Elsie & Marshall: Feedback #7

Participants: Julia E. Dyck, Jiyoon Heo, Sanja Iveković, Bokyung Jun, Dow/e Kim, Hye Jung Kim, Naomi Klein, Yung Bin Kwak, Paula McDowell, Christof Migone, Ye-eun Min, Jinshil Lee, Seok jung Lee, Seulgi Lee, Yeonsook Lee (aka Rita), Colby Richardson, Kyungtaek Roh, Sarah Sharma, Hito Steyerl, Ji in Yang, Hana Yoo, YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES

Curators: Baruch Gottlieb, Ji Yoon Yang

In 1922, at the age of 31, Canadian elocutionist Elsie McLuhan (1889–1961) embarked on an ambitious tour. She hired a housekeeper to look after the family and her 11 year-old son Marshall, who would later become a world-renowned media scholar. Elocutionist performances may be unfamiliar today, but they were a popular form of evening’s entertainment in the early 20th century, Elsie developed distinctive techniques of literary performance, and built up her own repertoire, addressing controversial social issues of the time, with a preference for women authors, and stories of empowered and independent women in programs which freely flowed between high, middle and low brow, blending interpretations of Shakespeare and Tennyson, impersonations of famous people, and personal anecdotes.

Elsie and Marshall: Feedback #7 is a project that relates the work of Canadian thinker of technology and media Marshall McLuhan to the artistic practice of his mother, Elsie McLuhan. Elsie’s artistry would influence Marshall’s university studies in Medieval literature, and later his observations on technology which fused insights from early and high modernist literature, social sciences and pop culture. Under Elsie’s influence, Marshall “heard” texts before he read them, and learnt to explore the creative and informative tensions between written and spoken language. In 1962, Marshall McLuhan’s book The Gutenberg Galaxy discussed the change in human consciousness brought about by the invention of the printing press. In his 1964 book Understanding Media, he explains that all technology is an extension of human capabilities which, as they extend and accentuate certain parts of our sensibility, numb and amputate others. A pop culture media superstar of his time, Marshall would later consciously instrumentalise his fame to experiment on audiences around the world in real time. 

Elsie and Marshall: Feedback #7 seeks out contemporary Elsies who have engaged in progressive artistic practice in media, on the frontiers of written and oral, visual and aural cultures. Six months before the opening, we held an introductory drum-up meeting with people from contemporary art, academia, and other communities in Korea to explore how our project resonated with the current state of affairs in Korea, This informed how we developed new curatorial approaches, including how we commissioned new work for the exhibition. The result is a unique exhibition where a playful and provocative composition of works by contemporary artists correspond with an archive of McLuhan’s radical publishing practices, media performances and documentation on Elsie’s and his lives, accompanied by Korean translations prepared specifically for this project and presented for the first time. 

The opening of the exhibition will feature a keynote by Sarah Sharma on techno-feminist refusal followed by a roundtable with Korean feminists and participating artists and three performances. The duration of the exhibition will be accompanied by a rich public program including Paula McDowell’s lecture on Elsie McLuhan, the première of a new lecture-performance by Hito Steyerl, artist talks, concerts and performances. 

Elsie and Marshall: Feedback #7 is the seventh and most ambitious edition of the project FEEDBACK; Marshall McLuhan and the Arts launched in 2017 at West Den Haag in The Hague, has been staged in Berlin/Leipzig, Karlsruhe, Frankfurt, Windsor/Detroit and Montreal. In a feminist mode, this edition opens up the hagiography of a “great thinker” in the context of their upbringing and support systems, in reproductive labor, conventionally provided by women. This new version goes beyond conventional formats exploring new synergies of artists, arts institutions and the public, testing Marshall McLuhan’s contention that we look at what artists are doing for clues of how to avoid disaster in our era of rapid technological change. 

Events
Symposium: November 30, 1–5pm
Keynote Speaker: Sarah Sharma

Opening performance: November 30, 6–7pm
Performer: Julia E. Dyck, Dow/e Kim, Colby Richardson

Online lecture: December 5, 10–11pm
Lecturer: Paula McDowell

Lecture performance: December 14, 2–3pm
Performance: Ye-eun Min, Lecture: Hito Steyerl

Theatre performance A-da-da: December 20–21
Performer: Dow/e Kim

Lecture & concert: December 21
Lecture: Hye Jung Kim, Concert: Ji in Yang, Seok jung Lee