Date
2012
Medium
Paint on vinyl
Real total war
Taken from a quotation of Marshall McLuhan
This collage dates from 2013. Each letter is carefully cut out, using Helvetica as the typeface. The painting is on stretched vinyl, it measure 92cm x 152cm. The quote is difficult to read and I wanted that it is not easily seen. The works well with the sense of the text.
McLuhan is best known for his quote "The medium is the massage" and he is often misquoted as saying " The medium is the message". Today, the media is the battleground. Particularly today, even journalists are working for biased organisation. War is in the street, our institutions, our healthcare system and voting rights.
Here is the quote as taken from Marshall McLuhan : “Real, total war has become information war. It is being fought by subtle electric informational media- under cold conditions, and constantly. The cold war is the real war front – a surround- involving everybody- all the time- everywhere. Whenever hot wars are necessary these days, we conduct them in the backyards of the world with the old technologies. These wars are happenings, tragic games. It is no longer convenient, or suitable, to use the latest technologies for fighting our wars, because the latest technologies have rendered war meaningless. The hydrogen bomb is history’s exclamation point. It ends an age-long sentence of manifest violence”.
