Life is Colorful

Elizabeth Grosz provides her reader with a new perspective and way of thinking about art in Chaos, Territory, Art. She opens by discussing the concept of chaos, which she defines as a myriad of forces that, for the most part, cannot be distinguished from one another (5). It is only through the extrapolation of the various qualities within art that sensation is able to exist. According to Grosz, "art is always the coupling of extracted elements from the cosmological order and their integration into the lived experience and behavior of organisms" (45). This means that elements consisting of one's culture, behavior, and experiences, in combination of components from the earth and 'cosmological order,' come together to form art.

Taking Grosz's words into consideration, I keep thinking about the Indian holiday Holi, or, rather, The Festival of Colors. The festival takes place annually in order to celebrate the beginning of spring as well as the religion and legends of those from India. It also holds social significance, as it is a way for the country to be strengthened and form a sense of community.

Starting with this...

Those that participate in the Festival of Colors acquire colored powder, which can be made from flowers or berries, or when I went to a celebration a couple years ago, we used baby powder and food coloring. Participants enjoy tossing the colors on each other, essentially using the colored powder as the paint, and the people are their canvas. Music plays in the background, soliciting everyone to dance and just enjoy themselves and each other's company. Through the sensations one receives from the environment created--the laughter and joy from the sense of fun, the colorful atmosphere, and the rhythm and beat of the music as well as the dancing--a form of art is created. Grosz explains: Art "is linked to those processes of distancing and the production of a plane of composition that abstracts sensations from the body" (11). Holi is partially about having fun, creating the sensation of joy that eludes from one's body, producing 'a plane of composition' through the colored powder and music.

...& ending with this.

The chaos that Grosz outlines in her book correlates with Holi in that the festival is centered on a plethora of concepts (religious or otherwise) and legends, many of which blend together from similar ideals, making it difficult to differentiate. Moreover, the music itself is "linked to expression and intensification," which Grosz explicates in regards to Darwinism (33). Holi is for people of all ages, including children, so sexual selection is less of a factor. However, the music, and the dancing that follows, is a way to express oneself, which is one of the concepts that is at the core and initial stages of Darwinism. Grosz further states, art "is 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 a body a link with forces...it is culture's most direct mode of enhancement or intensification of bodies [and] culture's mode for the elaboration of sensations" (23). The Festival of Colors allows for one to indirectly come in contact with nature and earth through the colored powder (if it is made from flowers, for example, which is common for children), and through the process of tossing color on other bodies as well as dancing and/or listening to the rhythms of the music, transmitting through each body creating a sensation, art is being composed and created.

Yep, I'm colorful.

One excerpt from Grosz's book that strikes me in relation to Holi, in the end, is this: "While there is no universal art, no art form, no music or painting, that appeals everywhere in the same way, it is also true that there is no culture without its own arts, without its own forms of bodily enhancement and intensification" (23). India holds The Festival of Colors as an example of its culture, its own form of such bodily enhancement and art.