evidence of these researches, see Svec “Folk”; a machine successfully impersonates a human in Svec “iHootenanny”; Svec “Pete.” the eyes of another human judge, performing not through the body but through the manipulation of 7 In making these performances and in thinking symbols (Turing). So, given that it involved a hu- about them now, I am indebted to so much great man (me) impersonating a computer impersonating work in media and cultural studies on the discur- a human, my A.I. hoax was in a sense a hoax of an sive production of “authenticity.” See, for instance, originary hoax. Bendix; Keightley; Peterson; Miller.

4 I have skipped over two of my hoaxes for brevi- 8 Tus Staunton R. Livingston is a carrier of what ty’s sake. I also claimed to have retraced the steps of Jonathan Sterne has described as “the audiovisual folklorist Edith Fulton Fowke, re-documenting that litany,” a Christian ideology that identifes sound which she once documented (see www.folksongsof- and hearing with presence and salvation, on one canadanow.com), and under a moniker (Staunton Q. hand, and sight with alienation and individuality, Livingston) I appeared to have found a lost record- on the other (Sterne 14-19). I very much had Sterne’s ing by Stompin’ Tom Connors that was infuenced discussion of “the audiovisual litany” in mind by Te Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (see www.loststomp- when constructing Livingston’s approach to song intomsongs.com). collecting.

5 As I myself learned afer a show in Ottawa, from 9 I am indebted to Fleming and O’Carroll for an actual archivist at Te National Archives, “Te pointing out that the ambiguous origins of “hoax,” National Archives” is not even what that place is according to the OED, includes “hocus pocus” (51). called (it is in fact “Library and Archives Canada”). It was from this kind archivist, too, that I learned about the lack of a basement there.

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MARSHALL MCLUHAN’S COUNTERENVIRONMENT WITHIN THE STREAM OF DEFAMILIARIZATION

KENNETH R. ALLAN

Abstract: Marshall McLuhan’s theory of the counteren- variations of defamiliarization more generally, are histor- vironment is within a larger tradition of defamiliariza- ically specifc while also partaking in transformative his- tion that emerges in Romanticism and can be further torical processes that involve a fusion of communication, traced through the writings of Henri Bergson, English change, continuity, and repetition. literary modernism, Russian formalist ostranenie, Brech- tian estrangement, and more recent institutional critique. Résumé | La théorie du contre-environnement de Marshall Among related Romantic writings, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s McLuhan s’inscrit dans une perspective plus large de défa- essay “A Defence of Poetry” (1821) clearly anticipates lat- miliarisation qui a vu le jour dans le romantisme et peut er theories that both repeat and develop fundamental no- être retrouvée dans les écrits d’Henri Bergson, la littérature tions of defamiliarization. Bergson’s writings on the com- moderniste anglaise, le formalisme russe, la distanciation ic revive Romantic ideas when he states that the object brechtienne, et la critique institutionnelle plus récente. Par- of the arts is “to brush aside the utilitarian symbols, the mi les écrits romantiques apparentés, l’essai de Percy Bysshe conventional and socially accepted generalities, in short, Shelley, « A Defense of Poetry » (1821) anticipe clairement everything that veils reality from us, in order to bring us des théories ultérieures qui à la fois répètent et développent face to face with reality itself.” English modernists such as des notions fondamentales de défamiliarisation. Les écrits de T.E. Hulme, T.S. Eliot, and their contemporaries drew on Bergson sur la bande dessinée font revivre les idées roman- Bergson and were major sources for McLuhan’s counteren- tiques quand il déclare que l’objet des arts est de « mettre vironment. Russian formalist and English modernist de- de côté les symboles utilitaires, les généralités convention- familiarization share roots in Romanticism and Bergson, nelles et socialement acceptées, bref tout ce qui voile la réalité, which account for their sometimes parallel perspectives. pour nous mettre devant la réalité elle-même ». Des mod- McLuhan had some limited exposure to Russian formal- ernistes anglais tels que T.E Hulme, T.S. Eliot, et leurs con- ism by way of Constructivist cinema as well as the art and temporains, se sont inspirés de Bergson et ont été des sourc- writings of László Moholy-Nagy. Later writers sometimes es importantes pour le contre-environnement de McLuhan. mistakenly view Viktor Shklovsky’s ostranenie to be at the La défamiliarisation du formalisme russe et du modernisme origin of defamiliarization, although it was a point of de- anglais tirent leur origine du romantisme et de Bergson, ce parture for Bertolt Brecht’s “alienation efect.” McLuhan qui explique leurs perspectives parfois parallèles. McLuhan began using the term counterenvironment not long before a eu une exposition limitée au formalisme russe à travers some artists (who were aware of McLuhan’s writing on the le cinéma constructiviste ainsi que l’art et les écrits de Lász- subject) started to direct the audience’s aestheticized atten- ló Moholy-Nagy. Les auteurs ultérieurs considèrent parfois tion to the situation’s contextual framework rather than to erronément l’ostranenie de Viktor Shklovsky comme étant à discrete objects alone. Like the counterenvironment, later l’origine de la « défamiliarisation », bien que ce soit un point institutional critique proposed a Gestalt reversal of atten- de départ pour « l’efet de distanciation » de Bertolt Brecht. tion by turning the environmental ground to fgure, there- McLuhan a commencé à utiliser le terme contre-environne- by prompting awareness of what had been earlier ignored. ment peu de temps avant que certains artistes, qui étaient McLuhan’s theory of the counterenvironment, and the au courant des écrits de McLuhan sur le sujet, commencent

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à diriger l’attention esthétisée du public sur le cadre contex- Bergson on Russian formalist literary theory, tuel de la situation plutôt que seulement sur des objets dis- Douglas Robinson suggests that Romanticism tincts. À l’instar du contre-environnement, la critique insti- anticipates Shklovsky’s theory of ostranenie, or tutionnelle ultérieure a proposé un changement de direction estrangement. In a late article from 1966, Shk- de l’attention gestaltiste en transformant l’environnement en lovsky quotes Novalis, who writes: “Te art of fgure, suscitant ainsi la prise de conscience de ce qui avait pleasing estrangement, of making an object été auparavant ignoré. La théorie de McLuhan du contre-en- strange and yet familiar and attractive: that is vironnement, et plus généralement les variations de la défa- Romantic poetics” (qtd. in Robinson 79-80). miliarisation, sont historiquement spécifques tout en partic- Robinson further notes: “Novalis is not the ipant à des processus historiques de transformation qui im- only inventor of Romantic estrangement, of pliquent une fusion de la communication, du changement, course; the concept is one of the central ideas de la continuité, et de la répétition.: of German and English Romanticism and Ger- man Idealism… . Te basic idea is that con- arshall McLuhan’s theory of the ventionalization is psychologically alienating, counterenvironment is central to his anesthetizing, and that the reader therefore understanding of aesthetics. As with stands in need of some sort of aesthetic shock Mevery innovative idea, however, its background to break him or her out of the anesthesis” (80- may be acknowledged, avoided, or reinterpret- 81). Walter Benjamin also points to this aspect ed according to evolving requirements. As a of defamiliarization (applied to artworks) in knowledgeable literary scholar with an interest Novalis: in modernity, McLuhan drew on a wide variety of sources that at times employed ideas linked When Novalis says, “What is at the same to defamiliarization. His counterenvironment time thought and observation is a criti- is within the historical stream of defamiliar- cal germ,” he expresses—tautologically, to ization that appears to emerge in Romanticism be sure, for observation is a thought pro- and may be further traced through, for exam- cess—the close affnity between criticism ple, the writings of Henri Bergson, English lit- and observation. Thus, criticism is, as it erary modernism, Russian formalist ostranenie, were, an experiment on the artwork, one Brechtian estrangement, and institutional cri- through which the latter’s own refection tique.1 I will provide a brief outline of some of is awakened, through which it is brought these theoretical and practical relationships as to consciousness and to knowledge of it- they pertain to McLuhan’s work. self. (Benjamin, “The Concept of Criticism” 151) Defamiliarization plays a role in the Romantic literary theory of Novalis as well as the theoret- Similarly, Robinson mentions Coleridge’s 1817 ical writings of the English poets Samuel Tay- Biographia Literaria, in which he writes: lor Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley, among others. Many contemporary writers and theo- Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was rists situate Viktor Shklovsky (problematically to propose to himself, as his object, to historically, but understandably in ideological give the charm of novelty to things of ev- terms) as the point of origin for defamiliariza- eryday, and to excite a feeling analogous tion. Tough he downplays the infuence of to the supernatural by awakening the

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mind’s attention from the lethargy of cus- of the dance and architecture and statu- tom and directing it to the loveliness and ary and painting: they are the institutors the wonders of the world before us; an in- of laws, and the founders of civil society exhaustible treasure, but for which, in con- and the inventors of the arts of life and the sequence of the flm of familiarity and self- teachers, who draw into a certain propin- ish solicitude, we have eyes which see not, quity with the beautiful and the true that ears that hear not, and hearts which nei- partial apprehension of the agencies of ther feel nor understand. (Coleridge 314) the invisible world which is called religion. (Shelley 482) At this early date Coleridge provides some of the fundamental characteristics of defamiliar- McLuhan, for his part, employs a Gestalt point ization as it comes to be known. When Roman- of reference, identifying those people as art- ticism deals with pantheistic notions of nature, ists who are able to reverse the fgure-ground there is a sublimation of religious sentiment. relation of what he terms the environment by Te emergence of defamiliarization in Roman- creating a counterenvironment. Doing so di- ticism may therefore involve a secularization rects our attention to the environment’s other- of earlier religious revelation that Coleridge wise unperceivable processes and constraints, seems to point to when noting that Word- making us aware of them. Tis new awareness sworth aimed to “excite a feeling analogous to allows us both to recognize actuality and act the supernatural by awakening the mind’s at- upon it in a responsible and informed manner. tention from the lethargy of custom.” As with Shelley, the individuals to whom Mc- Luhan refers need not be professional artists, or Shelley’s essay “A Defence of Poetry,” writ- even have any interest in the fne arts: “Te art- ten in 1821 and published in 1840, anticipates ist is the man in any feld, scientifc or human- well the later writings of Bergson on laughter; istic, who grasps the implications of his actions Shklovsky (who appears to have borrowed de- and of new knowledge in his own time. He is familiarization from Bergson) on ostranenie; the man of integral awareness” (McLuhan, Un- Bertolt Brecht (who adapted Shklovsky’s os- derstanding Media 65). Tese “artists” (broadly tranenie) on the alienation efect; McLuhan on understood) create counterenvironments that the counterenvironment; and various writers defamiliarize the original under-perceived en- on institutional critique (who tend to assert its vironment or context and allow for its genuine point of origin to 1968 or refer back to Brecht). appearance to be recognized. Shelley, like McLuhan later, claims that poets (McLuhan refers to “artists”) are not only those Shelley, following Coleridge, sets forth some of who work within the disciplinary confnes of the ideas that come to permeate the literature the arts, but are rather those people in any soon defamiliarization when he considers the na- cial role who recognize actuality and direct our ture of poetry: attention toward it: It reproduces the common universe of But Poets, or those who imagine and ex- which we are portions and percipients, press this indestructible order, are not and it purges from our inward sight the only the authors of language and of music, flm of familiarity which obscures from us

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the wonder of our being. It compels us to claimed of poetry that “it strips the veil of fa- feel that which we perceive, and to imag- miliarity from the world, and lays bare the na- ine that which we know. It creates anew ked and sleeping beauty which is the spirit of the universe after it has been annihilated its forms” (Shelley 505). Bergson for his part in our minds by the recurrence of impres- asks: “What is the object of art? … . All this sions blunted by reiteration. (505-06) is around and within us, and yet no whit of it do we distinctly perceive. Between nature and Note the phrase “flm of familiarity” borrowed ourselves, nay, between ourselves and our own directly from Coleridge. Shelley’s essay in- consciousness a veil is interposed: a veil that is forms later writers on defamiliarization, and dense and opaque for the common herd—thin, perhaps Bergson’s thoughts on the critical and almost transparent, for the artist and the poet” illuminating efects of laughter and art, when (157-58). Bergson proclaims the essence of his Shelley writes of poetry: “It awakens and en- argument when he states that “art, whether it larges the mind itself by rendering it the recep- be painting or sculpture, poetry or music, has tacle of a thousand unapprehended combina- no other objects than to brush aside the utili- tions of thought. Poetry lifs the veil from the tarian symbols, the conventional and socially hidden beauty of the world, and makes famil- accepted generalities, in short, everything that iar objects as if they were not familiar” (487). veils reality from us, in order to bring us face to Te subsequent literature on defamiliarization face with reality itself” (162). Tis is one of the presents many references to removing the veil defnitive statements on defamiliarization, and on appearances, which allows for the creation it can serve as the basis for recognizing later of new phenomenal perceptions of the every- variants of the aesthetic or aesthetic-social-po- day. Te percipient is thought to have sudden litical type. access to a greater understanding of both sen- sual and social actuality. Bergson’s analysis of laughter informs later approaches to art, linked to McLuhan’s coun- Bergson had considerable infuence on artists terenvironment, that are structurally comedic and writers seeking to align their works with in nature even when they deal with serious new developments in philosophy and science and socially critical subjects. Laughter has an in late 19th– and early 20th-century Europe.2 aesthetic element, but it also involves a “social McLuhan appears to have drawn theoretical gesture” that “pursues a utilitarian aim of gen- ideas from Bergson both directly and indirect- eral improvement” (73). It is in this utilitarian ly via the English modernists. Stephen Crocker aspect that laughter’s defamiliarization comes suggests that McLuhan also drew on a stream to resemble counterenvironmental art’s crit- of Catholic Bergsonism (Crocker 17), which ical dealings with its social framework. Berg- may suggest further afnities between defa- son writes, “there remains outside this sphere miliarization and spiritual revelation. Berg- of emotion and struggle… a certain rigidity of son’s short book Laughter lays out the ideas de- body, mind and character that society would veloped more fully by subsequent theorists of still like to get rid of in order to obtain from its defamiliarization. Bergson employs the same members the greatest possible degree of elas- veil metaphor and writes about art in a man- ticity and sociability. Tis rigidity is the com- ner reminiscent of Shelley, who had earlier ic, and laughter is its corrective” (73-74). For

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Bergson the comic is a consequence of a lack of literature employs misdirection, stealing in personal awareness that may extend to being upon the conscious mind and tricking it into oblivious toward others and the social context. a temporary moment of self-realization” (110). He calls this inattention “unsociability,” linking McLuhan takes a similar approach when he it to rigidity, automatism, and absentminded- writes that one “can never perceive the impact ness (155-56). of any new technology directly, but it can be done in the manner of Perseus looking in the Just as Shelley maintains that poetry “creates mirror at Medusa. It has to be done indirectly. anew the universe afer it has been annihilated You have to perceive the consequences of the in our minds by the recurrence of impressions new environment on the old environment be- blunted by reiteration”, Jan Walsh Hokenson fore you know what the new environment is” suggests that Bergson’s notion of the mechan- (McLuhan, “Address” 228). Such perception ical involves it diminishing individuals’ free- involves memory. Jonathan Crary positions dom in terms of behaviour and perception. By Bergson’s view of personal memory in relation carrying out the same activity repeatedly, the to the social operations of laughter. Attention person is overwhelmed by routine, resulting can assist memory in reinforcing and renewing in a situation where “one ultimately becomes current perception, which can multiply and ignorant of the true sources of one’s actions” create a web of related memories. Memory may (Walsh Hokenson 44). Walsh Hokenson fur- let us grasp in one intuition many moments of ther writes: “Bergson insists that the comic is duration, distinguishing itself from the larger a function of the mechanical encrusted on the fow of phenomena. Regarding the revitaliza- living, which includes society no less than the tion of perception, Crary explains, “Bergson individual and nature” (44, original emphasis). sought to describe the revelatory vitality, even Paul Douglass identifes the process by which the shock, of a moment when memory ceases Bergson feels we can be liberated from this me- to merely confrm or adjust a perception and chanical encrustation: “At the same time that instead opens up a reverberating process of we are being consumed in time, ‘our living and ‘endosmosis,’ of remaking an object of percep- concrete self gets covered with an outer crust tion, of creating something new” (Crary 322- of clean-cut psychic states.’ Te artist cannot 23). Such a creation of something new is one change the nature of this reality, but by ‘dissolv- of the aims of modernism, suggesting that the ing or corroding the outer crust’ of our lives, stream of defamiliarization joins early on with art can ‘bring us back to the inner core,’ restore the emergent ideals of avant-garde modernity. the awareness of ‘real time,’ and thereby return us ‘back to our own presence’” (Douglass Perhaps because Bergson’s popularity as a pub- 110). Like Shelley’s “veil,” references to a “crust” lic intellectual diminished following World forming on appearances, necessitating disrup- War I, he has not been sufciently acknowl- tion, repeatedly arise in the literature on defa- edged for his essential contributions to the de- miliarization. Douglass explains the technique velopment of defamiliarization theories. When for carrying out this disruption: “Bergson sug- the extent of his infuence in the early-20th gests, then, that the writer ‘insinuates’ into the century is taken into account, however, it be- reader’s mind the perception of truth, ‘bafing’ comes easier to trace his later impact, such as the reader on purpose. In Bergson’s poetics, in the works of the English modernist literary

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theorists who drew on their own literary her- Elsewhere in his essay Hulme employs a vari- itage while also being infuenced by Bergson’s ant of Bergson’s “crust” reference when he almost cult-like appeal at the time. In some states that in every art form “the artist picks ways the popular McLuhanism of the mid to out of reality something which we, owning to late 1960s was a repetition of the earlier rage a certain hardening of our perceptions, have for Bergsonism. T.E. Hulme, a Bergson-infu- been unable to see ourselves” (156). enced critic, wrote foundational essays that set the stage for later theoretical developments in Critics such as James M. Curtis have argued English modernism. McLuhan valued Hulme’s that T.S. Eliot draws considerably from Berg- book of essays, Speculations, to such a degree son,3 notably with Eliot’s employment of defa- that according to former graduate student miliarization: “[Eliot] wrote in Te Use of Poet- Donald F. Teall he assigned it as a required ry, ‘It [poetry] may efect revolutions in sensi- reading for graduate students in the 1950s bility, such as are periodically needed, may help (Teall 209). His interest in Hulme matters be- break up the conventional modes of perception cause in the McLuhan literature Bergson is of- and valuation which are perpetually forming, ten downplayed as a potential infuence due to and make people see the world afresh, or some the supposition that, because McLuhan’s early new part of it’” (Curtis, “French Structuralism” idol Wyndham Lewis railed against him in lat- 373). It could be argued that Eliot is deriving er years, McLuhan himself must have paid lit- his idea as much from the Romantics as from tle attention to Bergson. Yet Mary Ann Gillies Bergson, but Douglass identifes Bergsonian records that Lewis was a great admirer of Berg- elements in many of Eliot’s works, including son in his younger days and that Lewis typi- Te Waste Land and Four Quartets (Douglass cally assimilated what he could from sources 114). In Te Mechanical Bride (1951), McLuhan and then repudiated them (Gillies 50). Hulme adopts one of Eliot’s statements on defamiliar- translated some of Bergson’s writings and ad- ization in poetry (without citing it) in an early vocated his ideas, such as those related to defa- iteration of the counterenvironment. Regard- miliarization, found in several essays including ing modern advertising, McLuhan argues that “Bergson’s Teory of Art,” in which he writes: advertisers have invaded the “collective public mind… in order to manipulate, exploit, con- The creative activity of the artist is only trol” (McLuhan, Te Mechanical Bride v). Mc- necessary because of the limitations Luhan’s critical approach operates in a manner placed on internal and external percep- that presages the counterenvironment: “Tis tion by the necessities of action. If we book reverses that process by providing typi- could break though the veil which actions cal visual imagery of our environment and dis- interpose, if we could come into direct locating it into meaning by inspection. Where contact with sense and consciousness, visual symbols have been employed in an ef- art would be useless and unnecessary… fort to paralyze the mind, they are here used . [T]he function of the artist is to pierce as a means of energizing it” (v-vii). In “Te through here and there, accidentally as it Metaphysical Poets” Eliot employs a similar were, the veil placed between us and re- vocabulary of dislocation when writing: “Te ality by the limitations of our perception poet must become more and more comprehen- engendered by action. (Hulme 147) sive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to

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force, to dislocate if necessary, language into an ancient Greek genre that cast a long his meaning” (Eliot 289). In the above passage shadow on the subsequent development McLuhan’s referencing of Eliot demonstrates of European literature, which was like- an indirect use of Bergson’s defamiliarization wise an enduring inspiration to McLuhan. during the early stages of McLuhan’s formula- (Lauder, “Digital Materialisms” 357-58) tion of the counterenvironment. Regarding Bakhtin’s writing on humour and In “It’s Alive! Bertram Brooker and Vitalism,” satire, Larissa Rudova notes that among the Adam Lauder considers McLuhan’s relation many Russians reading Bergson in the ear- to Bergson by way of Lewis (who was both in- ly-20th century was Mikhail Bakhtin, whose debted to and conficted about Bergson) and book Rabelais and His World is said to have posits a possible connection in the Canadian much in common with Bergson’s Laughter (Ru- context through the painter, author, advertis- dova 107n). Elena Lamberti favours the Menip- ing executive, and theorist Bertram Brooker pean satire argument, writing that “more than (81-105). In the latter part of his doctoral dis- a moral and cynical satire, McLuhan’s can be sertation, Lauder discusses McLuhan’s possible perceived mostly as a Menippean satire, which use of Bergson’s Laughter in creating a template is devoted to intentionally attacking the reader for his counterenvironment. Lauder develops in order to wake him/her up” (Lamberti 192). It the idea (also suggested by Teall and McLu- does seem that Menippean satire can involve a han himself) that McLuhan’s humour involves form of deautomatizing defamiliarization not Menippean satire. Lauder links this form to unlike that theorized by Bergson, meaning that Lewis’s satirical writing, McLuhan, Mikhail McLuhan could have employed Bergsonian de- Bakhtin on the carnivalesque, and artist Rob- familiarization (at a time when Bergson’s rep- ert Smithson, who was an admirer of Lewis: utation had long been in eclipse) as a model for his own counterenvironmental defamilar- As in Bergson’s earlier commentary, Lewis ization, while also understanding himself to be viewed the mechanized body as a key lo- writing in the more esoteric form of Menip- cus of the comic. But whereas the French pean satire. thinker identifed a utilitarian purpose in laughter—namely as a corrective ‘intend- Tough the English modernists and Rus- ed to humiliate’ unsociable behaviour— sian formalists were ideologically distinct Lewis, by contrast, took aim at Bergson’s from each other in many ways, both Curtis anthropomorphic illusion. Rather than and Ewa Tompson have observed that each shoring up the humanist delusions of lib- group adopted Bergson’s ideas on defamil- eral democracy, Lewis’s comedic bodies iarization within a short time of each other reveal the subject’s inherence in posthu- (Curtis, “French Structuralism” 373; Tomp- man patterns of mechanization that we son 67). Many writers cite Shklovsky’s theory would now recognize as specifcally proof ostranenie as the point of origin for defa- to-informatic. The cynical overtones of miliarization more generally, despite the idea Lewis’s transformation of Bergson’s the- developing for a century or longer by the time orization of the comic reveals his indebt- he promoted it as a radically new interpreta- edness to traditions of Menippean satire: tive tool. It may be that Shklovsky is given this

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credit largely as a consequence of ideological language of defamiliarization being absent in afliation in that his place at the origins of the the discussion of montage in Film Form. Russian avant-garde may make him a more ideal and convenient ancestor fgure than Bergson Oliver Botar recognizes Moholy-Nagy’s in- or the Romantics, who might seem less in tune debtedness to the Italian Futurists and indi- with the social-political concerns of defamil- cates a diference between them: iarization as it evolved in the later-20th century. It does appear that defamiliarization in Rus- As early as 1913 F.T. Marinetti wrote of sian formalism and English modernism share ‘multiple and simultaneous awareness in a similar roots in Romanticism and Bergson. single individual,’ a potentially destabiliz- Robinson argues that Shklovsky borrows one ing state that the Futurists sought to aes- of the deautomatizing efects of ostranenie, see- theticize and harness. However, this de- ing as opposed to recognition, from Bergson in stabilization was not utopian in impetus. his 1914 essay “Te Resurrection of the Word” In their responses to modernity, the Fu- (Robinson 118-19). Curtis earlier proposed that turists sought, for the most part, to instill Shklovsky employed Bergson as a template for a sense of discomfort and disorientation “the paradigm, the structural principles” for his rather than adaptation in their audiences. own theoretical ideas (Curtis, “Russian For- In Moholy-Nagy’s scheme, art and artists malism” 110). Shklovsky’s ostranenie was lit- are accorded the role of educator rather tle known in North America when McLuhan than that of agent provocateur, and it is was formulating his notions. However, McLu- through this pedagogical prism that art han does cite the writings of the Russian Ser- is refracted and projected toward medial gei Eisenstein and Hungarian László Moho- experimentation and sensory training/ex- ly-Nagy, both related to Constructivism, as be- pansion. (Botar 11) ing among his intellectual infuences of the late 1940s and 50s. Teall points out that McLuhan In this scenario, it is the Futurists, more so than read Moholy-Nagy’s Vision in Motion as well as Moholy-Nagy, who were interested in the pos- Eisenstein’s Film Form (Teall 43). Even earli- sibilities of defamiliarization. McLuhan makes er, circa 1940, McLuhan wrote about his teach- multiple references to the Futurists in his writing methods at St. Louis University: “I always ings, and it is well known from their various spend at least two weeks introducing them to manifestos that they were devotees of Bergson. the writings of Pudovkin and Eisenstein on McLuhan, given his personal relationships with flm technique and make them adapt a novel to Lewis and Ezra Pound, was even more sympa- scenario form” (Gordon 97; McLuhan, Letters thetic to the Futurist-related English Vorticists. 107). While Eisenstein’s (or more suitably Dz- Botar shows that Moholy-Nagy had consider- iga Vertov’s) use of montage can be an exam- able access to Russian Constructivist ideas in ple of defamiliarization in practice, Eisenstein the early 1920s, noting that “in 1922 Moho- does not discuss defamiliarization as such in ly-Nagy teamed up with Hungarian art his- Film Form. R. Bruce Elder more recently con- torian Alfréd Kamény, who had just returned siders Eisenstein’s use of montage in terms of from Moscow full of the ideas of Alexander defamiliarization (Elder 290-91), despite the Bogdanov and his Proletkult movement” (21). Moholy-Nagy also knew El Lissitzky and the

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Hungarian Béla Uitz, who was familiar with Stijl, which deal in a philosophical way with many members of the Russian avant-garde. relationships: Moholy-Nagy and McLuhan shared a friend in the architectural and technology historian This development of the visual arts from Sigfried Giedion. Botar recounts that Giedion fxed perspective to “vision in motion” is “remembers Moholy-Nagy lying on the ground vision in relationships. The fxed viewpoint, and pointing his camera upward from the the isolated handling of problems as a ground and straight downward from a balcony norm is rejected and replaced by a fexi- during a joint vacation at Belle-Île-en-Mer in ble approach, by seeing matters in a con- 1925, shortly afer Moholy-Nagy began to use stantly changing moving feld of mutual a camera. Moholy-Nagy’s obsession with nov- relationships. This may start a new phase el viewpoints and visual qualities was part of in the history of mankind, based upon his efort to ‘educate’ vision” (Botar 33). Moho- the universal principle of relationships. It ly-Nagy’s early photography is of a defamiliar- is the clue to all the changes which took izing nature, but his diverse infuences and ac- or will take place in the sciences as well tivities make it difcult to situate him within as in philosophy, including education a single tendency. Herbert Molderings writes and all other felds, in fact, in our whole about Moholy-Nagy’s photograph of the Ber- civilization. (Moholy-Nagy 114, original lin Radio Tower, circa 1928, in a manner that emphasis) consciously applies Shklovsky’s ideas and vocabulary related to ostranenie: “Te steep view Moholy-Nagy concentrates more on integra- from above alienates the viewer and makes the tion and relationships than defamiliarization, depicted detail of reality difcult to recognize focusing less on revelation than his idea of the at frst glance. Instead of passively perceiving Total Work. In one instance, however, Moho- what the photograph shows, the viewer is ex- ly-Nagy echoes Shelley and McLuhan on the pected—as he is when standing in front of a nature of creative persons: Cubist painting—to piece together the depicted shapes into a recognizable whole. Tus see- The artist unconsciously disentangles the ing becomes a difcult, delayed and hence con- most essential strands of existence from scious process” (Molderings 41). Here Mold- the contorted and chaotic complexities erings discusses the photographs rather than of actuality, and weaves them into an Moholy-Nagy’s texts, making it possible that emotional fabric of compelling validity, his defamiliarization references derive more characteristic of himself as well as of his specifcally from Shklovsky as well as the lat- epoch. This ability of selection is an outer literature on photographer Alexander Rod- standing gift based upon intuitive power chenko and flmmaker Dziga Vertov. and insight, upon judgment and knowledge, and upon inner responsibility to Botar points out that Moholy-Nagy was very fundamental biological and social laws much involved with theories of “Biocentrism” which provoke a reinterpretation in every (12). His own writings about art in Vision in civilization. This intuitive power is present Motion sometimes resemble Piet Mondri- in other creative workers, too, in philos- an’s and Teo van Doesburg’s writings on De ophers, poets, scientists, technologists.

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They pursue the same hopes, seek the are as if they had never been.” And art ex- same meanings, and—although the con- ists that one may recover the sensation of tent of their work appears to be differ- life; it exists to make one feel things, to ent—the trends of their approach and the make the stone stony. The purpose of art background of their activity are identical. is to impart the sensation of things as they (Moholy-Nagy 11) are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects Moholy-Nagy emerged as an artist at a time “unfamiliar,” to make forms diffcult, to in- when Bergsonism sufused European modern- crease the diffculty and length of percep- ism, and by the early 1920s he would have had tion because the process of perception is direct contact with the Russian Shklovsky ver- an aesthetic end in itself and must be pro- sion of it. Hence, his practical and theoretical longed. (20, original emphasis) references to defamiliarization may be associated with multiple sources. Jurij Striedter outlines Shklovsky’s ideas on defamiliarization as follows: Shklovsky’s adoption of Bergson’s automatism and defamiliarization is evident when he On the one hand, the exclusive focus on writes: the artistic function of defamiliarization (neglecting any extra-artistic reference of In studying poetic speech… we fnd ma- implication) now takes the form of a the- terial obviously created to remove the au- sis: Changes in art and in artistic forms oc- tomatism of perception; the author’s pur- cur through a process, wholly contained pose is to create the vision which results within the realm of art and indispensable from that deautomatized perception. A to it, whereby automatized forms and de- work is created “artistically” so that its per- vices give way to new ones that defamil- ception is impeded and the greatest pos- iarize them afresh. (Striedter 30) sible effect is produced through the slow- ness of the perception. As a result of this McLuhan similarly suggests about the coun- lingering, the object is perceived not in its terenvironment: “All the arts might be consid- extension in space, but, so to speak, in its ered to act as counterenvironments or counter- continuity. (Shklovsky 27) gradients. Any environmental form whatsoev- er saturates perception so that its own charac- In a manner reminiscent of Bergson and the ter is imperceptible; it has the power to distort Romantics, Shklovsky dwells on the deadening or defect human awareness. Even the most of response that results from over-familiariza- popular arts can serve to increase the level of tion and the necessity of disruption in order to awareness at least until they become entirely gain clarity of vision: environmental and unperceived” (McLuhan and Parker 2). Importantly, the operations and Habitualization devours works, clothes, efects of defamiliarization or the counteren- furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war. vironment are historical and are not inherent “If the whole complex lives of many peo- properties of the work. Like a joke that loses ple go on unconsciously, then such lives its provocative power with repetition, what

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defamiliarizes at one time may operate very Brecht’s discussion of the alienation efect pre- diferently with repeated exposure or when pares the groundwork for McLuhan’s coun- conditions and expectations have changed. terenvironment and later contemporary art techniques that come to be known as institu- According to the commentary of John Willett, tional critique because of the insistence on re- Brecht began writing and speaking about Ver- moving the magical, the trance, and the illusion fremdungsefekt, or the alienation efect, follow- of the setting, resulting in what Shelley terms ing his visit to Moscow in 1935. Willett reason- laying bare or Bergson, Shelley, and Coleridge ably argues that Brecht’s notion is derived from the removing the veil that suppresses our en- Shklovsky (Brecht, “Alienation Efects” 99), de- counter with actuality. Brecht rephrases the spite the fact that formalism was suppressed at Romantic’s understanding of defamiliarization: that time in the Soviet Union with the institu- tionalization of socialist realism. Brecht’s alien- The achievement of the A-effect consti- ation efect became a great infuence in the tutes something utterly ordinary, recur- West at a time when references to earlier Rus- rent; it is just a widely-practised way of sian formalist and Soviet avant-garde sources drawing one’s own or someone else’s at- were difcult to come by. Brecht’s signifcance tention to a thing… . The A-effect consists is not only for the value of his version of this in turning the object of which one is to be theoretical idea, but also for his political posi- made aware, to which one’s attention is tion with which many later theorists and art- to be drawn, from something ordinary, fa- ists could identify—perhaps more so than with miliar, immediately accessible, into some- Bergson or certainly the Romantics—if they thing peculiar, striking and unexpected. wanted to maintain their sense of radicalism. What is obvious is in a certain sense made incomprehensible, but this is only in order In his essay “Short Description of a New Tech- that it may then be made all the easier to nique of Acting Which Produces an Alienation comprehend. (143-44) Efect,” Brecht writes: Here Brecht does not essentially add more to The frst condition for the A-effect’s ap- what Shelley, Bergson, and Shklovsky had al- plication to this end is that stage and au- ready proposed. Yet these repetitions are par- ditorium must be purged of everything adoxically admired for their theoretical orig- “magical” and that no “hypnotic tensions” inality, which may call to mind Rosalind should be set up. … The audience was not Krauss’s argument concerning the recurring “worked up” by a display of temperament format of the grid in avant-garde art. (Krauss or “swept away” by acting with tautened 54-58) Brecht’s truly innovative departure is in muscles; in short, no attempt was made to the already mentioned focus on the efects of put it in a trance and give it the illusion of staging on the viewer. watching an ordinary unrehearsed event. As will be seen presently, the audience’s In “Te Author as Producer,” Benjamin writes tendency to plunge into such illusions has about Brecht’s epic theatre: to be checked by specifc artistic means. (136)

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I remind you here of the songs, which have To construct from the smallest elements their chief function in interrupting the ac- of behavior what in Aristotelian drama- tion. Here—in the principle of interruption— turgy is called “action” is the purpose of epic theater, as you see, takes up a proce- epic theater. Its means are therefore more dure that has become familiar to you in re- modest than those of traditional theater; cent years from flm and radio, press and likewise its aims. It is less concerned with photography. I am speaking of the pro- flling the public with feelings, even sedi- cedure of montage: the superimposed tious ones, than with alienating it in an en- element disrupts the context in which it during manner, through thinking, from the is inserted… . The interruption of action, conditions in which it lives. It may be not- on account of which Brecht described his ed, by the way, that there is no better start theater as epic, constantly counteracts for thinking than laughter. And, in partic- an illusion in the audience. For such illu- ular, convulsion of the diaphragm usually sion is a hindrance to a theater that pro- provides better opportunities for thought poses to make use of elements of reality than convulsion of the soul. Epic theater is in experimental rearrangements. … Epic lavish only in occasions for laughter. (236) theater… does not reproduce situations; rather, it discovers them. This discovery is Benjamin’s refections on Brecht’s theatre are accomplished by means of the interrup- remindful of Bergson and McLuhan, who both tion of sequences. Only interruption here identify the comic and the structure of come- is not the character of a stimulant but an dy as being models for the defamiliarizing pro- organizing function. It arrests the action duction of revelatory awareness. in its course, and thereby compels the listener to adopt an attitude vis-à-vis the Te English translation of Brecht on Teatre, process, the actor vis-à-vis his role. (234- which outlines the alienation efect, was pub- 35, original emphasis) lished the same year as McLuhan’s Under- standing Media. McLuhan formalized the term Benjamin characterizes Brecht’s montage as “counterenvironment” around that time, al- a procedure of interruption that “disrupts though he had already outlined the basics of it the context in which it is inserted”, thereby in Te Mechanical Bride. Te counterenviron- prompting the dissolution of the audience’s il- ment is engaged in a reformation of conscious- lusion, leading to their recognizing the reality ness; it develops out of a modern tradition in of their situation. Tis is very like the aesthet- which the role of art is to direct people’s critical ic and social operations of McLuhan’s coun- attention to their context and reawaken their terenvironment as well as institutional critique, sensibilities so as to enable a fresh engagement which have the capacity to transform aware- with their own immediate situation. Tis is ness, leading to potential change. similar to Bergson’s defamiliarization and how Fredric Jameson characterizes Shklovsky’s os- Benjamin considers the relation of humour to tranenie as “a way of restoring conscious ex- the epic theater: perience, of breaking through deadening and mechanical habits of conduct (automatization, as the Czech Formalists will later call it), and

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allowing us to be reborn to the world in its otherwise numbed in a nonperceivable existential freshness and horror” (Jameson 51, situation. (McLuhan and Parker 241) original emphasis). What is largely new with McLuhan is the focus on the environment as McLuhan’s passage on defamiliarizing percep- the locus of change and transformation. How- tion echoes Shklovsky’s claim that “art exists ever, in Culture and Environment (1933), McLu- that one may recover the sensation of life; it ex- han’s Cambridge instructor F.R. Leavis and De- ists to make one feel things”. McLuhan does not nys Tompson write about the environment’s entirely equate conventional or traditional art adverse efects on the citizenry as well as the with the counterenvironment because for him need to struggle against it and train aware- the role of the artist is to readjust the bias of ness (Leavis and Tompson 4-5; Marchessault culture rather than to repeat or reinforce it. In 28). Teir use of the term environment resem- some respects, he is restating the idea and role bles McLuhan’s because, importantly, they do of the avant-garde in modernity. not use it to refer to space or nature but rather to processes that shape and alter our outlooks McLuhan began referencing the counteren- and perspectives. As McLuhan argues: “Envi- vironment around 1964, at a moment of great ronments are not passive wrappings, but are, change in the North American art world with rather, active processes which are invisible. Te the emergence of Minimalism, Pop Art, Flux- groundrules, pervasive structure, and over-all us, and shortly aferwards, Conceptual Art, patterns of environments elude easy percep- new media art forms, and institutional critique. tion. Anti-environments, or countersituations It is easy now to forget that the texts of Post- made by artists, provide means of direct atten- structuralism as well as those of Guy Debord tion and enable us to see and understand more and the Situationists were not readily available clearly” (McLuhan and Fiore 68). Tere is less in North America at the time. English transla- a sense of repetitive action causing an autom- tions of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological writings atist state than there is a recognition that we on culture were still to come. But McLuhan was are always in an environmental situation that a North American cultural phenomenon, with requires ongoing defamiliarization. his writings easily accessible and widely read by artists, critics, and others in the artworld. McLuhan proposes that Some of Brecht’s theoretical writings were also available, and some artists, especially the more [t]he function of the artist in correcting the politicized, cite his alienation efect as an in- unconscious bias of perception in any giv- fuence on their work. However, for the type of en culture can be betrayed if he merely re- artwork that emerged in North America in the peats the bias of the culture instead of re- mid 1960s to early 70s involving directing one’s adjusting it. In fact, it can be said that any attention to the contextual framework of one’s culture which feeds merely on its direct own situation and activity, McLuhan’s theo- antecedents is dying. In this sense the role ry of the counterenvironment appears to have of art is to create the means of perception played a signifcant and under-acknowledged by creating counterenvironments that role in laying down the theoretical ground- open the door of perception to people work (Allan, “Conceptual” 131; “Counterenvi- ronment” 22-45; Lauder, “Drop-In” 48-49).

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Te term institutional critique emerges in the technique’s point of origin. Other writers on mid- to late-1970s and is most closely associat- institutional critique, perhaps partly as a con- ed with the writings of Benjamin Buchloh that sequence of the increased popularity of Hans deal with an art form that, like the counterenvi- Haacke’s work in the 1980s, begin stressing the ronment, does a Gestalt reversal by turning the importance of legible political content for such ground to fgure. Buchloh was the second ed- work, ofen referring to thinkers such as Mi- itor of the German magazine Interfunktionen, chel Foucault, Bourdieu, and Debord as new which specialized in providing space for artists’ points of reference. Debord and the Situation- magazine projects that are artworks employing ists employed a form of defamiliarization in mass-publication techniques. Te frst editor work related to their theories of the dérive and was Friedrich Heubach whose initial issue of détournement (both seemingly adopted from 1969 originated out of Wolf Vostell’s actions in the Surrealists). Bourdieu, in the introduction opposition to the 1968 Documenta exhibition. to the English-language edition of Distinctions, Tis issue includes references to McLuhan in writes of “a sort of estrangement from the fa- relation to the intermedia approach of Vostell miliar, domestic, native world, the critique (in (an artist with Fluxus connections) and his fel- the Kantian sense) of culture [that] invites each low artists (Interfunktionen 17). Buchloh states reader, through the ‘making strange’ beloved of that it is with the rise of Conceptual Art in the the Russian formalists, to reproduce on his or late 1960s (he specifes 1968) that the canonical her own behalf the critical break of which it is artists whom he associates with institutional the product” (Bourdieu xiv). With Bourdieu, critique emerge: Michael Asher, Daniel Buren, the connection to the tradition of defamiliar- Marcel Broodthaers, Hans Haacke, Dan Gra- ization is maintained, although it is curious ham, and Lawrence Weiner. Buchloh writes: that, as a French writer, he does not recognize “Tere I would suggest that only at this time the partly Bergsonian origins of the Russian did a radically diferent basis for critical in- formalist idea that he cites. terventions in the discursive and institutional frameworks determining the production and In “What is Institutional Critique?” Andrea reception of contemporary art become estab- Fraser states that institutional critique “engag- lished” (xxiv). Tis claim may be largely true of es sites above all as social sites, structured sets this cohort of artists at this specifc moment in of relations that are fundamentally social re- contemporary art, but the general theoretical lations. To say that they are social relations is parameters had been set for a very long time. not to oppose them to intersubjective or even intrasubjective relations, but to say that a site Authors on institutional critique typically is a social feld of those relations” (Fraser 305, adopt Buchloh’s narrative. Paradoxically, how- emphasis original). It is not only the visible as- ever, these authors are ofen reluctant to use pects of the site that are dealt with, but more the tools provided by institutional critique to importantly “their structure, particularly what examine its own presuppositions and histori- is hierarchical in that structure and the forms cal background. For example, Blake Stimson of power and domination, symbolic and ma- writes: “Institutional critique, as it will be un- terial violence, produced by those hierarchies” derstood here, was a child of 1968” (20), as- (307). Fraser appears to be drawing on Bour- suming this year of political unrest as the dieu as well as Foucault, employing a changing

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vocabulary to describe defamiliarization. Yet “What is implicit about the building must be the structural manner in which second-gener- exposed as explicit, the myth must be visually ation institutional critique functions remains concretized and unmasked… . Tis must hap- remarkably similar to that of McLuhan’s coun- pen at the very place of the myth on the site terenvironment and to the work of those art- of its production, on its body—the building” ists who were infuenced by his writing on that (qtd. in Boswell 16). Te action must interfere subject. Like institutional critique, the coun- with the physical building itself and its public terenvironment is both aesthetic and social address. Furthermore, Wodiczko maintains: in its revelatory qualities. However, McLuhan “Tis will be a symbol-attack, a public, psycho- had fallen out of critical favour by the mid- analytical séance, unmasking and revealing the 1970s, making him an ancestral f gure many unconscious of the building, its body, the ‘me- avoided until the late-1990s. As a consequence, dium’ of power” (qtd. in Boswell 20). In this McLuhan remains largely invisible in the liter- last statement, Wodiczko seems to link his ap- ature on institutional critique. proach to defamiliarization with the languages of Surrealism, psychoanalysis, and Foucault. An interesting fgure who straddles historical perspectives is the artist Krzysztof Wodiczko, In this brief sketch of the relation of McLu- a Polish émigré to Canada and subsequently han’s counterenvironment to the larger history to the United States. Wodiczko’s public-mon- of defamiliarization, I have addressed numer- ument photographic slide projections of the ous points of continuity. However, because the 1980s were a fascinating form of institution- basic idea is at least 200 years old, emerging al critique. His work was championed early in tandem with the historical period of mo- on by the journal October, of which Buchloh dernity, the temporal frameworks specifc to is a founding editor. Wodiczko notes the im- the repetitions of this concept will themselves portance of Brecht and Soviet precedents, but be transformed in the ever-changing environ- he also references McLuhan and the Situation- ment. Leszek Kolakowski (a polymath who ists. He quotes from McLuhan: “In the name of also wrote on Bergson) identifes a problemat- ‘progress’ our ofcial culture is striving to force ic view of historical repetition in which: the new media to do the work of the old” (qtd. in Wodiczko 59). Tis quotation introduces an … the only factor of importance is that illumination proposal for Philadelphia in 1987. which constitutes the uniqueness of a par- In a fashion that illustrates the continuity of ticular historical complex, every detail of Wodiczko’s ideas with the long history of defa- which—although it may be indisputably a miliarization, he writes: “Te new task for City repetition of former ideas—acquires a new Hall will be to transform the sense of the entire meaning in its relationship to that com- public institution and its architectural body plex and is no longer signifcant in any into something sensitive, responding, and re- other way. This hermeneutic assumption sponsible, to acknowledge the daily rhythm clearly leads to a historical nihilism of its or daily life of the city. Our task is to reattach own, since by insisting on the exclusive re- the public domain’s hold on contemporary life lationship of every detail to a synchronic and to challenge its alienating, elusive efect” whole (whether the whole be an individu- (60). Peter Boswell quotes Wodiczko as saying: al mind or an entire cultural epoch) it rules

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out all continuity of interpretation, oblig- Bergson, Henri. “Laughter,” in Wylie Sypher, George ing us to treat the mind or the epoch as Meredith, and Henri Bergson, Comedy: An Essay on one of a series of closed, monadic entities. Comedy. Doubleday Anchor, 1956. It lays down in advance that there is no possibility of communication among such Boswell, Peter. “Krzysztof Wodiczko: Art and the entities and no language capable of de- Public Domain.” Public Address: Krzysztof Wodiczko. scribing them collectively. (Kolakowski 11) Walker Art Center, 1992, pp. 9-25.

Likewise, with McLuhan’s counterenvironment Botar, Oliver A.I. Sensing the Future: Moholy-Nagy, and the stream of defamiliarization more gen- Media and the Arts. Lars Müller Publishers, 2014. erally, it behooves us to not imagine that the idea emerges out of nowhere in the many in- Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of stances of its appearance, but to consider its the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice, historical specifcity, while understanding it in Harvard UP, 1984. relation to the transformative historical processes that involve a fusion of communication, Brecht, Bertolt. “Alienation Efects in Chinese Act- change, continuity, and repetition. ing.” Brecht on Teatre: Te Development of an Aes- thetic. Edited and translated by John Willett, Hill and Wang, 1986, pp. 91-99. Works Cited —. “Short Description of a New Technique of Act- Allan, Kenneth R. “Conceptual Art Magazine Proj- ing which Produces an Alienation Efect.” Brecht ects and Teir Precedents.” Dissertation U of Toron- on Teatre: Te Development of an Aesthetic. Edited to, 2004. and translated by John Willett, Hill and Wang, 1986, pp. 136-47.

—. “Marshall McLuhan and the Counterenviron- Buchloh, Benjamin H.D. “Introduction.” Neo-Avant- ment: ‘Te Medium is the Massage.’” Art Journal, garde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and vol. 73, no. 4, Winter 2014, pp. 22-45. American Art From 1955 to 1975. MIT Press, 2000, pp. xxvii-xxiii

Antlif, Mark. Inventing Bergson: Cultural Politics and the Parisian Avant-Garde. Princeton University Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Biographia Literaria.” Press, 1993. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by H.J. Jackson, Ox- ford UP, 1985, pp. 155-482. Benjamin, Walter. “Te Concept of Criticism.” Wal- ter Benjamin: Selected Writings Volume 1, 1913-1926. Crary, Jonathan. Suspensions of Perception: Atten- Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1996, pp. 116-200. tion, Spectacle, and Modern Culture. MIT Press, 1999.

—. “Te Author as Producer.” Refections: Essays, Crocker, Stephen. Bergson and the Metaphysics of Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. Translated by Media. Macmillan, 2013. Edmund Jephcott, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979, pp. 220-238. Curtis, James M. “Marshall McLuhan and French Structuralism.” Marshall McLuhan: Critical Evalu-

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ations in Critical Teory. Edited by Gary Genosko, Krauss, Rosalind. “Te Originality of the Avant-Gar- vol. 2, Routledge, 2005, pp. 365-75. de: A Postmodern Repetition.” October, vol. 18, Au- tumn 1981, pp. 47-66. —. “Bergson and Russian Formalism.” Comparative Literature, vol. 28, no. 2, Spring 1976, pp. 109-21. Lamberti, Elena. Marshall McLuhan’s Mosaic: Prob- ing the Literary Origins of Media Studies. U of To- Douglass, Paul. “Bergson, Vitalism, and Modernist ronto P, 2012. Literature.” Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism. Edited by Paul Ardoin et al, Blooms- Lauder, Adam. “IAIN BAXTER&: Te Artist as bury, 2013, pp. 107-27. Drop-in,” Journal of Canadian Art History, vol. 31, no. 2, 2010, pp. 40-75. Elder, R. Bruce. Harmony and Dissent: Film and Avant-garde Art Movements in the Early Twentieth —. “Digital Materialisms: Information Art In En- Century. Wilfred Laurier UP, 2008. glish Canada, 1910-1978.” Dissertation U of To- ronto, 2016. https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/ handle/1807/76436 Eliot, T.S. “Te Metaphysical Poets.” Selected Essays. Faber and Faber, 1966, pp. 281-290. —. “It’s Alive! Bertram Brooker and Vitalism.” Te Fraser, Andrea. “What is Institutional Critique?” Logic of Nature, the Romance of Space: Elements of Institutional Critique and Afer. Edited by John C. Canadian Modernist Painting, ed. Cassandra Getty, Welchman, JRP/Ringier, 2006, pp. 305-307. Art Gallery of Windsor; Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2010, pp. 81-105.

Gillies, Mary Ann. Henri Bergson and British Mod- Leavis, F.R. and Denys Tompson. Culture and Envi- ernism. McGill-Queen’s UP, 1996. ronment: Te Training of Critical Awareness. Chatto & Windus, 1964. Gordon, W. Terrence. Marshall McLuhan, Escape into Understanding: A Biography. Basic Books, 1997. Marchessault, Janine. Marshall McLuhan: Cosmic Media. Sage Publications, 2005. Hulme, T.E. “Bergson’s Teory of Art.” Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the Philosophy of Art. Ed- McLuhan, Marshall. “Address at Vision 65.” Essential ited by Herbert Read, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958, McLuhan. Edited by Eric McLuhan and Frank Zin- pp. 143-69. grone, Basic Books, 1996, 219-32.

Interfunktionen 1, 1969, 17. —. Understanding Media: Te Extensions of Man. MIT Press, 1997. Jameson, Fredric. Te Prison House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian For- —. Interviewed by Sheila Watson, fexidisc, “Wynd- malism. Princeton UP, 1974. ham Lewis Recalled.” Artscanada, no. 114, Novem- ber, 1967. Kolakowski, Leszek. Main Currents of Marxism: Te Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown. Translat- —. Letters of Marshall McLuhan. Oxford UP Canada, 1987. ed by P.S. Falla, W.W. Norton & Company, 2005.

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—. Te Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. Striedter, Jurij. Literary Structure, Evolution, and Gingko Press, 2002. Value: Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism Reconsidered. Harvard UP, 1989. McLuhan, Marshall, and Harley Parker. Trough the Vanishing Point: Space in Poetry and Painting. Harp- Teall, Donald F. Te Virtual Marshall McLuhan. er & Row, 1968. McGill-Queen’s UP, 2001.

McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore. Te Medi- Tompson, Ewa M. Russian Formalism and An- um is the Massage: An Inventory of Efects. Bantam glo-American New Criticism: A Comparative Study. Books, 1967. Mouton, 1971.

Moholy-Nagy, Lázló. Vision in Motion. Paul Teo- Walsh Hokenson, Jan. “Comedies of Errors: Berg- bald and Company, 1965. son’s Laughter in Modernist Contexts.” Understand- ing Bergson, Understanding Modernism. Edited by Paul Ardoin et al, Bloomsbury, 2013, pp. 38-53. Molderings, Herbert. “‘Revaluating the way we see things’: Te photographs, photograms and pho- toplastics of László Moholy-Nagy.” László Moho- Wodiczko, Krzysztof. “City Hall Tower Illumination, ly-Nagy: Retrospective. Edited by Ingrid Pfeifer and Philadelphia.” Critical Vehicles: Writings, Projects, Max Hollein, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt; Prestel, Interviews. MIT Press, 1999, pp. 59-61. 2009, pp. 36-43.

Robinson, Douglas. Estrangement and the Somatics Notes of Literature: Tolstoy, Shklovsky, Brecht. Johns Hop- kins UP, 2008. 1 I deal with some of these sources in relation to a counterenvironment-related art practice of the Rudova, Larissa. “Bergsonism in Russia: Te Case 1960s and 70s in my article “Counterenvironment” of Bakhtin.” Neophilologus, vol. 80, no. 2, April 1996, (22-45). pp. 175-188. 2 For more detail on the cultural politics surround- Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “A Defence of Poetry.” Shel- ing Bergson in early-20th-century France, see Mark ley’s Poetry and Prose. Edited by Donald H. Reiman Antlif. and Sharon B. Powers, W.W. Norton & Company, 1977, pp. 478-508. 3 Gillies suggests that Paul Douglass’s Bergson, El- iot, & American Literature (1986) makes a convinc- Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Modern Crit- ing case for Eliot’s being infuenced in his critical icism and Teory: A Reader. Edited by David Lodge, writing by Bergson (64). Longman, 1988, pp. 16-30.

Stimson, Blake. “What was Institutional Critique?” Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writ- ings. Edited by Alexander Alberro and Blake Stim- son, MIT Press, 2009, pp. 20-42.

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MOHAMMAD SALEMY

Abstract | Te 1960s was the decade in which satellite tech- Résumé | Les années 1960 ont été la décennie où la technolo- nology was introduced to the television world via a series of gie satellitaire a été introduite dans le monde de la télévision live broadcasts. With the active participation of 46 stations, par le biais d’une série d’émissions en direct. Avec la partic- BBC’s Our World (1967) was undoubtedly the most globally ipation active de 46 stations, Our World (1967) de la BBC a far-reaching of them all. Conceived around Marshall McLu- été sans aucun doute été l’émission la plus difusée à travers han’s concept of the communicative global village, the spe- le monde. Conçu autour du concept du village planétaire cial program took full advantage of satellites to reach a truly de communication de Marshall McLuhan, le programme global audience and use the occasion to announce the dawn spécial a profté pleinement des satellites pour atteindre un of globalization and what living in a small and thorough- public véritablement mondial et a saisi l’occasion pour an- ly connected world would mean for its inhabitants. Promi- noncer l’aube de la mondialisation et ce que vivre dans un nent in the broadcast was the program’s Canadian segment, monde petit et complètement connecté signiferait pour ses which aired right afer the introduction and included an inhabitants. Le segment canadien du programme, difusé juste terview with Marshal McLuhan in the Canadian Broadcast- après l’introduction, a été mis en vedette et comprenait une ing Corporation’s studio in Toronto. Tis paper considers Mc- entrevue avec Marshall McLuhan dans le studio de la Société Luhan’s contributions both to the ideas and practices of plan- Radio-Canada à Toronto. Cet article considère les contribu- etary communication as well as his direct involvement with tions de McLuhan aux idées et aux pratiques de la commu- the production of Our World. I demonstrate how McLuhan’s nication planétaire, mais aussi son implication directe dans understanding of the co-constitution of time and space not la production d’Our World. Je démontre comment la com- only set live television broadcasts apart from other temporal préhension de McLuhan de la co-constitution du temps et de media but that, through these spatiotemporal afnities, One l’espace non seulement sépare les émissions télévisées en di- World can be considered to belong to the prehistory of our rect des autres médias temporels, mais aussi, par ces afnités contemporary telecomputational technologies such as the In- spatio-temporelles, comment One World peut appartenir à ternet and mobile phones. la préhistoire de nos technologies de télécommunication contemporaines comme Internet et les téléphones mobiles.

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he 1960s was the decade in which sat- globalization and what living in a small and ellite technology started to be incorpo- thoroughly connected world would mean for rated in the production of live televi- its inhabitants. Our World also played a major Tsion programs. However, with the active par- role in defning the visual and presentational ticipation of 46 stations from round the world, style of not just live broadcasts, which became BBC’s Our World (1967) was undoubtedly the widespread with cable television in the decades most global in its reach. Conceived around to come, but both the aesthetics of the 24-hour Marshall McLuhan’s concept of the communi- cable news and the mainstream Internet. cative global village, the special program took full advantage of satellite technology not only According to the media scholar Lisa Parks, the to reach a global audience but also simultane- production of Our World in 1967 was largely ously produce its live televisual content from predicated on the ratifcation of a UN treaty diferent locations around the world. Satellite enabling the free use of the earth’s outer space technology allowed Our World to function in accordance with international law and ban- as a planetary announcement of the dawn of ning its monopoly by any single nation (Parks

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76-77). Te countries involved urged the pro- increase the world food supply and fnd solu- ducers to focus on humanitarian themes and tions to housing problems. Te show also high- purposes. Te producers, on the other hand, lighted examples of skills in sport and adven- used the mass audience of the program not ture from, notably, a professional Canadian fe- only to publicize but also visualize urgent male swimmer breaking her own world record global issues. Park emphasizes that Our World live in an open pool in Vancouver. Perhaps the emerged at the peak of the Cold War, the space most entertaining sequences of the program race, and during the decolonization of the de- were rehearsals of Lohengrin at the Bayreuth veloping world (Parks 75). It was as if all the vil- festival, Franco Zefrelli rehearsing a f lming lages of the globe were brought together by the of Romeo and Juliet in Italy, Leonard Bernstein convergence of media and political interests and and Van Cliburn rehearsal at the Lincoln to pronounce the dawn of a new era of glob- Center in New York, Joan Miró in his studio al cooperation and competition not just be- in France, and Te Beatles and their produc- tween the west and east but also the north and er George Martin recording their hit song “All south. Our World was broadcasted on June 29, You Need Is Love” in London. 1967 with an estimated 500 million viewers in 24 countries. It required more than two years, Our World began very early Monday morn- thousands of technicians, miles of cable, and $5 ing in Australia and Japan, Sunday afernoon million dollars to produce. in North America, and late Sunday evening in Europe. However, for its duration, the view- Prominent in the broadcast was the program’s ers from these diferent time zones around the Canadian segment, which aired afer the intro- world were bootstrapped to a new technology duction and included an interview with Mar- capable of uniting them both spatially and tem- shal McLuhan in the Canadian Broadcasting porally. Tis form of global presence was nev- Corporation’s studio in Toronto. In this illumi- er technologically possible before. Today’s net- nating conversation, which contains the most worked media takes for granted the mass par- compressed version of the philosopher’s con- ticipation of millions of users as the precondi- cept of the Global Village, the producers lay the tion for its authority and legitimacy, but in 1967 theoretical ground of the show’s propositions the audience’s knowledge of the fact that mil- and made explicit Mcluhan’s centrality to their lions of others were also watching the program concerns. added a new dimension to the televisual experience. Te accessible liveness made a mediat- In Te Medium Is the Massage, McLuhan and ed experience almost as tangible, real, and au- Quentin Fiore wrote: “Ours is a brand-new thoritative as any physical encounter with the world of all-at-once-ness, time has ceased world. Tis mode of experiencing time is what space has vanished we know live in a global I refer to as televisual intersubjectivity, a mode village a simultaneous happening” (63). Te that only enhanced as we moved from live sat- technological rebirth of the world as a glob- ellite broadcasts to the 24-hour cable television al village was emphasized in the start of the cycle and later on to the Internet’s own global program with images of newly born babies temporality. However, this intersubjective and from around the world. Our World includ- participatory immanence could only be possi- ed segments about various national eforts to ble by way of the media’s reorientation of the

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viewers’ attentional resources away from their foreshadowed what in the 1990s became actual and physical experience of the world known as the aesthetic frame for 24-hour news and into the audiovisual reality of the televi- broadcasters such as CBC Newsworld and sion monitor. Te togetherness can only be- CNN. In addition, by combining live use of the come tangible if the cognitive consciousness of television studio alongside maps, photographs, the audience is drawn into a convincing virtual charts, and live footage from remote locations, world with its own temporal logic. Tis def- the program pointed to the computational fu- nition of temporality is much closer to McLu- ture of the media in which the credibility of han’s and goes against its contemporary phe- the present is established in a network, or what nomenology and its Marxist recuperation via McLuhan would term a “mosaic” of diferent Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of history.1 In types of information. this sense, temporality is not grasped exclu- sively through inner time of consciousness nor Looking back almost 50 years at this experi- the measured outer time of the world, but rath- ment in mass communication, one might ask, er the way the passage of time from the stand- was this only the start of a new life for the me- point of external beings, including technolo- dium of television, or is the program also the gies, afects our understanding of being and harbinger of our post-cybernetic planetary time. It was through utilizing the potentialities life? To answer this question, we should mea- of this technologized intersubjective temporal- sure Our World against three diferent philos- ity that Our World was able to draw millions ophies of history and their temporalities. Tis of viewers into itself, providing a new perspec- consideration highlights the signifcance of tive from which one could see the Earth as a the program to our shared televisual history thing situated outside of the viewers’ physical in threefold. Te classic conception of history and local realities, thus transforming how they treats its subject as a concrete object from the understood the present in retrospect. One can past with an exact archaeological point of or- only notice how this model of understanding igin, worthy of unearthing and burnishing by complex facts is similar to how we experience the historian. In this respect Our World consti- the Internet as a whole today. It was the frst tutes a time capsule of the modern western lib- time in history that humans could watch the eral weltanschauung, a term defned by the Vi- planet as a single entity in both time and space, ennese art historian Alois Rigel and expanded similar to how Yuri Gagarin and Neil Arm- by the Hungarian sociologist Karl Mannheim. strong had previously viewed the Earth from According to both, worldview is not an ideal the outer space. category but rather the material and formal capabilities of artifacts, especially monuments, to It is noteworthy that the style and visual de- preserve the virtues, aspirations, practices, and sign of Our World had ramifcations for both technologies of the past and present times. As the presentation of live coverage on television a media monument, Our World speaks to both and for how objective news and commentary the form and content of the postwar Modern- were to enter public space in the future. For ism advanced by the US and its Western allies instance, the humming and buzzing envi- as they competed internationally with Sovi- ronment of the control room from Toronto’s et communism for the developing world. Our CBC studio where McLuhan was interviewed World is also signifcant in our contemporary

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conception of history as formulated by Walter Tere can be no doubt that the television mon- Benjamin in the “Teses on the Philosophy of itor—in general, as the ubiquitous optical data History.” For Benjamin, historical conscious- output device and live satellite television pro- ness is the backward reconstitution of the ruins gramming, and in particular, for its imma- of the past in the present against the inevitable nent temporality—are the harbingers of the force and direction of futurity. Tis particular planetary-scale computation and Internet to- conception bears resemblance to how the Hus- day. However, we can also claim that McLuhan serlian phenomenology describes the tempo- was at least unconsciously aware of the futuri- ral process of experiencing the world as well as ty of the television medium, as evident in Our how Norbert Weiner confgured the temporal- World’s opening interview with the author. Mc- ity of cybernetic feedback loops (34-35). Tis Luhan’s use of x-ray as a metaphor to explain conception of history is also graspable through the depth of televisual experience compared to McLuhan’s own characterization of the future the superfcial nature of print media not only as being graspable only through the rear-view reveals the specifc epistemic qualities of tele- mirror (McLuhan and Fiore 110-11). vision but also points to the further deepen- ing of this x-ray efect as we shif from the an- Yet there is a third and speculative concept of alogue signal via satellite to the digital one via history associated with Promethean realism, the Internet. to use Ray Brassier’s term. One can arrive at this conception particularly via Reza Negar- In addition, McLuhan’s clearly understands the estani’s reading of Hegel and Suhail Malik’s mosaic and fragmented essence of the televi- concept of risk rationality in relation to the sion paradigm as refecting an era in which the operational logic of fnance capitalism. Tese separation between the spectator and the par- thinkers share an understanding of history as a ticipant can no longer be maintained. It is not temporal platform for how future and the past hard to see how this confation of object and struggle against each other in the substrate of subject, user and used, and consumer and pro- the present time. From these more recent per- ducer is reaching its peak during our current spectives, Our World defnes the moment in Internet paradigm. At the heart of these trans- which the alien and artifcially intelligent fu- formations rests the question of time, its quali- ture, channeled through the fgure of McLuhan, ties and logic during social, political, and epis- travels back in time to liberate the present from temic transformations. Here, McLuhan recog- the clutches of the past. From these perspec- nizes the temporal revolution which television tives, reason, even if abstracted from its biolog- facilitates as an inexpensive and universal dis- ical substrate and operationalized via our me- penser of information in a time-based form dia technologies, can still play an autonomous and its intensifcation via inexpensive live sat- role in shaping the future history. Tus, if one ellite broadcast. In short, for McLuhan, these day in the future, our intelligent machines fnd media transformation were essentially about the capability to look back into the mirror of the fundamental change in the relationship be- history, they would be able to recognize in Our tween humans and the notion of time mediat- World and particularly the McLuhan segment a ed by media technologies. noticeable trace of their own existence.

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The Transcript of Our World’s unexpected repercussions in that way. People interview with Marshal McLuhan2 will be drawn into it as participants, whereas they are merely viewing themselves as specta- CBC: Good afernoon. Tis is the control room tors at this moment. here in Toronto where viewers in Canada will see our world this afernoon. It’s one of 45 con- CBC: Doesn’t this, though, it’s creating an en- trol rooms around the world, linking the world, tirely new intellectual spirit, climate, for those or the developed world, in this frst global tele- who can communicate. Doesn’t it present an- vision program. I have with me in the control other problem of dividing those who can from room Professor Marshall McLuhan, the so- those who can’t? called prophet of this electronic communication age. I hope you don’t object to that word, MML: Well, what is called for example a gen- “prophet,” you must be tired of it. eration gap today, the TV generation of kids, have a completely diferent set of perceptions MML: I’m quite helpless. from their parents. Teir parents grew up in a visual world like the world of movies, where CBC: I don’t know if you know what is going they have cameras and pictures and points around here Professor McLuhan. I don’t. of view. Te kids have grown up in an x-ray world. Te TV camera does a perpetual job MML: It’s a real humming, buzzing confusion. of x-ray on them and they take this for granted. X-ray means depth, x-ray means participa- CBC: Can you say what message the medium tion in depth in whatever they are doing, and has on the world this afernoon? calls for a totally new kind of commitment to everything they are doing. Tat is why when MML: Well, I can say right of for example that they encounter situations in which they are everyone will look at this program as if it were merely classifed entities as in the school room; something they have already seen before, with they don’t feel wanted, they don’t feel needed, just a little addition of this and that, because they just drop out. Now, this strange new all- that is the inevitable way in which we look at at-once situation in which everybody experi- everything. It’s the same old thing with a little ences everything all at once creates this kind of item or two added. In fact, what is happening x-ray mosaic of involvement and participation around the world today, is what has happened for which people are just not prepared. Tey with the [Montréal] Expo: a huge mosaic has have lived through centuries of detachment, of been created in which, in efect, an x-ray of non-involvement. Suddenly, they are involved. world cultures, not a story-line, not a perspec- So it’s a big surprise, and for many people a tive, not a point of view, but a kind of x-ray kind of exhilaration. Wonderful! through this mosaic, is created in which everybody can participate. Everybody is surprised at CBC: But there are people in the world, the ma- Expo at how deeply they appreciate and par- jority, who don’t live in this new, involved so- ticipate in the show. Nobody seems to real- ciety, and they are still in the age of the camel— ize why it is so unlike other world fairs. And I think this show this afernoon will have some

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MML: Tey are trying to live in the rear-view MML: You know, something like Expo, though, mirror. Tey are still desperately trying to get creates a mosaic of all those societies as well an image of themselves in a situation that is fa- as all the latest ones, and everything happens miliar and known, whereas in actual fact the at the same moment. You can be in Beirut, or situation that they fnd themselves in is not in Tokyo, or in New York at the same moment, well known, it’s utterly surprising and terrify- in this kind of mosaic world of all-at-once- ing. Te people have always, in all ages, Stan, ness, and so, in efect, the backwards countries have always been terrifed of the present. Te have to become contemporary simply because only people that seem to have enough gump- of this instantaneous quality of the mosaic. To tion, or nerve, to look at what is happening be brought into the show, they are all partici- right under their nose are artists. Tey are spe- pants. It’s no longer a question of philanthropy cialists in sensory life. Tey just deliberately or just do-gooderism. Tey just realize these look at the present, you know, as if they dared people are part of the show and they have to it to ruin, or do something to them. Tey are get into the act, until we put on their makeup like Perseus and the Gorgon. Te artist looks or something they can’t go before the camera, into the mirror of art and says, the heck with so, the whole backward territories of the world the Gorgon’s image, I’m not terrifed. But most are being upgraded at very high speed. In fact, people simply expect, when they look at the one of our most mistaken eforts in upgrading present, to be turned to stone, as by the Gor- is warfare, because when you fght a backward gon’s spell, and they are terrifed. T erefore country you in a sense educate it to hurry its they prefer the rear-view mirror. Nearly every- education up into the present. Tat’s the way body who looks ahead, as it were, is in efect Julius Caesar did it. looking at the rear-view mirror, and if people try to prophesize about today’s show, they will CBC: But didn’t we just see an example in the be steadfastly looking in the rear-view mirror. Middle East where one nation had an army which was a complete master of this mecha- CBC: But we are, nevertheless, as you have said, nized society, fghting another which was men- those of us who participate in this new society, tally caught in a camel age. this electric society, it is a new sense of awareness and involvement, but, my question is this: MML: You can see that the generation gap the majority of the world’s people in our sat- there, or the technological gap, created frustra- ellites are going around the world today, are tion (inaudible) even though the war didn’t. completely out of it. Te cameras don’t reach them, they don’t hear the message— CBC: You are confdent that these nations, the backwards nations who are not yet in the elec- MML: Tey aren’t watching the show at all. tric age, they are in the transition to radio age, as you have already pointed out, but— CBC: And they are not in the rear-view mirror. Tey are in the past, centuries, and isn’t that MML: But you see, in our own homes, the gen- gap widening as our rocket-like society goes eration gap between child and parent is fan- forward? tastically great, but we always accepted that as a normal, natural growth gap. Now, today,

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because of an enormous speed up of infor- CBC: But the soviet Communist society is a mation, the child is becoming an adult, the printing press-minded organization— adult has to acquire all the empathy and intuition of childhood in order to live with his own MML: Ah, ah! Right, the 1917 October Revolu- children. Te gap between adult and child is tion was entirely the result of the print technol- just disappearing overnight. Tat is as big as ogy of that era. Yes. any revolution as any backwards country has to face when it’s being updated into the 20th CBC: But do you fnd in those two countries century. Te biggest revolutions in the world today, any indications of, perhaps, the prob- are taking place under our own roofs, at our lems they inherited from the printing press? dinner tables. Tis all-at-onceness just wipes out the old distances and times between age MML: Oh yeah, because the United States is al- groups, ethnic groups, civilized groups, and ways looking for blueprints and always looking so on. Tis kind of speed up enables you, for for solutions in forms of classifed data. Tis, of example, at Expo, to see all the cultures of the course, is utterly alien to Russian culture with world, in x-ray form, in depth. What you en- its oral traditions of involvement, and so there counter at Expo is not history, but the imme- are great gaps, culture gaps, between the US diate experience of these countries. You walk and Russia. Te Russians haven’t had time to into a pavilion and you experience them not become completely permeated with print cul- as they were, or they will be, but as they are, as ture by any means. an immediate experience, as immediate as the smell of a cigarette. CBC: Did you by any chance see Mr Barouni, the delegate from Saudi Arabia speaking the CBC: I’d like to, on this day, when Mr. Kosygin complete Arab oral— and President Johnson, are meeting at West- borough, to look back at a comment you made MML: No, and a man who resented the com- back a number of years ago, around eleven ing of the European civilized blueprint into years ago, I think. You pointed out the difer- the Arab world imposing on them. What we ences mentally between a print society and the considered, that is the way we have always newer oral, the electric society. You made the thought of civilization, giving the benefts of interesting observation that the United States civilization to Africa has always come down and the Soviet Union are the two great coun- to print-oriented people as the laying down of tries which came to greatness in the era of the new blueprints, new times for work and educa- printing press. Do you— tion, programming, but today it has to be done by dialogue, by a completely new kind of in- MML: Well, no I’m not sure that I wish to say volvement and participation in their problems. just that. Te United States is entirely a product And the old blueprint method is disappearing of the printing press. Russia had many centu- without questions. Television is an x-ray not a ries of history before print, and still has huge blueprint, so it goes right inside problems, in- commitments— side cultures, in depth. Tere are so many numerous stories that express the grievances and

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the tensions that arise from these situations. I Parks, Lisa. “Our World, Satellite Televisuality and wish we had time to rehearse them. the Fantasy of Global Presence.” Planet TV: A Global Television Reader, edited by Lisa Parks and Shanti Kumar, NTU Press, 2003, pp. 74-93. CBC: I’m afraid that our time is up. I’ve got to get down to the studio. Many thanks, Professor McLuhan. Riegl, Alios. Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts. Zone Books, 2006, pp. 55-56.

Works Cited Weiner, Norbert Wiener. Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Benjamin Walter. “Teses on the Philosophy of His- MIT Press, 1948, pp. 30-44. tory.” Illuminations: Essays and Refections, Hough- ton Mifin Harcourt, 1968, pp. 253-264. Images Notes

Brassier, Ray. “Prometheanism and its Critics” Featured Image: From lef, Paul McCartney, George #Acelerate Reader, edited by Robin Mackay and Ar- Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon of the men Avanessian, Urbanomic/Merve Varlog, 2014, Beatles pose for photographers during a break in pp. 467-487. rehearsal for a performance of their song, “All You Need Is Love,” on June 25, 1967 . (AP Photo) Used with permission. Husserl, Edmund. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917). Kluwer Notes Academic Publishers, 1991. 1 Te temporal logic of Walter Benjamin’s angel of —. Te Phenomenology of Internal Time-Conscious- history is similar to the phenomenological experi- ness. Indiana UP, 1966. ence of human subjects. In both cases a contingent and unexpected encounter with the future is made Malik Suhail. “Te Ontology of Finance: Price, Pow- sense in the present vis-a-vis the subject’s recon- er, and the Arkhéderivative.” Collapse VIII, edited by struction of the past in which the Benjaminian “ru- Robin Mackay, London: Urbanomic/Sequence, 2014, ins” stands as a metaphor for the disintegrated na- pp. 629-812. ture of past information. See both Benjamin and Husserl. Karl Mannheim, “On the Interpretation of Welt- anschauung,” Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, 2 Transcribed with help by Manuel Correa and Ol- (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951), 33-83. ivia Leiter, certifcate students at the Tew Centre for Research and Practice. McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore. Te Medium Is the Massage, Penguin Books, 1967.

Negarestani, Reza. Intelligence and Spirit, Urbanom- ic/Sequence, Upcoming.

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ASSEMBLING THE (NON)HUMAN: THE ANIMAL AS MEDIUM

JODY BERLAND

Abstract | Tis article revisits McLuhan’s well-known phrase le médium est un animal? La compréhension de McLuhan “the message is the medium,” and it asks: What if the medium de sa propre phrase était profondément anthropocentrique, is an animal? McLuhan’s understanding of his own phrase comme les critiques l’ont noté. Cependant, son héritage dans was profoundly anthropocentric, as critics have noted. But le domaine de la théorie de la médiation, combiné avec les his legacy in mediation theory combined with the insights of connaissances des études interdisciplinaires sur les animaux, interdisciplinary animal studies make it possible to expand permet d’élargir les possibilités de la phrase. L’histoire des mé- the possibilities of the phrase. Media history also challeng- dias remet également en cause le concept anthropocentrique es the anthropocentric concept of the medium or the medi- du médium ou du processus de médiation. Bien que l’utilisa- ation process. While the use of animal as medium predates tion de l’animal comme médium soit antérieure aux médi- the electric media with which McLuhan was concerned, ear- as électriques dont parlait McLuhan, les premiers dispositifs ly computer devices and later mobile technologies have pur- informatiques et les technologies mobiles subséquentes ont sued users’ engagement through didactically visible identif- poursuivi l’engagement des utilisateurs grâce à une identi- cation with/as animal spirits. Animals have become “natu- fcation didactiquement visible avec/comme des esprits des ralized” along with the indispensability of these devices as animaux. Les animaux sont devenus « naturalisés », par- essential mediators of connectivity. In contemporary media allèlement au caractère indispensable de ces dispositifs com- arts, we see animals mediate and metaphorically stand for me médiateurs essentiels de la connectivité. Dans les arts the vitality of mediated connectivity. Recognizing animal fg- médiatiques contemporains, nous voyons les animaux faire ures as mediators of mediation shifs the balance, the afect, de la médiation et métaphoriquement représenter la vitalité and the price of what McLuhan called our “shared media de la connectivité médiée. Reconnaître les fgures animales situation.” Tey are both luring enchantments into digital comme médiateurs de la médiation modife l’équilibre, l’ef- connectivity and anxious premediations of rising challenges fet, et le prix de ce que McLuhan appelle notre « situation to anthropocentric humanism and its destructive blind spots médiatique partagée ». Ils entraînent à la fois un ensorcel- which continue to shape the world. lement vers la connectivité numérique et des préméditations anxieuses des défs croissants de l’humanisme anthropocen- Résumé | Cet article revisite la phrase bien connue de Mc- trique et de ses angles morts destructeurs qui continuent à Luhan « le message est le médium », et il demande : et si façonner le monde.

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Assembling the (Non)Human: medium is the message.” McLuhan does not The Animal as Medium ask us to focus solely on electronic media as a technical assemblage that connects us or In the electric age, when our cen- mutates our nervous systems or modifes our tral nervous system is technologically machinic natures; he asks us to investigate how extended to involve us in the whole it shapes our “participation in a common sit- of mankind and to incorporate the uation.” Echoing what he learned from Har- whole of mankind in us, we necessar- old Innis, he writes: “Every medium is in some ily participate, in depth, in the conse- sense a universal, pressing toward maximal re- quences of our every action. It is no alization. But its expressive pressures disturb longer possible to adopt the aloof existing balances and patterns in other media and disassociated role of the literate of culture” (Gordon 86-87). For Innis, such ex- Westerner. (Understanding Media 20) pressive pressures involve diferent technically mediated confgurations of space and time, A cyborg world might be about lived centres and margins, and their shaping of mo- social and bodily realities in which peo- nopolies of knowledge. For McLuhan, these ple are not afraid of their joint kinship confgurations are further delineated through with animals and machines, not afraid technically mediated structures of embodi- of permanently partial identities and ment and perception that we should exam- contradictory standpoints. The political ine from both perspectives at once: looking at struggle is to see from both perspec- the technology and looking at the technology tives at once because each reveals looking at us. both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage A medium does not just transmit something point. (“Cyborg Manifesto” 153-4) from one party to another, or from one to many; it is part of forming a relationship or set The Medium is the Message of relationships, while sensually as well as socially shaping the subjects who participate in n a 1953 article published in the Toronto it. New media forms engender new relational journal Explorations, McLuhan introduced processes. Today, when the technical and aes- an early version of the idea that made him thetic forms of the media multiply so fast that Ifamous: “the medium is the message.” Critiqu- we constantly have to compare and adjust, we ing his contemporaries’ tendency to interpret may be more aware of this aspect of commu- media in terms of its content, he wrote: “Tis nication—consider how the press panics about assumption blinds people to the aspect of com- millennials. Perhaps commentators have for- munication as participation in a common sit- gotten what the (no) future economy looks like uation. It leads to ignoring the form of com- now to that generation. In any case, there are munication as the basic art situation which is still aspects of our shared social situation of more important than the basic idea or infor- which we remain largely unaware. mation ‘transmitted’” (Gordon 56, emphasis added). Tis introductory remark gives us For McLuhan, “man” is the measure of a slightly diferent portal to the phrase, “the meaning. Yet there is nothing in McLuhan’s

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argument that excludes the nonhuman ani- desperate times, making comradery, cats, com- mal from the defnition of a medium. Consider edy, and politics creatively interchangeable for this premise at the simplest level: if you have a me and thousands of other members. Who or dog, your relationship with neighbours and the what is the subject here? You took the picture, neighbourhood is diferent than if you do not the cat is the object, the screen is the subject— have a dog. You share a particular “common or is it the other way around? Indeed, “When situation” with other people and animals and I am playing with my cat, how do I know the with the spaces around you when your pet me- cat is not playing with me?” (Derrida 7). Te diates your relationships with them. When you cats mediate your relationship with the screen meet through dogs, the dog is an essential me- as much as the screen is mediating your rela- dium of communication, as evidenced by the tionship with the cats; both are mediating your fact that you are more likely to know the name connection to a community of amenable cat of the dog than that of the person on the other and human comrades who are talking or not side of the leash. As you prowl the neighbour- talking about the world. Tere is more than hood at various times of day and night, you are one history haunting this activity, whether as perhaps acting as the servo-mechanism of the tragedy or farce. Historically, cats were seen as four-legged creature leading you on—just as “familiars” possessing the souls of women, and McLuhan says, in one of his more histrionic like the so-called witches they were tortured phrases, that humans act as the servo-mech- or killed by Christians for their putative car- anisms of the machine world. As you stop to rying or mediating Satan. Tis mediation has greet other dogs and people, you become a lit- taken a diferent form in the modern age. Pic- tle bit more dog-like in your awareness of your tures of animals have launched new electronic environment, although becoming-animal in devices since moving pictures were frst made this milieu does not involve the freeing of un- in the 1890s. Te frst moving picture, made in conscious energies and instincts with which 1889, featured a running horse; in 1984, both Deleuzians generally equate the phrase. Rather, Étienne-Jules Marey and Tomas Edison made we are, following Haraway (“Companion Spe- short flms of cats in motion.1 Since then, the cies Manifesto”) simply recognizing the reci- ability of animals to evoke and provoke the hu- procity of bodies through which humans and man compulsion to connect has been a crucial animals become companion species. product of the growth of social media. We may have become a new form of possessed subject In a diferent but not unrelated manner, you reproducing altered human and nonhuman share a common situation with people to animal population management strategies at a whom you are connected online who post cat micro-level. pictures that you like to view and share. Much has been written about this activity, and the way Rather than attend to the fnely textured and that cats lure so many people in to the space ofen bewildering phenomenologies of these behind the screen (“Cat and Mouse”). For ex- experiences here, I want to explore more close- ample, the Facebook page “Cats Against Cap- ly what it means to claim that the medium is italism” ofers a space to share and comment the message and can even be an animal. What on cat pictures, metaphors, lives, and deaths as does introducing animals mean for mediation a gateway to friendly solidarity and banter in theory? What does McLuhan’s own medium

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theory teach us about human-animal rela- Media theorist Friedrich Kittler was strong- tions? What light might this discussion shed ly infuenced by McLuhan’s ideas, but drew a on our conventional understandings of hu- sharp dividing line between them on the issue man-animal relations and diferences? of what he perceived as McLuhan’s anthropo- centrism. For McLuhan, media are the “exten- The Animal is a Medium sions of man” (Understanding Media). As Geof- frey Winthrop-Young suggests, “…this pros- McLuhan’s “New Media as Political Forms” ap- thetic logic has its point of origin in the hu- peared shortly afer another article he pub- man body and nervous system. From Kittler’s lished earlier that year on media and art; both point of view, McLuhan still subscribes to the demonstrate the emergence of his medium the- anthropocentric delusion that man is the mea- ory. Like Walter Benjamin, McLuhan sought a sure of all media, even when the latter reshape deeper connection between media as art form the former” (van den Oevre and Winthrop and media as a political process, a connection Young 235). Yet Kittler’s critique of anthropo- that could only be explained by reference to centrism does not extend to a consideration how our interactions with media technologies of nonhuman species. Like McLuhan, he over- change our perceptions of space and time, our looks the ways that nonhuman bodies experi- sensory experiences, and our relations with one ence the world, mediate our relationship with another. McLuhan understood the “expressive technology, and change our understanding of pressures” of a medium in terms of its materi- life. Kittler does not propose that if a train or ality, how that materiality shapes or reshapes light bulb can be a medium, so can a horse or a users’ sensory and haptic dimensions, and how girafe. Even Claude Shannon, author of the soit interacts with other media within a chang- called “mother of all models” of information ing media ecology. As he elaborates in Under- theory (Wikipedia contributors, “Information standing Media, each medium absorbs and ex- Teory”) would have acknowledged horses as tends our body and our attention in specifc instruments of communication. Information ways. One could apply this principle equally to theory studies the quantifcation, storage and clothes, cameras, cars, or cats. We live among communication of information. Horses trans- them in a state of complex mutual mediation, ported people and mail for centuries before the not just as individuals but also as interactive faster, automated “horsepower” machines were participants in a “common situation” of media invented to replace them. Just as problems with involvement. McLuhan used the light bulb to data compression could introduce “noise” into illustrate this point: it has no content of its own, the transmission of information, a problem but it extends our shared environment into the with weather and roads could challenge the ef- night and alters our perceptions and structures fciency of the pony express or the legibility of of participation. Tis extension of light into the mail. Te transmission of information can night creates new afordances and new chal- arguably include and even depend upon a gi- lenges. Mediated in new ways, the human body rafe, or a fox, or a cat, whose relations with hu- no longer coincides with itself. With this un- mans have been thoroughly mediated and mul- derstanding of the mediated human comprised tiplied by communication technologies that of its relationships, McLuhan took a frst step are in turn thoroughly mediated and changed towards posthumanism. by all the cats (“Animal and/as Medium;” “Cat

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and Mouse”) Are YouTube cats re-enacting or one place to another. Just as surely, one must even fetishizing some pre-technological social- take the history of the beaver into account in ity within the context of changed nature-tech- examining the maps of Canada or the fash- nology confgurations? ions and perfumes of the 19th century. Many of our mediating materials—from writing im- We require a larger frame for this interpretive plements to transport vehicles, clothes, scents, process. Animals were among the frst medi- favours, and even flm, as Nicole Shukin has ators of social relations between humans. In shown (2009)—have been rendered from an- some pre-capitalist societies, the bodies of cows imal bodies. or goats were exchanged between families, often for wives, while in others, kinship relations Te idea of media afordances and the way were structured by the totemic enactment of they alter our shared environment takes on a animal spirits. As food, property, companions, particular intensity when faced with our dam- or tributes, animals comprise a signifcant part aged culture-nature habitus. We do not think of the materiality and meaning that constitutes of animals as media because we think of me- likeness and diference in all societies. Animals dia as technology and animals as nature within appear in all foundational religious texts and an epistemology that still insists on separating played a notable role in the transformation of them. So much of what we habitually consid- polytheism to monotheism. Historically, rep- er to be “natural” is shaped, though, by inter- resentatives of specifc species, including cats, actions with human and technological activ- cows, bears, foxes, and goats, have embodied ities and interventions. It is easy enough to and performed symbolic roles within strongly point out the human agency that contributed hierarchical social systems. Such symbols/bod- to forming an animal such as a dog, or more ies have been mobilized to perform and legiti- broadly to see how plants, animals, foods, and mate practices of human hierarchy, connection, households are shaped by human activities. In- and violence. deed, nature is always-already nature-culture; the world of nature is equally co-constituted Animals have not just served as mediations by our culture and technology. Tese concepts between people; as the history of the horse re- are so porous that our understanding of na- minds us, they are also mediations between ture-culture has been thoroughly complicated, people and machines. A horse and cart can no especially in the last several decades. more be separated than a tribute girafe from the ship that carried it to an emperor (“Attend- Tis fraying of the boundaries of language cor- ing the Girafe”). Understanding animals as responds to a process in which “nature and mediators in the interplay between these mutu- technology leak, spill over, blend into each ally reconfguring machines and humans is dif- other. A number of neologisms—NatureCul- ferent from viewing animals as content trans- ture (Donna Haraway), MediaNature (my mitted via a media technology. Surely a horse own), Medianatures (Jussi Parikka), entangled or girafe extends our capacity for relationality ontology (Karen Barad)—have been proposed or changes our “common situation” diferently to highlight the changing relationship between than a lamp does, even when it is housed in a these two domains, whose repercussions and menagerie or a zoo rather than travelling from implications have also long begun to inform

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debates over the new knowledge formations” machine, the animal seems to him to enjoy a (Angerer 18). Humans continuously shape na- kind of innocence. Te animal has been emp- ture-cultures and the parameters of nonhuman tied of experience and secrets, and this new in- life. Te reverse is also the case; none of us can vented ‘innocence’ begins to provide in man a be human without our extensions. When I kind of nostalgia” (12). In Electric Animal—To- think about media as an extension of myself ward a Rhetoric of Wildlife, Akira Lippitt reit- in personal terms, I also think about what is erates Berger’s claim that animal imagery cir- at the end of my hands: a pen, a musical or culates in electronic media as compensation alphabetical keyboard, my cat’s fur, my dog’s for the loss of direct encounters with animals. nose. Without them, my hands are incomplete; While there is clearly some truth to this idea, it I am not-me. Tat is to say, I am not modern. does not explain the function of such compen- When forms of mediation change, whether sation in the constancy of digital animal mo- from cow to coin, horse to car, bird-song to re- tifs as commercial symbols of technical inno- cording, live music to gramophone, painting to vation. Tese images restore some of the fanta- photograph, typewriter to computer, pet cat to sies of childhood, making new media appear to Grumpy cat, we change too. be friendly and anthropomorphically familiar to young users who are more likely to adopt It is not just the history of animal sacrifce, dis- new media tools. placement, or dismemberment that invites us to look at the animal as a medium. In the mid- Graham Meikle and Sherman Young argue that 2000s, I was researching the television weather LOL cats are videos not only for “creative audi- forecast as a post-representational assemblage ences” to look at but also to make and share of colonial-spatial-optical-digital-environ- for themselves. Making their own LOL cats mental materials. Given the interdependency “bridges the gap between doing nothing and of these lucrative institutions and the fawed doing something.” (115). To intercede between accuracy of the forecast, I concluded that the downloading and uploading some video is to television forecast was best seen as a cultural engage in “participatory culture” (ibid) Indeed, technology of risk in everyday life (“Animal McLuhan argued in Understanding Media that and/as Medium”). Ten the deluge of cat im- anyone can be an artist, or rather, that art is ages began to food my inbox. By 2004, the vi- whatever you can get away with—a favourite sual feld of the network was morphing from sentiment of the blogosphere. Yet once again, a mélange of landscapes, logos, digital graph- this does not account fully for why animal im- ics, maps, celebrities, babies, and angels to a ca- agery in particular engenders such widespread cophony of cats (“Cat and Mouse” 8). Why are online participation. Film critic Jonathan Burt, there so many cats on the Internet? For some rejecting Berger’s focus on the viewing of ani- critics, virtual animals compensate for the loss mals as failed compensation, suggests that the of our direct contact with a variety of species in image of the animal evokes and questions the the animal world. In “Why Look at Animals?” relationship between visuality and life that lies Berger writes: “What man has to do in order at the heart of flm itself. Te virtual-cat phe- to transcend the animal, to transcend the me- nomenon brings to the forefront a vital but chanical within himself…is ofen anguish. And perhaps previously less visible triangulation of so, by comparison and despite the model of the

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humans, technology, and the so-called natural its constitution. Unlike many sociotechnical world that now saturates our planet. objects, though, its materiality is elusive.

To dig into the logics of a technocultural ob- As Werner Herzog observes in his documen- ject or phenomenon is to embark on an exca- tary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, cave drawings vation of the present. It involves outlining the over 30,000 years old already look cinematic various material and technological trajectories in how they capture the fuid motion of animal that have led to this present; it also involves ac- bodies. Te drawing of an animal in motion knowledging what Raymond Williams called was the frst metaphor for life and its mysteries. the “structure of feeling” through which peo- Te association of animality, movement, and ple embrace these objects and processes. We life in these apparently primitive lines evokes need to think through these processes with both human control over life and the vitality of Williams and McLuhan together, rather than life that is always on the brink of eluding such continue to accept the critical opposition be- control. It is possible that this tension is trans- tween them that once dominated cultural mitted in one way when the image is still and studies. Technology and afect come together another when the image is moving. Moderni- in complicated particularities through which ty made images of animals in motion central their pasts and presents are continuously chan- to experiments and shifs in imaging technol- neled by various power dynamics, and thus ogies, evident in Eadweard Muybridge’s stud- extended and articulated through the trends ies on motion in the 1870s and his zoopraxis- and objects that arise. It is difcult to formu- cope, the frst movie projector. In short, the re- late clearly what happens when McLuhan’s me- lationship between animality, life, motion, and dium theory is bounced against concepts like mimesis extends much further back in human “the animal.” Our theoretical language, like the history than the age of electronic reproduction, imagery I am describing, gives vitality and but it is clear that electronic technology afects emergence to media as though they are or were these processes, how they interact, and how animals already. As technology becomes more artists respond. mobile, more responsive, more apparently autonomous, we humans, as Haraway famously We must ask not so much what these animals put it, become increasingly inert. mean, but what they are doing in terms of the environments or assemblages in which they When you connect to people online with peo- appear. “Our conventional response to all me- ple who post cat pictures that you like to view dia,” McLuhan writes, “namely that it is how and share, you are sharing and helping to con- they are used that counts, is the numb stance stitute a “common situation” as McLuhan put it. of the technological idiot. For the ‘content’ of a Much has been written about this activity, and medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried the way that cats lure so many people in to the by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the space behind the screen (cf. Berland, “Cat and mind” (Understanding Media 18). Mouse”). Tis situation is formed from technological and afective ingredients which, like McLuhan uses this metaphor to contest his any sociotechnical object, meets in the act of contemporaries’ failure to understand electronic media in terms of their specifc forms

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and materials, their modes of sensory medi- by Windsor McKay of Nemo fame. Te graph- ation, their alteration of space and time, and ics identifying early sofware products includ- thus the relations and perceptions of viewers. ed penguins, monkeys, birds, and snakes. Te Focused on the content of a medium, we might frst amateur video posted to YouTube was shot not understand what a technology does to or at the zoo; the second and third were cat vid- with us; without the robber’s meat, the watch- eos produced by sofware engineer/graphic de- dog might notice what the cats are up to. In any signer Steven Chen, titled Stinky the Cat, I & 2. case the cats have gone elsewhere. YouTube was launched with zoos and cats; the iPhone 5 was launched with a GIF of a splash- Like our screens, our language is full of animal ing elephant; the anti-spyware encryption tech- metaphors. McLuhan chose the watchdog met- nology recently used to open an iPhone 6 was aphor to represent how the mind works when frst used against an animal-rights campaign in encountering and yet not perceiving the me- 2002. Telecommunication hardware and sof- dia environment despite the fact that the media ware, computers, and new mobile technologies environment he is describing is an extension have all put forth new products with stylized of the human brain. For John Durham Peters, images of animals. In short, animal images however, the animal is not a metaphor: “Me- are central whenever the new “common sit- dia theory concerns the diferent sense ratios uations” of electronic spaces and devices ap- with which mind interacts with world and the pear (Berland 2014). In the governance of hu- various worlds that come into being” (60). Te man populations, the more distributed we be- senses that concern him are the crustaceans’, come, consciously or otherwise, the more the and the environment that concerns him is the lines between human, machine, and animal ocean. Taking up the insight that “the medium become porous and afectively charged. Evi- is the message” without abandoning the dogs, dently the presence of virtual animals in new cats, squids, and horses (or the dead animal the media shapes (or at least is perceived to shape) robber carries to distract the dog) means ac- human users’ feelings about these interactions. knowledging, as Peters has, the degree to which Commenting on McLuhan’s work on the oc- animals challenge and expand our understand- casion of its half-centenary, Richard Grusin ings of mediation whether they occupy aque- writes: “In the frst decades of the 21st centu- ous, digital, or philosophical environments. ry, we fnd ourselves in the midst of a shif in our dominant cultural logic of mediation away Animals expand not only our understandings from a predominantly visual, late 20th-century of mediation but also our spaces and platforms focus on remediation toward a more embod- of mediation. For more than a century, animals ied afectivity of premediation generated by the have provided the frst images in the cumula- mobile, socially networked media everyday of tive unveiling of the platforms, spaces, and the 21st century” (56) Te greatest contribution practices of electronic media. Te animal me- of Understanding Media, Grusin suggests, is “to diates the screen while we focus on the screen turn our attention away from a primarily visual animating the animal. Moving pictures were analysis of media and toward an understand- launched with horses and cats. American an- ing of how media operate as objects within the imation began in 1913 with the image of Ger- world, impacting both the human sensorium tie the Dinosaur strolling out of a cave, drawn and the nonhuman environment alike” (56).

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Animals enact and symbolize this afective turn. just as they do in the body of the animal. De- As Grusin and others suggest, afect is perhaps scribing this dynamic as a form of risk man- a subtler (if no less debated) concept for talking agement playing out in the space and time of about how people are touched by media en- human-technology interactions is signifcant- counters than McLuhan’s speculative cyber- ly diferent than talking about the representa- netic physiology. Locating the animal-medium tion of animals. It is also diferent from talking connection in the context of 21st-century tech- about how people represent the risks animals nology also highlights its tangible relationship themselves face in their interactions with hu- with risk culture. If cats, dogs, elephants, and mans and human technologies, although these other animals are premediating our so-called may well be connected. Tere is no doubt that new technologies, they are do just issue an in- the representation of animals is connected to vitation into the portal of mobile digital com- the wellbeing of animals, but understanding puting but also provide a means to actualize how they are related or exploring this relation- and reconcile contradictory responses to the ship artistically calls for a fuller and less an- risky worlds we have constructed. With nature thropocentric theory of mediation. and technology so closely intertwined, the embodied afect of being-with virtual animals can If we consider risk as something that arises and be explored with some of the same concepts is managed through processes of mediation— that have been used to analyze the human sen- rather than thinking about risk in terms of the sorium mutating in interaction with electronic “content,” such as pictures of endangered ani- and digital technologies. mals or poisoned places—what are the implications for re-examining the human-technology Mediating Risk mediation so central to McLuhan’s concerns? Risk takes many forms, fnancial, and social as For McLuhan, “Te body, in sum, is a capaci- well as biological. Te animal fgures circulated ty for relationality that literally requires medi- by Apple, Fido, Bell, and Telus invite potential ation and that, in a sense, cannot be concep- mobile phone buyers to join a tribe in which tualized without it” (Mitchell and Hansen xiii small devices are semiotically and afectively ). Te human body’s reliance on technology interchangeable with small animals. Everyone is precisely what makes humans human. Tis loads their devices with animal images, while dance of mediated becoming does not only in- animals themselves are increasingly linked to volve technology; understanding animals as or followed by electronic devices. Both cell mediators between humans and our technol- phones and cats cultivate attention that ex- ogies is diferent than viewing them as content tends from our hands and arms; they are ex- in the media milieu. Tis distinction allows us tensions of us, they extend us into something, to talk about the representation of animals as some “common situation” that is not-us. Such a form of risk management. Te animals are connection both enhances and depletes our doing something—mediating—while meta- powers. Tese digital-animal hybrids emerge phorically standing for the vitality of this ac- within a culture in which the use of technology tivity. Tis double duty conveys the impression requires ever more developed techniques and that the symbolic, the material, and the vital constant innovations, or what Edward Tenner can coincide in the world beyond the screen calls “the performative use of technology, the

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skills and know-how that go into the efective to political Twitter posts, from high theory to operation of devices” (4). Given the commer- children’s television. However, to learn about cial and governmental contexts of control soci- the realities of wildlife or animals in confne- ety in which such innovation occurs, it is cru- ment or factory farms requires documentaries cial that users want to adapt to these new tech- and webcams. Tis proliferation confrms our niques, that they feel welcome in the changed fascination with animate life and the pleasure environment in which these technologies ap- and anxiety of witnessing the merging of bod- pear, and that they respond to them as simul- ies, technologies, and nonhuman species. It is taneously linked in to them and free from the not surprising that the contemporary virtu- implication or efects of being so confned. An- al menagerie includes not only pets but also imals are part of a regime that stimulates our monsters, which explicitly challenge the spe- interaction with digital processing, collects cies barrier. data about that interaction, formulates new communicative and surveillance strategies In the interactive hybridity of digital space, the based on that data, and shapes our perceptual distinction between sculpture, genetics, an- and cultural capacities in ways that feel natural. imals, and technologies, as well as those be- Consider how children are inundated with im- tween galleries and laboratories, inner and ages of happy animals that have nothing to do outer space, or information and intelligence, with habitat or struggle from the minute they has begun to unravel under the didactic log- can see. If we are interested in how media (in ic of emergence. Te experimental relationship the case of McLuhan) or animals (in the case of between life-like behaviour and system activi- animal studies scholars) invite us to look back ty is ofen structured as metaphorical, as when at ourselves diferently, what do these images computer-controlled objects are programmed tell us, truthful or otherwise, about their own to look or move like life forms such as animals condition? or fsh. Te practice of modelling sofware design on evolutionary and biological structures Te evocation of the animal-digital connection goes back as far as the 1950s, so the relationship runs across the surfaces of culture: digital an- is actually not just metaphorical. Multimedia imals, logos, art projects, GIFs, stop-motion artist Luis Bec created the term “zoosystemic” photography, taxidermy, cartoons. It is no lon- to describe his art practice of “dynamic mor- ger strange to see an animal talking; the histo- phogenesis and digital bio-modeling” (qtd. in ry of cartoons is based upon this premise, al- Wilson 346). “Cyborgian” refers to when the though we no longer really think of them as quasi-object is comprised of both live and in- animals, if indeed viewers of allegorical or an- ert matter; “A-life” is confgured to be both thropomorphic animals ever did. Digital pic- autonomous and evolutionary. In such exper- tures of people’s pets travel daily through social iments, the art work comes to stand for evo- media while digital pets delight their “owners” lution, which Tomas Ray conceives as an au- with presents and remind them to stay con- tonomous “creative process, which acting inde- nected to their mobile phones in case they miss pendently, has produced living forms of great one. Figures comprised of bits of animals, ma- beauty and complexity” (qtd. in Wilson 353). chines, and humans can be found everywhere Te search for self-organizing systems is an from cell phones to military labs to art galleries important part of this same history, and raises

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some of the same questions. Life forms do not and exploitation of the nonhuman and how it only evolve autonomously; the ideal of autono- mediates our media practices and knowledg- mous self-production has a particular salience es. With their contradictory evocations of in- in evolutionary biology, with its investigation nocence, Darwinian struggle, childhood, and of how a species sustains itself, but the fascina- the liberation of repressed impulses, these me- tion with this idea also speaks to the power of a diating animal fgures can be seen as a strategic neoliberal imaginary. If the agents in a particu- means to shif the balance, the afect, and the lar biological process or species history include price of what McLuhan called our shared me- other species, humans, and technologies, that dia situation. Tey are also premediations of is to say if they inhabit an environment, then the rising challenge from nonhumans and oth- these life forms are inescapably and increas- er others to anthropocentric humanism and its ingly interdependent with dynamics of govern- destructive blind spots as it continues to shape mentality and power. Even if this were not the the world. case, even if McLuhan or Foucault or Haraway or Marx have nothing to teach us, we know that life forms and species are fundamentally Notes interdependent and that they co-evolve with others within their environments, within an Tis article is a thinking through of my book Vir- ecological process, whether that ecology con- tual Menageries, forthcoming, MIT Press/Leonardo tains media technology or not. Books. It is a spinof from my piece, “Attending the Girafe,” Humanimalia: Journal of Human-Animal Interface Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, Fall 2017, http://www. McLuhan invites us to look at ourselves as depauw.edu/humanimalia/. Tanks to Humanima- changed beings from the perspective of the lia editor Istvan Csicsery-Ronay for his kind permis- media through which we construct and view sion to borrow and extend these ideas here. the world; critical animal studies scholars invite us to look at ourselves from the imagined 1 A short history of the frst motion picture narrat- perspectives of nonhuman animals attempted by Kerry Decker includes a clip of moving hors- ing to survive as we watch, cuddle, or eat them. es: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDmAxdL- Tinking of the animal as a mediator and not vdQ4. Both Étienne-Jules Marey and Tomas Edi- just the content of a medium allows us to begin son entered the feld with flms of cats. Marey’s flm to answer questions about what they see, look- Falling Cat (1894) can be viewed at https://www.you- ing back, and what they are telling us. If a me- tube.com/watch?v=XqL9siGDeBA. Edison’s flm, dium creates a “common situation” in human “Boxing Cats” (also 1894) can be viewed at https:// culture, as McLuhan put it, that is, if a medium www.youtube.com/watch?v=k52pLvVmmkU. does not “mean” things but “does” things, then a post-anthropocentric interpretation of me- Works Cited diation must acknowledge that human-technology relationships rely on the presence of Aloi, Giovanni. Art and Animals. I.B. Tauris, 2011. animals in their various material and symbolic reiterations as much as they do upon their Angerer, Marie-Louise. Ecology of Afect: Intensive human-created technological extensions. We Milieus and Contingent Encounters. Meson Press, need to look more closely at the suppression 2017.

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Baker, Steve. Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity, Haraway, Donna J. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, and Representation. New ed. University of Illinois Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Press, 2001. Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs and Women: Te Reinvention of Nature. Free Association Books, 1991, pp. 149–81. Berger, John. “Why Look at Animals?” in About Looking. 1980. Reprint. Vintage, 1992. —. Te Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Signifcant Otherness. Prickly Paradigm Press, Berland, Jody. “A Visitor’s Guide to the Virtual 2003. Menagerie.” Antennae: Virtual Animals, edited by Giovanni, Aloi. Antennae: Te Journal of Nature in Herzog, Werner. Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Kin- Visual Culture, no. 30, 2014 . http://www.antennae. osmith, 2011. Film. org.uk/back-issues-2014/4586806446.

—. “Attending the Girafe,” Humanimalia: Journal of “Information Teory.” Wikipedia, Te Free Ency- Human-Animal Interface Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, Fall clopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 1 Sept. 2017. 2017, http://www.depauw.edu/humanimalia/. Web. 6 Nov. 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Information_theory.

—. “Animal and/as Medium: Symbolic Work in Communicative Regimes.” Te Global South, vol. 3, Lippit, Akira Mizuta. Electric Animal—Toward a no. 1, 2009, pp. 42–65. Rhetoric of Wildlife. University of Minnesota Press, 2000. —. “Cat and Mouse: Iconographics of Nature and Desire.” Cultural Studies, vol. 22, no. 3 -4, 2008 , Liu, Alan. Te Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and pp. 431-54. the Culture of Information. 1 edition. University of Chicago Press, 2004. —. “Mapping Space: Imagining Technologies and the Planetary Body.” North of Empire: Essays on the Cul- Manovich, Lev. Te Language of New Media. Te tural Technologies of Space. Duke University Press, MIT Press, 2001. 2009.

McLuhan, Marshall. “New Media as Political Forms.” Burt, Jonathan. Animals in Film. Reaktion Books Explorations, vol. 3, 1954, pp. 120-26. Ltd, 2002. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: Te Ex- Derrida, Jacques. Te Animal Tat Terefore I Am. tensions of Man. With a new introduction by Lewis Fordham University Press, 2008. H. Lapham. 1964. Te MIT Press, 1994.

Gordon, W. Terrence. McLuhan: A Guide for the Per- Meikle, Graham, and Sherman Young. Media Con- plexed. Bloomsbury Academic, 2010. vergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Grusin, Richard. “Mediation Is the Message.” Jour- nal of Visual Culture, vol. 13, no. 1, 2014, pp. 55–57. Midgley, Mary. “Beasts, Brutes and Monsters.” What Is an Animal?, edited by Tim Ingold. Routledge, 1994, pp. 35–46.

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Mitchell, W. J. T., and Mark B. N. Hansen, eds. Crit- Tenner, Edward. Our Own Devices: How Technology ical Terms for Media Studies. University of Chicago Remakes Humanity. Vintage, 2004. Press, 2010. van den Oever, Annie and Geofrey Win- Ngai, Sianne. Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, throp-Young. “Rethinking the Materiality of Tech- Interesting. Harvard University Press, 2012. nical Media: Friedrich Kittler, Enfant Terrible with a Rejuvenating Efect on Parental Discipline- A Dia- logue.” Techné/Technology: Researching Cinema and Peters, John Durham. Te Marvelous Clouds: To- Media Technologies, Teir Development, Use and ward a Philosophy of Elemental Media. University of Impact, edited by Annie van den Oever. Amsterdam Chicago Press, 2015. University Press, 2014, pp. 219-39.

Pick, Anat. Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulner- Williams, Raymond. “Structures of Feeling.” Marx- ability in Literature and Film. Columbia University ism and Literature. Revised ed. Oxford Paperbacks, Press, 2011. 1995.

Shukin, Nicole. Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Wilson, Stephen. Information Arts: Intersections of Biopolitical Times. University of Minnesota Press, Art, Science, and Technology. Te MIT Press, 2003. 2009.

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THE DESIGNSCAPES OF HARLEY PARKER: PRINT AND BUILT ENVIRONMENTS

GARY GENOSKO

Abstract | In this paper I present two views of Harley Parker, Resume | Dans cet essai je présenterai deux perspectives de Marshall McLuhan’s longstanding collaborator. In the frst I Harley Parker, qui pour un longtemps collaboré avec Mar- underline how Parker’s training in the arts as a typograph- shall MacLuhan. Premièrement, j’explique comment Parker ic designer was put to work on the print projects for which a utilisé son training typographique pour le travail dont il est he is best known, namely, on the original series of Explora- plus connu, le journal Explorations. Je dirais que son travail tions. I debate the claim that his work on Explorations 8 was sur l’Explorations est original et son propre en utilisant l’his- not his own, and in this phase of argument I draw upon the toire des autres designers notables à Toronto, spécifquement, legacy of other notable designers working in Toronto, name- les producteurs de Flexitype, Allan R. Fleming de Cooper & ly, Allan R. Fleming of Cooper & Beatty Inc., the developers Beatty Inc. Deuxièmement, je désire à resituer le connexion and promoters of Flexitype. Second, I resituate Parker’s link entre Parker et l’exposition au musée d’art et le performance to installation and performance art in Canada by following au Canada, par suivais la ligne de son fls, Blake Parker, et the line established by his eldest son Blake Parker as resi- la groupe musique expérimentale d’Intersystems. Pendant dent poet of the experimental electronic band Intersystems, 1967-68, cette groupe a performé dans un labyrinthe psy- whose activities in 1967-68 included installations and perfor- chédélique, Te Mind Excursion, durant l’évènement du Per- mances at Perception 67 on the University of Toronto cam- ception 67 à l’Université de Toronto. Le Hall de Fossiles de pus. Te Mind Excursion psychedelic maze had its debut a Harley Parker au Musée Royale d’Ontario a ouvert en jan- few weeks afer Harley Parker’s Hall of Fossils opened at the vier et quelques semaines plus tard Te Mind Excursion a Royal Ontario Museum and marks the group’s origin proper. ouvert. Le groupe d’Intersystems a commencé avec cet évène- Te connection between father and son is explored through ment. J’explore les relations entre père et fls par voie des in- the infuences of elder Parker’s artistic proclivities as a paint- fuences artistiques de Harley, et son collègue MacLuhan, et er, typographer, exhibition designer, critic, his collaborations la combinaison la culture de psychédélique et l’art kinésique. with Marshall McLuhan, and the blend of McLuhan’s ideas, Ces idées ont animé d’Intersystems. psychedelia, and kinetic art that animated Intersystems.

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arley Parker’s core career accomplish- ment was as Display Chief in art and archaeology at the Royal Ontario Mu- Hseum (1957-67). He was co-conspirator and collaborator with Marshall McLuhan on print projects, journals, books, and flms. Parker was visiting professor at Fordham University (1967- 68) during McLuhan’s visiting research chair, and later held the post of William A. Kern In- stitute Professor of Communications at the Rochester Institute of Technology (1973-74). From 1967 to 1975 Parker was a Research As- sociate at McLuhan’s Centre for Culture and Technology at University of Toronto. However, he had worked out a non-stipendiary cross-ap- pointment with the Centre as early as 1963, the year of its establishment.

In this paper I situate the contributions of Parker along two connecting para-academic corridors of the Toronto School, focusing on graphical art and sound experimentation. Te frst refers to his design of McLuhan’s semi- nal communications journal Explorations, in particular, issue number 8 from October 1957 Fig. 1. Harley Parker and Marshall McLuhan, “Because print is a patterkiller,” section 12, in Explorations 8, (Figs. 1 and 2). Although a few of the earli- ed. Marshall McLuhan and Edmund Carpenter (1955; er issues involved Parker in several tentative repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016): n.p. © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. © Estate Of Harley Parker. Used with experiments with the spatiality of the print- permission. ed page and the plasticity of then new typographic methods, it was not until issue 8 that of Spaces”). However, it is productive to isolate the results became substantive and infuenced two events in the aforementioned months in the look and feel of an entire issue. Transiting order to solidify this observation. Te connec- from the page to the built environment, Parker tion I make here is between the Parkerian page would become a trailblazer in museum instal- and performance spaces in which his son, poet lation, as his masterpiece of museum display, Blake Parker, participated through his mem- the Hall of Invertebrate Fossils at the ROM, at- bership in the electronic music group Intersys- tests. Students of Parker’s role in the Toronto tems, with specifc reference to installations of School have observed that “perhaps the most the group’s Mind Excursion structure, which literal application of Parker’s design theories debuted in the same year as the elder Parker’s was made by the Toronto art-and-music col- opening of the Hall of Fossils. His agile move- lective Intersystems, which included Parker’s ment from print to installation and back again son, the poet Blake Parker” (Lauder, “A Clash

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McLuhan’s collaborations. Schnapp and Mi- chaels reconstruct the history of the creation of Te Medium is the Massage and War and Peace in the Global Village as experimental “inventory books” and properly remedy the erasure of the team’s eforts, that is, the roles of co-author and corporate communications consultant Fiore and publishing coordinator Agel, not to mention details about McLuhan’s own participation. No matter how non-bookish these books appeared, in examining the layout and printing decisions as well as underlining the diferences in de-bookifcation undertaken in Massage in contrast to the more lineal and textual War and Peace, Schnapp and Michaels enable us to augment earlier critical statements, such as by Don Teall, who disparaged the Agel-Fiore books as “corporate art” (Electric Age 103). Teall included in this category McLuhan’s collaborations with Parker on the books Trough the Vanish- ing Point and Counterblast. Yet he made an exception when it came to the long-established afnity of Parker for McLuhan’s penchant for James Joyce—War and Peace is afer all shaped by the quotes from Finnegans Wake in its mar- Fig. 2. Harley Parker and Marshall McLuhan, gins—which required a prefatory note and rec- “We are back in acoustic space,” section 14, from Explorations 8, ed. Marshall McLuhan and ognition of hidden collaborator Eric McLu- Edmund Carpenter (1955; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & han’s role in decoding the ten thunders. Tis Stock, 2016): n.p. © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. © Estate Of Harley Parker. Used with permission. made a diference for Teall: “the collaboration with Parker seems more successful than solidifes Harley Parker’s legacy within the To- that with Fiore, possibly because Parker has ronto School. worked closely with McLuhan for years and shares the same interests in Joyce, in various Part 1. The Colophon Caper contemporary movements, in the visual arts, and in cinema” (Medium is the RearView Mir- Te kind of questions that Jefrey T. Schnapp ror 155). It was Teall who originally coined the and Adam Michaels ask in Electric Information term “concrete essay” to describe the collab- Age Book—about McLuhan’s picture books orative books noted above, including the way with Jerome Agel and Quentin Fiore with re- in which War and Peace achieved the “tech- gard to role clarifcation in collaborative pro- nique of marginalia” that McLuhan had har- duction and the technomateriality of publish- bored since publishing Te Gutenberg Galaxy, ing—may similarly be asked of Parker and opening a space for greater consideration of

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the collaborators themselves and the techno- Parker was specifcally acknowledged on the material processes of these books’ production. front page of the original issue, receiving cred- Indeed, such books may be analyzed as qua- it for the cover and the interior, his choice of si-acoustic spaces, remaking reading and repo- colour inks, and modifed typefaces; the eight- sitioning the reader, injecting ambivalence and page yellow section looks forward to the style retaining tactility and inviting multi-sensory of the “unknown” Explorations once it moved participation—these are so-called “non-books” to the University of Toronto alumni magazine in an entirely salutary sense. By contrast, the in 1964. However, it was not his frst involve- term “non-book” was used within journalis- ment with Explorations. He designed the cover tic circles to disparage McLuhan and Parker’s of Explorations 7 earlier the same year, where Trough the Vanishing Point. For instance, in it is briefy noted that the next issue will be “an “McLuhan Nonbook” former UCLA English experiment in photo-type designed by Harley professor Jascha Kessler mocks this “illustrat- Parker.” He also received credit for the Anna ed manual” as “non-enlightening.” Livia pages in Explorations 5 (June 1955) along with colleagues Richard Grooms, Frank Smith, However, my approach is less concerned with and Cooper & Beatty Ltd., which also gets a the negative tropes of de-bookifcation and small mention on one page of the spread itself: is more overtly and positively focused on the “Experimental typography by Cooper & Beatty, acoustifcation of printed pages. T is is espe- Ltd.” Tis design brings into focus typical con- cially pertinent to Explorations 8 and the ca- tent from a descriptive colophon, which early per that accompanied the erasure of its colo- issues of Explorations, with the exception of is- phon. Te augmented reprint of this issue ten sue 8, for the most part integrated into “Notes years later in 1967 by Fluxus press Something on Contributors” and “Acknowledgements” or Else—a rarity given that issues of Explorations spread out on pages throughout the issue. have not been reproduced until 2016, with the exception of an anthology of selected essays What does the 1957 colophon tell us? Te that appeared in 1960—omitted the colophon typography was known as Flexitype, expertise of the original altogether. A colophon appears in which was provided by Cooper & Beatty at the end of a publication and makes note of Ltd. of Toronto. Tis use of Flexitype migrated the design, typesetting, and printing details. from the world of commercial advertising Not incidentally, such details and notes, once and design to the academic publication regained, are not completely transparent, even process at University of Toronto Press, and though they provide insight into the details of it marks an alleged frst—at least in terms production. Te modifcation of Parker’s “orig- of the concentrated quantity of its use, but inal design” is acknowledged in the reprint. also in relation to the high quality of printing provided by another outft, Bomac Ltd. of Parker rightly counted Explorations 8 in his Toronto—not to neglect the type of paper, portfolio of key design accomplishments, and Paragon Ofset Brilliant, and the company his contribution has been noted in detail by that sold it, Provincial Paper Ltd. Together keen observers of the journal such as Robert with the sponsorship note from the front Fulford, who praised his “famboyant and high- matter indicating that the funder was the ly original typography” (“All Ignorance” 314). Toronto Telegram newspaper, there is an

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began his career at Eaton’s (1945-47), but afer Parker (Parker is 14 years older than Fleming). Te fact that the colophon does not mention Fleming has angered Martha Fleming, who writes in “Te Man who Branded a Nation”: “Te company was forefront; its creative director unmentioned.”

In addition to pointing out many of her father’s accomplishments as a designer and researching his legacy and infuence (some of the visible manifestations of the academy in Ontario during the 60s and 70s results from Fleming’s work for Trent University and Massey College, not to mention corporate logos for Toronto Hydro, TSO, Gray Coach, and CN), Martha Fleming also calls into question Parker’s role in Explorations 8. She further claims that:

Fig. 3. Harley Parker and Marshall McLuhan, “Anna Nominally this issue of Explorations was de- Livia,” from Explorations 5, ed. Marshall McLuhan and Edmund Carpenter (1955; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & signed by Harley Parker, who taught colour Stock, 2016): n.p. © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. © at the Ontario College of Art where Fleming Estate Of Harley Parker. Used with permission. taught typography. Parker, as display chief of unusually rich array of information about the Royal Ontario Museum, would have also products and businesses but not persons. helped install the exhibition Fleming assisted in curating (by selecting books for display) Afer Parker graduated from OCA in 1939, he there in 1956 to commemorate the 500th an- undertook an apprenticeship in typograph- niversary of Gutenberg’s 42-line bible: “Te ic design with Cooper & Beatty in Toronto Art of Fine Printing and its Infuence upon before moving into a position as typograph- the Bible in Print.”’(“Te Man who Branded a ic designer with the T. Eaton Company, prob- Nation”) ably working in the catalogue division, afer which he joined the Canadian army, where he Te choice of the term “nominally” suggests served three years (1942-45). Upon his return that the reality is diferent from the ofcial he began teaching classes at Ontario College credit afxed to the journal. Tis involves two of Art, where he continued until 1957, the year related events. Te frst is that Père Fleming’s he joined the ROM. He would have known de- catalogue essay for his curated exhibition, “Te signer Allan R. Fleming through OCA, who Development of Printing as an Art,” ends on became head of typography at the college in a rather sour note as he points out the pauci- 1955, the same year he began working infor- ty of fne Canadian books for display in a Ca- mally with Cooper & Beatty, quickly becom- nadian setting, remarking that “the production ing its Creative Director in 1957. Fleming, too, of printers and publishers here are still at the

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level of England in mid-nineteenth century, a period not of bad taste, but of no taste at all” (“Development of Printing” 19). In the end, he found only one Canadian book to display. Te cultural cringe of an accomplished Toronto- nian does not amount to a critical insight.

Te salient point is that Parker did not arrive at the ROM until September 1957, while the exhibition “Te Art of Fine Printing” took place a year earlier in September-October of 1956. Although these dates do not support Martha Fleming’s claims, the second factor looms large. Te product known as Flexitype was promoted by Cooper & Beatty through a substantive brochure with abundant typeface samples and glowing self-promotional discourse grounded in the machinic modernization of tradition; Fulford was an admirer of Fleming’s brochures for C&B (“Allan R. Fleming”). Flexitype was in the mid-50s a new photography-based typesetting that directly generated negatives rather than rely on relief surfaces on metal plates, Fig. 4. Marshall McLuhan, “Printing and Social Change,” in Printing Progress: A Mid-Century Report (Cincinnati, and Cooper and Beatty promoted their ad- Ohio: The International Association of Printing House vantage this way: “We’re proud to be the frst Crafts- men, 1959), pp. 86. Graphic design and page layout (1958) by Allan Fleming (1929-1977), as company to introduce photographic typog- Typographic Director, Creative Department, Cooper & raphy to the printing industry across Canada” Beatty Type Craftsmen (Toronto). © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. Courtesy Clara Thomas Archives and Special (“FLEXItype”). Collections, York University. Used with permission.

Beginning in 1955, the distorted typefaces that As a graphic design professional in Toronto, Parker utilized in Explorations were generat- Parker seized the opportunity to experiment ed by placing a prism before the camera’s lens, by crossing over from commercial methods to captured in a photographic negative; Cooper academic publishing, a process of de-special- & Beatty did this in-house using a photo-me- ization that was at the heart of his critique of chanical process. It seems likely that the ad- the position of the curator and his public loath- vertising copy for Flexitype was the work of ing for ‘POBS’—print-oriented bastards. Ad- Fleming, as his repeated point of reference is ditionally, the yearly Typography exhibitions Gutenberg, a curatorial interest. For instance, a and lectures, at least from 1958-64, occasion- typical piece of hyperbole: “Typesetting direct- ally involved McLuhan, who guest lectured at ly into flm is the greatest advance in the de- the 1960 luncheon, and also Parker, as these velopment of graphic arts since Gutenberg frst exhibitions would have been his responsibili- invented movable type” (“FLEXItype”). ty to mount as they occurred at the ROM (ie.

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Typography ’58-’59-’60-’61 and ’64); moreover, Martha Fleming astutely reminds us that it Fleming designed invitations to the exhibits was her father who designed McLuhan’s paper and arranged for OCA students to show their “Printing and Social Change” for the 1959 report work in them alongside his own. McLuhan’s published by the International Association of work was known among members of the Typo- Printing House Crafsmen, in Cincinnati. Tis graphic Designers of Canada, especially Carl remarkable publication is clear about attribu- Dair. Parker and McLuhan tried to enlist Dair tion as each paper has a detailed colophon, including a personal refection by the designer, who explains, in this instance, that he sought to “evoke a feeling of change in the reader” by means of a series of introductory pages con- sisting of wood cuts and a photograph and the title of the essay, a motif taken up in the page headers in the remainder, using red and black inks, and two colours of paper stock. Still, Fleming attributes the design to the collective eforts of all eleven Canadian Crafsmen clubs. Moreover, it is not Cooper & Beatty but rather the Society of Typographic Designers with whom Fleming identifes himself; C&B provided the type for the body and display elements, and preliminary printing and binding for the essay was done in Canada.

Although Fleming and Parker were fourteen years apart in age and Fleming died young at the age of 48, they shared the C&B and the Eaton’s art department connections and both were OCA teachers. Tey both had, most importantly, McLuhan and University of Toron- Fig. 5. Marshall McLuhan, “Printing and Social Change,” to in common, as Fleming joined UTP as chief in Printing Progress: A Mid-Century Report (Cincinnati, Ohio: The International Association of Printing House designer in 1968 and later even designed pro- Crafts- men, 1959), pp. 887. Graphic design and test signs for the Stop Spadina campaign in page layout (1958) by Allan Fleming (1929-1977), as Typographic Director, Creative Department, Cooper & which Marshall was active; Parker had already Beatty Type Craftsmen (Toronto). © Estate Of Marshall joined McLuhan’s Centre as an associate. Both McLuhan. Courtesy Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, York University. Used with permission. Parker and Fleming contributed design elements to Expo 67 and were active, one as cura- to design Trough the Vanishing Point, but Dair tor and artist and the other as display chief, at would not take up the project and passed away the ROM during the years when Typography in 1967, a year before the book’s publication. took place there. Typographic 58 was, as Ful- ford described it, a “one-man show” by Flem- ing who even designed the invitation card:

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“everywhere you turned in the small room in is brought into close contact with movement, the Royal Ontario Museum in which the show colour, and light, underlining psycho-physical was held, it is more than obvious that Canada’s experience in a defned and controlled space frst attempt at an annual typographic exhibit (Popper 204-7)—is shared with the Intersys- was dominated by the work of one man” (“Al- tems’ built environments, especially Mind Ex- lan R. Fleming” 268). Ironically, Martha Flem- cursion, and the tools that Harley Parker uti- ing’s complaint is not so diferent from the ab- lized for the Hall of Fossils, including a range sence of credit for display and installation in of invisible beams and pressure sensitive mats published records such as catalogues under- that triggered light and sound events, a low taken by Parker for much of his everyday ROM cloth ceiling, round walls, sand and shells on work. Te important point is the confuence of uneven fooring, a bank of wall-mounted di- design intelligence in Toronto in the late 1950s, al-less telephones delivering recorded messag- with the commercial training and product in- es in lieu of typical didactics, and an acute aver- novation and C&B, its leaders such as Allan sion to labels and glass display cases. Parker’s Fleming, design fgureheads such as Dair, and goal was to make the “changing sensory ori- the inter-institutional cooperation between the entation of the public” a key factor in inven- ROM, C&B, McLuhan, and University of To- tive exhibition design, citing that much can be ronto Press. learned from “Go Go girls and the psychedelic event … [without] the misdirected enthusiasm Part 2. The Winter of ’67 of the hippies” (296).

Everyone has heard about the summer of ‘69, Sculptor Michael Hayden had successfully ex- but I would like to revisit the winter of ’67, Jan- hibited a number of kinetic pieces in Toronto uary and February to be precise. In the last and New York in 1966 at Gallery Moos and week of January the elder Parker’s master- Martha Jackson Gallery respectively, and had work, the Hall of Fossils, opened at the ROM; begun collaborating with Blake Parker who in February, the building and opening of Mi- contributed textual elements but had not yet chael Hayden’s Mind Excursion installation for begun to perform and record them himself. Perception 67 took place at University College. By 1967, Head Machine was shown at Nation- During these two months the dailies in Toron- al Gallery of Canada; it featured composer to and New York were chewing over the Hall of Mills-Cockell’s soundscape and Parker’s re- Fossils’ opening, each trying to outdo in wit the corded recitations, an “environmental contain- McLuhan in/of the museum motif. Ten Mind er with its own sound and light systems and a Excursion burst onto the Canadian arts scene timing device which programs the action of as a strange psychedelic built environment that each piece in the whole,” but within an 8’x8’x8’ would catalyze the founding of Intersystems, cube, (NGC, Intersystems and Lajeunie). help Blake Parker fnd his voice, and put Inter- systems on the international map of kinetic art. Intersystems as a trio was born in February at University College (U of T) at the Hayden-co- Te environmental impetus in kinetic art— ordinated Perception 67, a psychedelic event which moves toward collapsing the space be- featuring visual art, music, poetry, and a range tween work and spectator-participant, who of countercultural luminaries. Mind Excursion

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was a built structure: a ten-room maze that at Carbondale courtesy of an invitation from heightened by parceling sensory experience Buckminster Fuller). Te band acquired new into rooms by means of modifying foor and member architect Dik Zander, who had been wall and ceiling surfaces augmented with var- active already with Hayden during the con- ious substances including chocolate, cotton struction of Mind Excursion. Duplex is again balls, candy, and projections of images, with architectural in inspiration, with Mills-Cockell sof and hard substances for shoeless visitors, and Parker (voice and sound) on the ground live dancers, low ceilings, and slanted foors. foor, and Zander and Hayden (lights and pro- Given its room-to-themed-room sequentiali- jections) upstairs. Parker recites a tale of an ty, a given trajectory would result in a series of ordinary duplex, with laundry machines and experiential transitions rather than a true mul- framed diplomas. Tis motif would become tisensual simultaneity. While McLuhan and progressively darker as Parker troubled do- partner Corinne attended the event, he was mesticity and suburban life (“Intersystems” 89). not on the bill. Mind Excursion was later re- Parker was a poet of the everyday, of the fore- constructed in 1968 in Montréal and included a boding ordinary. Intersystems would only sur- Mindex Department Store selling packaged art vive until early 1969 afer their performance of objects, giving the notion of “exiting through Network II at the Masonic Temple in Toronto. the gif shop” an early referent (Reid 98). Mind Excursion is, however, a three-part work con- For A Post-Typographic Practice sisting of the soundtrack of the third Inter- systems album, Free Psychedelic Poster Inside, While a case can be made for broad overlap- and Blake Parker’s narrative for Mind Power, a ping extra-psychedelic themes in Parker’s late collectively produced bilingual graphic short 1960s collaborations with McLuhan in print story borrowing from group members’ fami- and flm media (“Intersystems” 84), when ly photos (in addition to photographer Brian Blake Parker found his voice and began per- Tompson) of the courtship and marriage of forming his poetry for Intersystems—as it had fctional Gordie and Renée, an ordinary couple hitherto been rendered and recorded by oth- whose experiences indicate some of the excur- ers, a fact he allegedly disliked according to sion thematics (i.e., room of mirrors, confetti Hayden (26)—then a controlled exploration room, pastoral room). of integrated multi-sensory elements emerged and the possibility of taped performances Hayden-Parker-Mills-Cockell frst performed within the plastic elements of custom designed live together as the foursome Intersystems in and built environments could take place: Blake Vancouver at the VAG’s spring 1967 event Di- Parker moved from published poet to spoken rection 67, an “electrosonic” installation and word performer, making kinetic art, records, performance in near darkness. Intersystems’ and performing live, sometimes within the public presentations were enhanced when structures themselves (i.e. Duplex 1968 ). Of Mills-Cockell acquired a Moog synthesizer course, in its initial incarnation Mind Excur- in 1968 and the machine became a performer sion only stood for two days, a far cry from the in its own right, especially at its frst appear- long run enjoyed by the Hall of Fossils. While ance at the AGO in March 1968 during the Hayden had insisted on exploring olfactory band’s Duplex performance (later revisited diferences amongst the “programmed” rooms

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of Mind Excursion, Harley Parker once joked us about print culture is that a page is a process, that it would have been appropriate to infuse sped up by translation, slowed down by a rede- the entire Hall with the smell of rotting fsh signed reprint. Furthermore, as he wrote with to augment the bird, storm, and other sounds McLuhan in the preface to Trough the Vanish- and recorded voices, both thundering and qui- ing Point, “labels as classifcation are extreme et, not to mention fashing lightning and flm forms of visual culture” (xxiv); a gallery that projection of a wave overhead—in the pro- limits the use of labels and transforms them cess de-emphasizing the graphical and esh- into recorded messages and projections erodes ewing naturalism for abstraction in pursuit stable visuality for the sake of new movements of a carefully deduced audience whose role and relations. Blake Parker took opportunities would be to “operate” the gallery. Te Hall of for releasing new intensities when he decided Fossils is certainly less boxy and more senso- to record his own poetry for art works and to rily integrated than Mind Excursion, with its perform it live, becoming the “singer” in an calculated sequential changes and hyper-con- experimental band. Harley Parker, in moving centrated atmospheres. Still, the Hall relied on Flexitype from a commercial to an academic standard built motifs of museum design such context, initiated novel intensities of aesthetic as dioramas and borrowed the semi-circular and conceptual relations, building pages like ambulatory from church architecture (Medie- environments with all of the special efects val Modern 164-65). Mind Excursions’s rheto- available at the time. ric of programming and its foor plan, viewed from above in standard architectural bias, may In opening up the space of the printed page, have forced sensory experience into tight spac- Harley Parker also addressed the transition es and thus intensifed it without refecting on from the visual bias of illustration to the syn- the control elements of interplay imposed by aesthetic icon as a way of understanding the both design and institutional factors. predicament of serials in the post-literate age that typically include both. He tried to make By the end of the 1960s, Harley Parker had re- his design work in print and in natural history turned to typographic experimentation and galleries more iconic, breaking up large masses book design in the rollicking pages of McLu- of grey type dynamic fourishes reduces word han’s Counterblast (1969). Counterblast can counts, suggesting that writing will need to be- barely contain the Lewisian eruptions of print, come increasingly non-sequential. Exposition and the niceties of print craf are gone—no will proceed in clusters rather than sequential- more colophons and no more nods to the ink ly. Phototype will fourish, and sound will be and paper producers. Te designer’s name is invoked in a myriad of ways. Parker was imag- actually on the cover, in capital letters, fxing ining a post-typographic practice akin to the identity and authority, a hard-won acknowl- post-labeled artifact in the museum setting; edgement that uses its power in the pages of the the immersive psychedelic environments that book to disorient and disrupt in grand gestures concentrated elements borrowed from kinetic of de-signifying glitches and the construction art practices. of word-objects whose stability goes only as far as the foreign translations that of necessity re- make and remodel them. What Parker taught

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Image Notes Works Cited

Fig. 1. Harley Parker and Marshall McLuhan, “Be- Cooper & Beatty. FLEXItype, photo-typography cause print is a patterkiller,” section 12, in Explora- (brochure). Toronto: Cooper & Beatty Ltd., 1954 tions 8, ed. Marshall McLuhan and Edmund Car- penter (1955; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016): n.p. © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. © Estate Of Cruchley, Brian. “Headline freak out at U of T.” Te Harley Parker. Used with permission. Telegram (Toronto) (January 1968 12): np.

Fig. 2. Harley Parker and Marshall McLuhan, “We Dipede, Cheryl. “From Typographer to Graphic De- are back in acoustic space,” section 14, from Ex- signer: Typography Exhibitions and the Formation plorations 8, ed. Marshall McLuhan and Edmund of a Graphic Design Profession in Canada in the Carpenter (1955; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1950s and 1960s.” RACAR 40/2 (2015): 130-45. 2016): n.p. © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. © Estate Of Harley Parker. Used with permission. Fleming, Allan R. “Te Development of Printing As Fig. 3. Harley Parker and Marshall McLuhan, “Anna An Art.” In Te Art of Fine Printing And Its Infuence Livia,” from Explorations 5, ed. Marshall McLuhan Upon the Bible in Print. Toronto: Royal Ontario Mu- and Edmund Carpenter (1955; repr., Eugene, OR: seum (Sept 11-Oct. 13 1956), pp. 11-19. Wipf & Stock, 2016): n.p. © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. © Estate Of Harley Parker. Used with permission. Fleming, Martha. “Allan Fleming: Te man who branded a nation.” Eye 79/20 (Spring Fig. 4. Marshall McLuhan, “Printing and So- 2011). Accessed online via Google cache: cial Change,” in Printing Progress: A Mid-Century http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/ Report (Cincinnati, Ohio: Te International Associ- allan-feming-the-man-who-branded-a-nation. ation of Printing House Crafs- men, 1959), pp. 86. Graphic design and page layout (1958) by Allan Fulford, Robert. “All Ignorance is Motivated.” In Fleming (1929-1977), as Typographic Director, Cre- Marshall McLuhan: Critical Evaluations in Cultur- ative Department, Cooper & Beatty Type Crafsmen al Teory, Volume 1, Fashion and Fortune. London (Toronto). © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. Used and New York: Taylor & Francis, 2005, pp. 307-16. with permission. — “Allan R. Fleming.” Canadian Art XVI/4 (Novem- Fig. 5. Marshall McLuhan, “Printing and So- ber 1959): 266-73. cial Change,” in Printing Progress: A Mid-Century Report (Cincinnati, Ohio: Te International Associ- Hayden, Michael. “How the Mind Excursion came ation of Printing House Crafs- men, 1959), pp. 887. to be.” In Intersystems [booklet of vinyl resissue Graphic design and page layout (1958) by Allan package]. Milan: Alga Marghen, 2015, pp. 21-34. Fleming (1929-1977), as Typographic Director, Cre- ative Department, Cooper & Beatty Type Crafsmen (Toronto). © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. Courte- Kessler, Jascha. “McLuhan Nonbook Nonenlighten- sy Clara Tomas Archives and Special Collections, ing.” Los Angeles Times (17 November 1968): D52. York University. Used with permission.

Lauder, Adam. “‘A Clash of Spaces’: Harley Parker’s Reconceptualization of the Museum as a Communi-

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cation System.” Amodern 5 (2015). Accessed online: Popper, Frank. Origins and Development of Kinetic http://amodern.net/article/a-clash-of-spaces/ Art. London: Studio Vista, 1968.

McLuhan, Marshall. Counterblast. Toronto: McClel- Reid, Dennis. “Intersystems, 1967-69: Radically Re- land and Stewart, 1969. thinking Art.” In Intersystems (booklet). Milan: Arga Marghen, 2015, pp. 93-99. — “Printing and Social Change.” In Printing Prog- ress: A Mid-Century Report, ed. Cliford L. Helbert. Schnapp, Jefrey T. and Michaels, Adam. Te Electric Cincinnati: Te International Association of Print- Information Age Book. New York: Princeton Archi- ing House Crafmen, Inc., 1959, pp. 89-112. tectural Press, 2012.

McLuhan, Marshall, and Parker, Harley. Trough the Storring, Nick. “Intersystems: Number One, Peachy, Vanishing Point: Space in Poetry and Painting. New Free Psychedelic Poster Inside.” In Interystems York: Harper & Row, 1968. [booklet]. Milan: Alga Marghen, 2015, pp. 77-91

Nagel, Alexander. Medieval Modern: Art Out of Teall, Donald. Understanding McLuhan: Te Medi- Time. London: Tames & Hudson, 2012. um is the RearView Mirror. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1971. National Gallery of Canada. Intersystems and Lajeu- Figures 1, 2, and 3 © Estate Of Marshall nie (catalogue). Ottawa: NGC, 1967-68. McLuhan. © Estate Of Harley Parker. Figure 4 and 5 Figures 1, 2, and 3 © Estate Of Parker, Harley. “New Hall of Fossil Invertebrates Marshall McLuhan. Royal Ontario Museum.” Curator X/4 (December All Figures used with permission and not 1967): 284-96. covered by the Creative Commons Licence

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CONTRIBUTORS

Guest Editors | Rédacteurs invités chapters for a Monograph about McLuhan’s city. Jaqueline McLeod Rogers (Ph. D.) est professeure et présidente du Département de Adam Lauder est boursier postdoctoral du rhétorique, de rédaction et de communica- CRSH à l’Université York de Toronto. Il a ob- tions de l’Université de Winnipeg. Elle a publié tenu un doctorat du Départmement des études plusieurs articles sur le lieu et l’espace urbains, supérieures en arts de l’Université de Toron- dont une collaboration parue récemment sur to à l’automne 2016. Ses recherches actuelles le Musée canadien des droits de la personne utilisent l’esthétique non standard de Laruel- (MCDP) dans TOPIA, ainsi qu’un chapitre le pour étudier l’art de l’information canadien dans Environmental Rhetoric and Ecologies of dans les années 1970, alors que les artistes ont Place (2013). Elle publie également des arti- commencé à explorer de nouveaux cadres sci- cles sur les femmes et Internet qui explorent entifques et de nouvelles modalités de « fc- la rhétorique féministe et numérique. Elle a tion ». Il a contribué à des revues savantes, dont contribué à l’article « McLuhan and the City », Amodern, Art Documentation, Canadian Jour- à une collection de nouveaux essais qu’elle a nal of Communication, Future Anterior, Imag- codirigés, Finding McLuhan (2015), et pub- inations, Journal of Canadian Studies, Techno- lié « Self and the City: Teaching Sensory Per- etic Arts, Te Journal of Canadian Art History, ception and Integration in City as Classroom » TOPIA et Visual Resources. Il a aussi publié des dans Explorations in Media Ecology (2016). Elle textes plus courts dans des revues comme Art prépare actuellement des chapitres pour une Handler, Border Crossings, C, Canadian Art, monographie sur la ville de McLuhan. e-fux, Flash Art, Hunter and Cook et Millions. Il a édité H& IT ON (YYZ, 2012), mettant en Jaqueline McLeod Rogers (Ph. D.) is professor vedette l’art original de l’artiste pionnier de l’in- and chair in the Department of Rhetoric, Writ- formation IAIN BAXTER&, et est l’auteur de ing and Communications at Te University of chapitres apparaissant dans Finding McLuhan Winnipeg. She has published several articles (2015), Te Logic of Nature, Te Romance of about urban place and space—a recent co-au- Space (2010), de même que Byproduct: On the thored article about the Canadian Museum for Excess of Embedded Art Practices (2010). Human Rights (CMHR) in TOPIA and a chap- ter in Environmental Rhetoric and Ecologies of Adam Lauder is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow Place (2013). She also publishes articles about at York University in Toronto. He obtained a women and the internet that explore feminist Ph.D. from the Graduate Department of Art and digital rhetorics. She contributed the ar- at the University of Toronto in Fall 2016. His ticle “McLuhan and the City” to a collection current research employs the non-aesthetics of of new essays she co-edited, Finding McLu- Laruelle to study Canadian information art in han (2015) and published “Self and the City: the 1970s, as artists began exploring new sci- Teaching Sensory Perception and Integration entifc frameworks and modalities of “fction.” in *City as Classroom“* in Explorations in Me- He has contributed articles to scholarly jour- dia Ecology (2016). She is currently preparing nals including Amodern, Art Documentation,

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Canadian Journal of Communication, Future française et francophone des 20e et 21e siècles, Anterior, Imaginations, Journal of Canadian particulièrement sur la poétique de la créa- Studies, Technoetic Arts, Te Journal of Cana- tion et les dynamiques inter et transculturelles. dian Art History, TOPIA and Visual Resources Elle est l’auteure d’une monographie intitulée as well as features and shorter texts to maga- Le processus de création dans l’œuvre de J.M.G. zines including Art Handler, Border Crossings, Le Clézio (Rodopi/Brill, 2016) et de plusieurs C, Canadian Art, e-fux, Flash Art, Hunter and articles sur des écrivains d’Europe et du Cana- Cook and Millions. He edited H& IT ON (YYZ, da (N. Huston, A. Nothomb, S. Kokis, R. Robin, 2012), featuring original art by the pioneering P.K. Page, etc.). information artist IAIN BAXTER&, and is the author of chapters appearing in Finding McLu- Adina Balint is Associate Professor of French han (2015), Te Logic of Nature, Te Romance at Te University of Winnipeg. Her feld of of Space (2010) as well as Byproduct: On the Ex- research is 20th and 21st-century French and cess of Embedded Art Practices (2010). Francophone literature, with an emphasis on the poetics of creation and on transculturalism. Contributors | Collaborateurs She is the author of the monograph Le Proces- sus de création dans l’œuvre de J.M.G. Le Clézio Kenneth R. Allan enseigne au Département (Rodopi/Brill, 2016), and of several scientifc des arts de l’Université de Lethbridge. Ses pub- articles on European and Canadian writers (N. lications incluent : « Marshall McLuhan and Huston, A. Nothomb, S. Kokis, R. Robin, P.K. the Counterenvironment: ‘Te Medium is Page, etc.). the Massage’ » dans Art Journal, vol. 73, no. 4 (2014), « Barnett Newman’s Te Wild: Paint- Jody Berland est professeure au Département ing as Spatial Intervention » dans October, no. des sciences humaines et aux programmes 143 (2013), et « Metamorphosis in 391: A Cryp- d’études supérieures en communication et cul- tographic Collaboration by Francis Picabia, ture, sciences humaines, sciences et technol- Man Ray, and Erik Satie » dans Art History, ogie, et pensée sociale et politique, à Univer- vol. 34, no. 1 (2011). sité York de Toronto. Elle est l’auteure de plus de 50 articles et chapitres de livres sur les pro- Kenneth R. Allan teaches in the Department cessus de médiation impliquant la musique, la of Art at the University of Lethbridge. His technologie, la culture, le lieu et la nature. Son writings include: “Marshall McLuhan and the prochain livre, Virtual Menageries in Network Counterenvironment: ‘Te Medium is the Cultures (MIT Press, Leonardo Books 2018), Massage,’” Art Journal, vol. 73, no. 4 (2014); retrace le rôle de la médiation animale depuis “Barnett Newman’s Te Wild: Painting as Spa- le début du commerce colonial jusqu’aux nou- tial Intervention,” October, no. 143 (2013); and velles technologies connectives. Son livre “Metamorphosis in 391: A Cryptographic Col- North of Empire: Essays on Cultural Technolo- laboration by Francis Picabia, Man Ray, and gies and the Production of Space (Duke Univer- Erik Satie,” Art History, vol. 34, no. 1 (2011). sity Pres 2009) a reçu en 2010 le prix littéraire G.J. Robinson de l’Association canadienne de Adina Balint, professeure agrégée à l’Univer- communication. Berland est chercheuse prin- sité de Winnipeg, travaille sur les littératures cipale du projet « Digital Animalities: Media

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Representations of Nonhuman Life in the Age au Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts de l’Uni- of Risk », fnancé par le CRSH. Elle est aussi versité York. Chew collabore à Houses on Pen- professeure invitée au Centre for Human Ani- garth, un projet de recherche et de conserva- mal Studies à l’université Edge Hill au Royau- tion axé sur le développement, dans la comme-Uni. Elle est rédactrice émérite de TOPIA: munauté de Lawrence Heights à Toronto, d’un Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, et a su- laboratoire d’art expérimental engagé sociale- pervisé de nombreux mémoires et thèses. ment. Son travail récent apparaît dans l’anthol- ogie Material Cultures in Canada, Internation- Jody Berland is Professor, Department of Hu- al Journal of Heritage Studies, et un numéro à manities, and Graduate Programs in Com- paraître du Journal of Canadian Art History. munication and Culture, Humanities, Science Chew enseigne actuellement au Cinema Stud- and Technology Studies and Social and Polit- ies Institute de l’Université de Toronto. Elle est ical Tought, York University, Toronto, Cana- également rédactrice en chef de la revue PUB- da. She has written more than 50 articles and LIC: Art/Culture/Ideas. book chapters on processes of mediation involving music, technology, culture, place, and May Chew received her Doctorate in Cultur- nature. Her forthcoming book, Virtual Menag- al Studies from Queen’s University, where her eries in Network Cultures (MIT Press, Leonar- research examined the uses of interactive and do Books 2018) traces the role of animal medi- immersive technologies in diverse museologi- ation from early colonial trade to new connec- cal sites across Canada, and how these facili- tive technologies. Her book North of Empire: tate the material practice of nation and cultural Essays on Cultural Technologies and the Pro- citizenship. She is currently a MITACS Post- duction of Space (Duke University Pres 2009) doctoral Fellow at York University’s Sensorium was awarded the Canadian Communication Centre for Digital Arts. Chew collaborates on Association’s G.J. Robinson book prize in 2010. Houses on Pengarth, a research and curation Berland is Principle Investigator of the SSHRC project centred on developing a socially-en- funded project, “Digital Animalities: Me- gaged, experimental art lab in Toronto’s Law- dia Representations of Nonhuman Life in the rence Heights community. Her recent work Age of Risk” and Visiting Professor, Centre for appears in the anthology Material Cultures in Human Animal Studies, Edge Hill University, Canada, the International Journal of Heritage UK. She is Editor Emerita of TOPIA: Canadian Studies and an upcoming issue of the Journal of Journal of Cultural Studies, and has supervised Canadian Art History. Chew currently teaches many theses and dissertations. in the Cinema Studies Institute at the Universi- ty of Toronto. She also serves as Managing Ed- May Chew a reçu son doctorat en études cul- itor for the journal, PUBLIC: Art/Culture/Ideas. turelles de l’Université Queen’s, où sa recherche a examiné l’utilisation des technologies interactives et immersives dans divers lieux muséologiques à travers le Canada, et com- Gary Genosko est professeur de communica- ment celles-ci facilitent la pratique matérielle tion et d’études sur les médias numériques à de la citoyenneté nationale et culturelle. Elle est l’Institut universitaire de technologie de l’On- actuellement boursière postdoctorale MITACS tario à Oshawa, en Ontario. Son livre Te

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Reinvention of Social Practices: Essays on Félix Toronto, in the Department of History of Art. Guattari est actuellement sous presse avec Her work focuses on eco art and ecological Rowman & Littlefeld. Il a récemment terminé citizenship in Canada (2017-19). She complet- le manuscrit d’un livre sur le rôle des revues in- ed her PhD at Queen’s University in fall 2015 dépendantes : Back Issues: Journals and Forma- (2011-15), and was formerly a postdoctoral re- tion of Critical and Cultural Teory in Canada search fellow at the University of Manitoba, and the US. Centre for Globalization and Cultural Stud- ies (2016-17). She teaches at the University of Gary Genosko is Professor of Communica- Winnipeg and University of Manitoba (2010-) tion and Digital Media Studies at the Univer- and works as assistant and archivist to artists sity of Ontario Institute of Technology in Os- Rebecca Belmore and Osvaldo Yero (2014- hawa, Ontario. His book Te Reinvention of ). She is currently working on a monograph Social Practices: Essays on Félix Guattari is in with Cree curator Daina Warren, Indigenous press with Rowman & Littlefeld. He recently New Media Arts: Translocal Cosmologies (Mc- completed a book manuscript on the role of in- Gill-Queen’s University Press; in process). Her dependent journals, Back Issues: Journals and work is published in numerous scholarly an- Formation of Critical and Cultural Teory in thologies and journals. Canada and the US. Alexander Kuskis, Ph. D. (Toronto) a connu Jessica Jacobson-Konefall (Ph. D.) est cher- des carrières dans les secteurs de l’enseigne- cheuse postdoctorale du CRSH à l’Université ment supérieur et de la communication, en de Toronto, au Département d’histoire de l’art. particulier dans la l’édition de livres, l’infor- Son travail porte sur l’art écologique et la ci- matique, et la formation aux logiciels et à l’in- toyenneté environnementale au Canada (2017- formatique. Il a enseigné aux universités de 2019). Elle a complété son doctorat à l’Univer- Toronto, du Manitoba, Wilfrid-Laurier, et en sité Queen’s à l’automne 2015 (2011-2015) et a ligne pour Connected University et l’Universi- été chercheuse postdoctorale au Centre for té Royal Roads. Il a également travaillé comme Globalization and Cultural Studies de l’Uni- consultant en formation en ligne et il enseigne versité du Manitoba (2016-2017). Elle ensei- actuellement en ligne des cours de communi- gne à l’Université de Winnipeg et à l’Université cation pour l’Université Gonzaga. Ses intérêts du Manitoba (2010-) et travaille comme assis- académiques incluent l’écologie des médias, tante et archiviste auprès des artistes Rebecca Marshall McLuhan et l’école de communica- Belmore et Osvaldo Yero (2014-). Elle travaille tion de Toronto, la communication assistée par actuellement sur une monographie avec la ordinateur, et l’histoire de la communication. conservatrice crie Daina Warren : Indigenous Ses recherches portent sur Marshall McLuhan New Media Arts: Translocal Cosmologies (Mc- en tant qu’éducateur et il publie le blogue Mc- Gill-Queen’s University Press, en cours). Son Luhan Galaxy à l’adresse https://mcluhangal- travail est publié dans de nombreuses anthol- axy.wordpress.com/. ogies universitaires et revues. Alexander Kuskis, PhD (Toronto) has en- Dr. Jessica Jacobson-Konefall is a SSHRC post- joyed careers in both higher education and doctoral research fellow at the University of communication industries, specifcally book

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publishing, computing, sofware and IT train- for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media ing. He has taught at the Universities of Toron- Ecology en 2016. Elle coordonne le projet cul- to, Manitoba and Wilfrid Laurier and online turel UE / Canada « PERFORMIGRATIONS : for Connected University and Royal Roads les gens sont le territoire » (www.performigra- University. He has also worked as an e-learn- tions.eu), qui explore le thème de la « mobil- ing consultant and presently teaches online ité » (à la fois culturelle et technologique), ainsi communication courses for Gonzaga Universi- que le projet UNIBO « Performative Storytell- ty. His academic interests include media ecolo- ing & Civic Engagement ». Elle siège au conseil gy, Marshall McLuhan and the Toronto School d’administration du programme de deuxième of Communication, computer-mediated com- cycle de « Communication historique » de munication and communication history. His l’Université de Bologne, au conseil d’adminis- research focuses on Marshall McLuhan as an tration de l’Association italienne d’études can- educationist and he publishes the McLuhan adiennes (AISC), ainsi que sur plusieurs comi- Galaxy blog at https://mcluhangalaxy.word- tés éditoriaux et scientifques (Explorations in press.com/. Media Ecology, Wi: Journal of Mobile Media, et Te International Journal of McLuhan Studies). Elena Lamberti enseigne la littérature nord-américaine et les études des médias au Elena Lamberti teaches North American Liter- Département des langues, littératures et cul- ature and Media Studies at the Department of tures modernes de l’Université de Bologne. Ses Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures domaines de recherche incluent : le modern- at the University of Bologna. Her areas of re- isme anglo-américain, la littérature et la tech- search include: Anglo-American Modernism, nologie, la mémoire culturelle, et la littérature Literature and Technology, Cultural Memo- de guerre. Elle a publié plusieurs essais sur le ry, War Literature. She has published several modernisme anglais et anglo-américain (Ford, essays on English and Anglo-American Mod- Joyce, Pound, Hemingway), ainsi que sur la ernism (Ford, Joyce, Pound, Hemingway), as culture anglo-canadienne de la fn du XXe siè- well as Anglo-Canadian culture of the late 20th cle (Coupland, Cronenberg, McLuhan). Elle Century (Coupland, Cronenberg, McLuhan). est l’auteure du volume primé Marshall McLu- She is the author of the award winning volume han: Tra letteratura, arti e media (Mondadori, Marshall McLuhan: Tra letteratura, arti e me- 2000), auteure de Te transatlantic review: dia (Mondadori, 2000); author of “the trans- Note sulla rivista che traghettò gli Yankees in Eu- atlantic review“: Note sulla rivista che traghettò ropa (Asterisco, 2012), directrice de Interpret- gli Yankees in Europa* (Asterisco, 2012), editor ing/Translating European Modernism (Com- of Interpreting/Translating European Modern- positori, 2001), et co-directrice de divers vol- ism (Compositori, 2001); co-editor of various umes dont Ford Madox Ford and Te Republic volumes including Ford Madox Ford and Te of Letters (CLUEB 2002) et Memories and Rep- Republic of Letters (CLUEB 2002); Memories resentations of War in Europe (Rodopi, 2009). and Representations of War in Europe (Rodopi, Son volume Marshall McLuhan’s Mosaic. Prob- 2009). Her volume Marshall McLuhan’s Mosa- ing the Literary Origins of Media Studies (U of ic. Probing the Literary Origins of Media Studies T Press, 2012) a été fnaliste des Prix du Canada (U of T Press, 2012) was a fnalist for the 2013 en 2013 et a reçu le Marshall McLuhan Award Canada Prizes and received the 2016 Media

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Ecology Award – Marshall McLuhan Award Parsons/Te New School, NYC. In Sept-Oct for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media 2017, a recent one-person exhibition of his paint- Ecology. She coordinates the EU/Canada Cul- ings were shown at Rick Wester Fine Arts, NYC. tural Project “PERFORMIGRATIONS: Peo- ple Are the Territory” (www.performigrations. Mohammad Salemy est un artiste, critique et eu) investigating shifing ideas on/of ‘mobili- conservateur indépendant établi à New York. ty’ (both cultural and technological) as well as Il possède une maîtrise en études critiques the UNIBO project on “Performative Storytell- en conservation de l’Université de la Colom- ing & Civic Engagement”. She serves in: Board bie-Britannique. Il a montré ses œuvres dans of Directors, Master Program on ‘Historical Home Works 7 d’Ashkal Alwan (Beyrouth) et Communication’, University of Bologna; Board Witte de With (Rotterdam). Ses écrits ont été of Directors, AISC – Italian Association for publiés dans e-fux, Flash Art, Tird Rail et Canadian Studies; as well as in diverse Editori- Brooklyn Rail, et il a préparé des expositions à al and Scientifc Boards (Explorations in Media la Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Access Ecology; Wi: Journal of Mobile Media; Te Inter- Gallery, et Satellite Gallery à Vancouver ainsi national Journal of McLuhan Studies*). qu’à tranzitdisplay à Prague. En 2014, il a or- ganisé la conférence Incredible Machines. L’ex- Tom McGlynn est un artiste, écrivain et con- périmentation de conservation « For Machine servateur indépendant établi dans la région de Use Only » de Salemy a été incluse dans la 11e New York. Son travail d’art visuel est représenté édition de la Biennale de Gwangju (2016). Il dans les collections permanentes du Whitney codirige actuellement les programmes d’édu- Museum, du Museum of Modern Art, et du cation au New Centre for Research & Practice. Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Son travail et son écriture critique ont été pub- Mohammad Salemy is an independent New liés, entre autres, dans Artforum et &&& Jour- York based artist, critic, and curator who holds nal. Il collabore à Te Brooklyn Rail depuis 2012 an MA in critical curatorial studies from the en tant qu’éditorialiste et il est aflié à Parson/ University of British Columbia. He has shown Te New School, NY. En septembre et octobre his works in Ashkal Alwan’s Home Works 7 2017, le Rick Wester Fine Arts, NY, a présenté (Beirut) and Witte de With (Rotterdam). His une exposition solo de ses peintures. writings have been published in e-fux, Flash Art, Tird Rail, and Brooklyn Rail, and he has Tom McGlynn is an artist, writer, and indepen- curated exhibitions at the Morris and Helen dent curator based in the NYC area. His visual Belkin Art Gallery, Access Gallery, and Satel- art work is represented in the permanent col- lite Gallery in Vancouver as well as Transit Dis- lections of the Whitney Museum, Te Museum play in Prague. In 2014, he organized the In- of Modern Art, and Te Cooper- Hewitt Na- credible Machines conference. Salemy’s cura- tional Design Museum of the Smithsonian. His torial experiment “For Machine Use Only” was work and critical writing has been published included in the 11th edition of Gwangju Bien- in Artforum, and in &&& Journal among other nale (2016). He currently co-organizes the ed- publications. He has been a contributor to Te ucation programs at Te New Centre for Re- Brooklyn Rail since 2012, where he is an edi- search & Practice. tor at large, and is academically afliated with

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Henry Adam Svec (Ph. D., Université de West- ne m’arrêtera. Elle a obtenu son baccalauréat ern Ontario) est un artiste de performance et en 2003 de l’Emily Carr University of Art and un écrivain. Son travail a été présenté dans des Design. Warren est diplômée d’un programme galeries et des festivals tels que 7a*11d, FADO, de maîtrise en histoire de l’art, ayant fait des Te Rhubarb Festival, Sappyfest, et New Ad- études critiques en conservation de l’Universi- ventures in Sound Art, et il a été un artiste en té de la Colombie-Britannique (2012). En 2015, résidence au Banf Centre et à l’Institut des arts Warren a reçu le Emily Award de l’Emily Carr et de la culture du Klondike. Également spé- University. Elle a aussi été sélectionnée comme cialiste des médias, il est actuellement profes- l’une des six conservatrices autochtones de la seur adjoint d’études en communication au délégation du Conseil des arts du Canada pour Millsaps College à Jackson, au Mississippi. Son participer en décembre 2016 à l’International premier livre, American Folk Music as Tactical First Nations Curators Exchange à Porirua, en Media, sera publié en décembre 2017 par Am- Nouvelle-Zélande. Elle est actuellement la di- sterdam University Press. rectrice de l’Urban Shaman Contemporary Ab- original Art à Winnipeg, au Manitoba. Henry Adam Svec (PhD, UWO) is a performance artist and a writer. His work has been Daina Warren is a member of the Montana or presented at galleries and festivals including Akamihk Cree Nation in Maskwacis (Bear Hills), 7a*11d, FADO, Te Rhubarb Festival, Sappyfest, Alberta. In 2000, she was awarded Canada Coun- and New Adventures in Sound Art, and he has cil’s Assistance to Aboriginal Curators for Resi- been an artist in residence at Te Banf Cen- dencies in the Visual Arts program to work with tre and the Klondike Institute of Art & Cul- grunt gallery in Vancouver. Tis opportunity led ture. Also a scholar of media, he is currently to a permanent position with the artist-run cen- Assistant Professor of Communication Studies tre as an associate curator and administrator un- at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. His til 2009. Warren completed the Canada Council’s frst book, American Folk Music as Tactical Me- Aboriginal Curatorial Residency at the National dia, will be published in December of 2017 by Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, where she Amsterdam University Press. curated the group exhibition Don’t Stop Me Now. She has received her Bachelor’s degree in 2003, Diana Warren est membre de la nation crie graduating from the Emily Carr University of Montana ou Akamihk à Maskwacis (Bear Art and Design. Warren graduated from a Mas- Hills), en Alberta. En 2000, elle a été récipien- ters in Art History program, completing the Crit- daire du programme d’aide aux conservateurs ical and Curatorial Studies from the University autochtones pour des résidences en arts visuels of British Columbia (2012). Warren was awarded du Conseil des arts du Canada afn de travailler the 2015 Emily Award from Emily Carr Universi- avec grunt gallery à Vancouver. Cette oppor- ty and selected as one of six Indigenous women tunité a mené à un poste permanent au cen- curators as part of 2016 Canada Council for the tre d’artistes autogéré en tant que conservatrice Arts Delegation to participate in the International adjointe et administratrice jusqu’en 2009. War- First Nations Curators Exchange in Porirua, New ren a terminé sa résidence au Musée des beaux- Zealand in December 2016. She is currently the arts du Canada à Ottawa, en Ontario, où elle a Director of Urban Shaman Contemporary Ab- été conservatrice de l’exposition collective Rien original Art in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

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