Printing a Film to Make it Resonate: Sorel Etrog and Marshall McLuhan’s Spiral

This essay investigates the collaboration between McLuhan and the Romanian born Canadian artist, Sorel Etrog. In 1975, Etrog’s movie Spiral was shown at the Centre for Culture and Technology, established by McLuhan at the University of Toronto. Following that event, McLuhan suggested that Etrog select “stills from the film so that he could provide an annotation to those images – a free form text of quotations from various writers – as well as a commentary”. Thanks to another great protagonist of the Canadian cultural scene, Barry Callaghan, that idea became a tangible object a few years after McLuhan had passed away: Spiral. Images from the film. Text by Marshall McLuhan, was in fact published in 1987 by Exile Editions in Toronto. Today, it remains as a memento of an original artistic encounter. It also remains as a tool to reconsider our environment through poetry and images, as words and still-shots are cast to pose an intellectual challenge to an increasingly materialistic society. As a book, Spiral is conceived to make ideas on media and society resonate through a witty juxtaposition of images from the film and literary quotations from a broad Western tradition that encourages readers to navigate the ongoing profound cultural shift. Known but not often investigated when discussing McLuhan’s artistic associations, the collaboration between Etrog and McLuhan ought to be delved into for different reasons. It is, in fact, strategic to appreciate how McLuhan has acted as a facilitator of a renewed 20th century inter-art dialogue. Then, it helps to consider the conscious shift from modernist avant-garde to new avant-gardes and art forms of the 1970s in relation to McLuhan’s environmental explorations. Finally, it also pays homage to an artist that deserves to be remembered as one of the most original voices of the Canadian artistic renaissance.