I am responding specifically to Grosz’s section “Milieu and Territory.”
First, in relation to a quote that emphasizes Grosz’s assertions that art is surplus. Here she is referring to the fact that birds are either musicians (singers) or artists (colorful and pretty). She says, “It is almost as if each bird can only contain so much intensity, sonorous or visual, and no more, that it can entice and seduce in one particular way rather than in many.” We could take this a step farther and point out that humans, are able to be artists in many ways, although we tend also to focus our energies into one type of art. However, it can be noted that many well known artists, writers and musicians were involved with other arts.
Second, Grosz’s idea here of music as territory in a very literal sense is quite intriguing, and here, very well argued. At the most primitive level, birds and animals use sound to announce their territory to other creatures. More compelling however, is her example of the Australian outback as a musical score since every object had once been sung. She sums this up very well in the first paragraph of this section: “art is always the coupling of extracted elements from the cosmological order and their integration into the lived experience and behavior of organisms.” Art is what we know. It is an extraction of our own experience. The Australian aborigines in singing all that they saw were territorializing and knowing their world through this singing.
Beth Ratay