Site specificity in the age of intermediality (with thanks to Michael Snow)

This article addresses the materialist screen works of Canadian artist Michael Snow. It argues that Snow’s lifelong experimentations with different media technologies have always encompassed a rigorous and precise understanding of the phenomenology of the different viewing situations in which his works are seen. Two aspects of Snow’s practice are singled out as inherently connected: medium specificity and audiency. Snow’s artworks provide us with unique opportunities to grasp the complexities of changing forms of intermediality and spectatorship at a time when media are more fluid and ephemeral than ever before.