Marshall Mcluhan and the Arts
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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 remedia- tion—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 ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 5 MCLUHAN AND THE ARTS AFTER THE SPECULATIVE TURN 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-