UPDATE: As Serious George correctly pointed out in the combox, it turns out that it may be a hoax. Read about it here.
This from this morning's 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.
You can read the rest of the article here.
Comments (16)
This is devotional art, of a diabolical sort. Art is always associated with religious affirmations, rituals, and sacraments, since these are revelatory of being, and this, too, is art's vocation. Hence, what this project asserts is that Life is Death, Being is Nothingness, Will is Truth.
There is wisdom in repugnance.
Posted by Maximos | April 17, 2008 1:20 PM
Is there any possibility that she's lying?
I suppose we can hope so, in a weird way.
Posted by Lydia | April 17, 2008 1:56 PM
I must admit that not only was my urge to understand opposing viewpoints insufficient to get me to click to read the rest, but I was not tempted in the slightest to do so.
I suspect that time will reveal some unintended conqsequence for this hubris. Hers, not mine.
Posted by Loren Heal | April 17, 2008 4:15 PM
One may hope that she is lying, though I think this unlikely. One may also hope that she repents one day, as stranger things have transpired.
Posted by Maximos | April 17, 2008 4:21 PM
Many people are claiming to be shocked by this behavior, but there's no reason to be.
Such behavior is the logical end of the life-hating, lefty abortophiliac mindset that dominates our elite schools.
Ideas have consequences. Some ideas lead to truly human art. Some, like the ones this girl was fed, lead to young women giving themselves abortions in a bathtub. That's reality. What's to be shocked about?
Posted by Dean | April 17, 2008 4:46 PM
Wow, this was by far the the most rapid acting emetic I've ever experienced! This girl could certainly use our prayers.
Posted by Jd | April 17, 2008 4:51 PM
It gets harder and harder to be transgressive.
Posted by steve burton | April 17, 2008 6:26 PM
Revolting, but not suprising these days. Reading it almost made me physically ill (not a usual reaction for me, even when reading about vile things). I'll pray that one day she'll repent.
Posted by Joe Lammers | April 17, 2008 6:57 PM
Turns out the "artist" works in fiction.
Posted by Serious George | April 17, 2008 8:40 PM
Thanks, George. Good. She _was_ lying.
What a despicable lie. But still, better than if it had been real.
Posted by Lydia | April 17, 2008 9:13 PM
I grateful to have been wrong about this one. But it was despicable, even as fiction and performance - yes, despicable is the word.
Posted by Maximos | April 17, 2008 9:19 PM
Culture of death, nonetheless.
Posted by Kyle R. Cupp | April 17, 2008 9:35 PM
Someone with a keener ear than mine pointed out the irony of the last sentence in the Yale PR statement:
"Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns."
Posted by Serious Goerge | April 17, 2008 9:58 PM
Well, according to the link, it's *not* exactly a hoax: Shvarts denies Yale's denial (more or less):
"...Shvarts reiterated Thursday that she repeatedly use a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself. At the end of her menstrual cycle, she took abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding, she said. She said she does not know whether or not she was ever pregnant.
"'No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen,' Shvarts said, 'because the nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties.'
"This afternoon, Shvarts showed the News footage from tapes she plans to play at the exhibit. The tapes depict Shvarts — sometimes naked, sometimes clothed — alone in a shower stall bleeding into a cup...
"...Shvarts said the goal of her exhibition was to spark conversation and debate about the relationship between art and the human body."
Etc.
Posted by steve burton | April 18, 2008 9:50 AM
She is lying about the method used. I went to a feminist blog and they said it was nearly impossible for her to survive using an herbal method as often as she claimed. It is a form of Russian roulette, and with no medical consultation before, during, or after, it would have an exponentially higher chance of killing her compared to the embryo, assuming she told the truth about the attempts to get pregnant.
Posted by Step2 | April 18, 2008 5:39 PM
Well, then, gee, Step2.
I guess it's just "art".
Posted by steve burton | April 18, 2008 8:33 PM