Response to Grosz -- Alexei Othenin-Girard

There is something elementary about Grosz’s insights about framing. Not that they’re simplistic, rather that they seem to reach down to some very fundamental aspect of the artistic instinct. I think that her understanding of, and elaboration around, the uses of frames as devices is very powerful, but I’m curious about her connection of framing to architecture. I understand that she’s following Deleuze and Guattari’s footsteps, but framing seems like a pre-architectural instinct to me. The magic circle, the family, the in-group and the out-group, all of these take place before architecture. The frame is what divides the outside from the inside, but that occurs at the cellular level. A lipid bilayer, an epidermis, these are frames, the way that Grosz describes them. We have an intuitive understanding that there is an exterior, where there is chaos, and aninterior, where there is mystery: It is called the body.

Interestingly, as digital artists, one of the most powerful and ubiquitous types of frames also seems to be one of the least investigated or utilized. We have used “windows” as a user interface paradigm for over twenty years, but I’m not sure that even now the idea has been fully developed, either as user interface or as an artistic metaphor. Once we understand windows as being the permeation of the wall between the rarefied space of human activity and chaos, how do we apply that to our understanding of how information is displayed in a computer? (For example, which side is which?) If a frame is necessary because “…unless it is in some way demarcated, nature itself is incapable of sexualizing life, of making life alluring, lifting life above mere survival,” then what does it mean that we frame a huge portion of the information we get via the screen of these devices?

—Alexei

Response to Elizabeth Grosz -- Robin Sacolick

Some points in Grosz will be quite useful; others are questionable; others common sense; others all three. For example, points about art’s “capacity to enlarge the universe by enabling its potential to be otherwise…”(24) are profoundly useful common sense. Similar points have elsewhere been made more prosaically, i.e., to bolster funding for PBS; but they do remind the artist why she is pursuing art. They also reissue the question of whether artists have ethical duties. The Heisenbergian quantum imagery that emerges in discussing the interchange between the perceiver and the perceived (23) is intriguing. Grosz’ quote of Deleuze on framing music (20) suggest both authors’ secondary relationships with music. The frame as an initiating gesture will be a very useful concept in writing, and writing about, music.  Still, I’m uncertain about how ‘refrain’ is used, while I’m quite certain the musical frame is not limited to motif, air, theme. What about timeline, pitch range, and venue? Or, or, or. Irigaray’s (2) idea of “sexual specificity…as the very motor of cultural…production” needs further selling.  While the resonance with Maslow and the poignancy of elaborate bird mating rituals are compelling, we are also told that music spiritualizes the body (21).  I may agree with the assumption of chaos as the ground in which art forms a figure, but its Hegelian lack of lack is claustrophobic. Therefore I prefer the Shaivist spanda imagery in passages such as “the peristaltic movements, systole and diastole, contraction and expansion of the universe itself” (16).  

Reponse to Grosz - Daniel Christopher

Reading chapter 1 of Grosz’s *Chaos, Territory, Architecture*, I rediscovered some concepts I haven’t thought about in years, such as how philosophy can work with art, and the idea that architecture is “enframement, containment” of chaotic materials which require such demarcation in or to “induce sensation.” One criticism of this chapter is that the re-occuring theme of sexuality seems out of place, especially in the section *Architecture & the Frame.* One glaring example is on page 17 “the earth can be divided, territorialized, framed. But unless it is in someway demarcated, nature itself is incapable of sexualizing life…” After closely reading the paragraphs directly before this passage, my opinion isthat the sub-theme of sexuality is forced.

On the subject of philosophy working with art, I disagree with a number of Grosz’s claims. One being, “What philosophy can offer art is not a theory of art…but what philosophy and art share in common…in short, their capacity to enlarge the universe by enabling its potential to be otherwise, to be framed through concepts and affects.” (24) I’m skeptical - I would argue that art and philosophy have no direct effect on the universe, merely our perception of it.

One illuminating section caused me to reconsider how art can alienate the uneducated - “…art is not frivolous, an indulgence or a luxury…its it the most vital and direct form of impact on and through the body, the generation of vibratory waves, rhythms, that traverse the body and make of the body a link with forces it cannot otherwise perceive and act upon.” (23) Sometimes I think that it can be hard to appreciate certain contemporary artworks without rigorous academic training in art history. In my work, I desire to make pieces that are accessible to a wide range of folk, and ambitiously attempt to deepen their awareness when perceiving art. After all, in Grosz’s view art is not a luxury, and I believe that the masses should have access to this “most vital and direct form of impact on and through the body.”

Grosz on Deleuze on Everything Else — Helen Park

Reading Deleuze & Guattari is always like framing, reframing, deterritorializing, and blurring the boundaries of chaos, much like the work that art and philosophy do to the thinking, sensating, affecting body that Grosz elucidates here. I sometimes think of A Thousand Plateaus as a dematerialized artwork itself. Grosz’s writing is incredibly creative and evocative towards the mapping of new connections, overlays, and “lines of flight” between art and philosophy, as well as in thinking about the very ontology of both fields. In terms of this particular writing in relation to my own artistic practice, as I was reading I had a few questions that were not quite addressed, which are perhaps more philosophical than artistic, but can be connected nonetheless. These questions deal primarily with the congruencies or incongruencies between Grosz’s Œ”framing of Deleuze’s Œframing” of art in the ontological sense, and Peircian phenomenology and semiotics. Grosz writes, “Deleuze suggests, in opposition to those philosophical or phenomenological approaches to the arts that analyze their intentionality or the mutual engagements of subjects and objects in artworks, that the arts produce and generate intensity, that which directly impacts the nervous system and intensifies sensation. Art is the art of affect more than representation, a system of dynamized and impacting forces rather than a system of unique images that function under the regime of signs” (3). Would a Peircian understanding of phenomenology be disjunctive or counter toward this proposal? Deleuze drew much upon Peirce, particularly in Cinema 1 & Cinema 2, so I’m wondering why or if these writings were precluded in Grosz’s book (which perhaps I will find out once I get a full copy of it). Also, the footnote (#14) on page 18 states that “Deleuze himself seems rather contemptuous of postmodernist art, and especially conceptual art. ŠOne of the challenges facing Deleuzianism is how to direct a Deleuzian-inspired analysis to texts and movements for which he himself had little time.” Deleuze and Guattari have certainly found a home in contemporary new media theory practices and discourses, which is not to assume a sameness between postmodern/conceptual and new media art, but one should certainly acknowledge a lineage. And again, what of Deleuze’s writings on cinema ­ is this introduced or applied in this particular text by Grosz? I find the discussion around what we mean when we talk about art a bit limiting if we are to only think of painting or music what of other forms ­where would the Situationists fit in? And what about socially engaged situational art, happenings and other performative acts, Internet-based art, etc?

Response to Reading Week One — Questions and Dialogues — Jolie Ruelle

Over the past two quarters I have been working primarily in stop motion animation, and have been thinking about the transformation that happens when inanimate objects become animate. In reading the chapter Chaos, Cosmos, Territory, Architecture by Elizabeth Grosz I recognized that much of the process of animating objects is defining order within chaos and establishing a territory or frame where, through order, elements of that chaos can be felt. As Grosz states, “Sensation is what art forms from chaos through the extraction of qualities.”

When Grosz states that “Art enables matter to become expressive, to not just satisfy but also to intensify - to resonate and become more than itself.” I am immediately reminded of a scene in the Brothers Quay animation Street of Crocodiles. In the foreground a screw untwists itself from a windowsill and rolls across the screen. This action is immediately followed by other screws throughout the image, abandoning their positions in the structure. The difference of frames (the animators order) allows the viewer to imagine that this rebellious screw may have an awareness of itself. As Grosz put it “qualities are now loosened onto the world no longer anchored in their “natural “ place but put into the play of sensations that departs from mere survival to celebrate its means and excesses.”

I too think of art as having autonomy, a life of its own beyond whatever order or frame is establish. While at some points if feels as though art may be “the exteriorization of one’s own bodily forces and energies.” as Nietzsche’s believed, their is a stronger sense that as Grosz states art “emerges when sensation can detach itself and gain autonomy from its creator and its perceiver, when something of the chaos from which it is drawn can breath and have a life of its own.” Perhaps both are true, that the order that an artist asserts may be from within, but once expressed it draws from elements of chaos and is therefore autonomous.

Response to Grosz — Dan Heller

Humans have a unique ability among the animal kingdom to create mental abstractions. These are then used as basic foundational building blocks that can be assembled in infinite ways to both interpret and explain empirical observations and experiences. But, what we observe—and thus our interpretation of the universe—is itself filtered by our individuality. Henri Bergson wrote, “we perceive only that which interests us.” The human challenge is to overcome our ingrained tendency towards “confirmation bias” in our observations (and conclusions) about the universe, an affliction that bests even the most clever of philosophers.

This is not to suggest that there are no common denominators among individuals. Indeed, Grosz observes basic facts and draws similar conclusions as others have before (and after) her: the universe is a collection of atoms that interact with one another chaotically until they inadvertently assemble themselves into structures we call “life.” This is the first notion of “order from chaos.” And life continues to evolve to a point where human cognition is introduced, which allows for a higher level of order from chaos; one that can produce, or at least interpret, “art.”

Here is where Grosz expresses that “art is the art of affect more than representation.” That is, the *technique* of expressing an idea in a way that stimulates the emotive response is unique. Here, the ‘art’ is that unique ability to create a work that affects the viewer. This implies that representation alone is arbitrary and meaningless – it is only “art” if there is affect. A mere photo of a house is not considered art unless it has affect.

But here is where the circular dependency lies: who’s to say whether such a photo has affect? If it is a photo of a house where horrible injustices were done, then suddenly it has affect. The viewer, like a voyeur, stares at the house, as if from across the street, wondering what sort of evil happened inside? But let’s say the viewer wasn’t told anything at all – it’s just a photo of a house on a wall. Will the viewer read something into it anyway? Alophonso Lingis’ *Dangerous Emotions* challenges us with this question. He presents the reader with disturbing conceptual acts and scenes that greatly offend us, not for the purpose of jolting us, but to demonstrate that it is innate to human nature to be attracted to such things. Even if we are repelled by them, we still look, contemplate, imagine. There’s a human attraction to danger. We think about it, even when we don’t want to.

We, as humans, are *self-affective*: we can (and do) read all sorts of meaning into most anything, whether it’s there or not, whether we want to or not. The chaotic nature of our minds prevents us from maintaining full control all the time; we cannot fully filter out dangerous emotions, even though we can control our physical actions in the open world. If presentedan artifact and are told that it is “art,” we orient our minds towards that predisposition and begin the contemplation process: we examine, imagine, and let go of those filters that hold our dangerous emotions in place. We let chaos take over because we want to be affected.

Grosz says “the arts produce and generate intensity, impacting the nervous system.” Sure, but what is actually generated by the artwork and what is generated by our expectation that we should be so moved? The placebo effect is profoundly affective when it comes to interpreting art.

Grosz might counter this statement with indifference: that the organic origins of “art” can be found in many things in the universe, so it doesn’t matter where the “affectiveness” started, with the material work, or with the viewer, or with the artist. As long as there is affect, the work has achieved the status of “art”, and this could have only come into because of “*order from chaos*.” Living beings’ (“bodies”) “slow down chaos enough to extract from it something … intensifying, a performance, a refrain, an organization of color or movement that .. enables and induces art.”

The real question is “what is affective?” Much the same way one can ask, What is order? And thus, What is chaos? And finally, Where is the dividing line between order and chaos? We believe ourselves to be of a higher order than chaos, but are we? How is this measured? Just because we exist (“I think, therefore, I am”) does not necessarily imply order. We drift in and our of chaotic thought uncontrollably all the time, as Lingis says. Indeed, some of the greatest artists are known to be the least “ordered” in their cognitive capacities—raging madmen, self-destructive, cruel, and suicidal. If there’s any true attribute of chaos, self-annihilation is surely a candidate.

(Research on human corpses asks the provocative question: when is death? Biological processes in the body continue, often for weeks, just because there is sufficient fuel and organic material to allow it to continue. Chaos, it seems, cannot be so easily nailed down.)

So what is Grosz’ end goal with her essay? She says, “Exploring the relations that art establishes between the living body, the forces of the universe, the creation of the future, and abstract questions … may provide a new way of understanding the concrete and the lived.”

To this I ask, which part is “new”? The *understanding*, or the *way of understanding,* or even* the concrete and lived?* In all cases, she argues that simply being aware of the connections between the forces of the universe and art will help us better understand life and the concrete realities that affect us emotionally and profoundly.

I don’t presume to disagree with this thesis, but I would suggest that it’s hardly as achievable as she seems to imply. If anything, I believe that her premise provokes far more questions than it answers. And, indeed, this is often a byproduct of well-executed artworks. Life and the universe, order and chaos, and many other paradoxes in our cognitive understanding of things are ambiguous. If Grosz’ approach is to draw the common denominators between art and other universal elements as a way of providing a “new way ofunderstanding the concrete and lived,” that doesn’t yet tell us anything. Are we to draw conclusions about art we never considered before? Or, is she proposing that her approach helps us understand a whole new concept entirely? 

My personal take on this essay begins with a thesis about philosophy: Not everyone shares the same observations or experiences during their existence. As they build their own associations between life experiences and conceptual abstractions (which are used in a feedback mechanism to both explain and interpret events—the concrete and lived), they begin to diverge just a bit more from others. Philosophers therefore face a conundrum: are their own observations as universally applicable as they believe they are? Or, are they encapsulated in their own self-created perception of the universe? To be self-aware of this paradox, thinkers like Elizabeth Grosz have to walk a delicate line: be generic and abstract enough in their observations and conclusions, or risk overstating their case? In this essay, Grosz walks the line well and makes observations that are straightforward enough to avoid objection in principle. Yet, always aware that she may be criticized for Bergson’s accusation of only noticing what interests her, she remains solely at this higher level. And while I applaud her master craftsmanship in the art of writing philosophically as she articulates her thesis and defense, I humbly confess she uncovers no new concepts or conclusions for me.

(Personal postscript: Despite the confidence expressed in my summary paragraph, I do not pretend to be well-versed in the background of Elizabeth Grosz or in the broader academic depth of this material, despite my having attempted to do some research. I am always greatly humbled when those more learned than myself explain oh so articulately everything that went way over my head when I first read the essay. I fully expect to experience this phenomenon again here.)

Elizabeth Grosz (2008) Chaos, Territory, Art

Post responses here (about 250 words, not counting quoted texts…but don’t limit yourself strictly…) related to readings from Elizabeth Grosz’s (2008) Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth. The response should include some precise quotes from the reading, and a reflect on its relevance to your work, or to something else of interest to you; it can also just be your abstract interpretation of the reading.

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