Ready the fainting couches! Prepare emergency pearl-restringing machines! Anti-choice heads are a-popping!
From the Yale Daily News:
Art major Aliza Shvarts ’08 wants to make a statement.
Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.
And no. We are not making this up.
But we do wonder why no one ever thought of this sorta stunt before.
Wow! That is one interesting art project. Some fetishists may find their strings in a knot over this one, I’m sure!
I’m not anti-choice, but my head’s a-popping. My grandmother suffered five miscarriages. I fail to see how this is art. Maybe I’m missing something?
Well, I think its personally disgusting, but since Ms Shwarts used her own body and the products of her own body to produce this, with her own consent and by her own choice, she is free to do what ever she wants.
I wouldn’t go see it, but thats my choice to make, as creating it was her choice.
A bit overkill if you ask me. She could have just named each one and posted the pictures on her blog and the fetus fetishists would have loved it.
Right?
Mike: That crossed my evul mind, too.
The show opens next week. I can’t wait to see the protests.
Are we sure this isn’t a hoax of some kind?
*blink*
*stare*
OK, seriously, this has to be a hoax.
Why would you do this to yourself? How many times can you possibly impregnate yourself in the span of 9 months? Even at a once a month rate of ovulation, not every month is going to result in pregnancy.
If she waits until she actually knows that she is pregnant, she’s into the next cycle, plus then time for the abortifacient to kick in, and the abortion to exit (dude, that is not instantaneous, trust me on that one).
OK, so now we’re down to 4 tops, assuming she manages to abort at 2 weeks pregnant.
I’m betting it’s a hoax – a hoax meant to garner as much attention as possible, which she’s getting – and yet, I am underwhelmed by it. I’d put money on it being a series of bloody sheets from her period, which is a hell of a lot less scandalous, so lie about it, why don’t you?
And much as I thought, it’s a hoax.
http://www.yale.edu/opa/
hoax or not, the all-crap, all-whining zygote zealots will, ahem, lap this up.
so…
chocolate fetus anyone?
No, thanks but I’ll have a zygote gummy, if you don’t mind.
When a friend emailed this to me yesterday, I thought, wait a sec..where have I heard this before? There was a male artist out of Banff who did an installation piece consisting of a large *sealed* box suspended high above the ground outside amid trees that he purported to contain multiple containers of his ejaculate, all carefully labeled on the outside of the box of when he ‘created’ each sample and how much it was in volume (speaking from memory instead of googlin). The point of the piece seemed to be people took his word for what was in the box and despite it just being a box to anyone’s eyes “think of the children” squawking ensued. So my initial wonder was if she’d heard of that and was being derivative, or came up with her project on her own.
My personal question is, has art become a matter of merrily lying through your teeth to provoke sputtering in people and publicity you wouldn’t have otherwise garnered? It certainly takes the ‘artistic justification’ blurb box posted beside most abstract pieces to new levels. (I tend to call those the bullshit box, knowing art students who make it up when forced to do the blurb by an instructor) On a more serious level, the artist in question produced a thought experiment. I don’t know if it’s art, but it is an illustration…of how people in this society are programmed to think about sex and abortion.