Abortion as art

Original 4/17/08 1:34pm:
This girl is clearly deeply, DEEPLY disturbed and sick.

For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse

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.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts’ project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock — saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for “shock value.”

“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”
[Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight]

...

Obviously this is a cry for help. This girl is suffering, possibly from a past abortion, and someone from Yale needs to step in and get her professional help instead of attributing this warped behavior to creativity and "art."

(On a side note, whenever I hear of beyond-ridiculous modern art pieces, I am always tempted to quit my job and smear feces on a lit Christmas tree or pour milk in a box, let it curdle and spoil, then submit it to art competitions where I will win numerous awards and sell pieces of shit for millions of dollars. Maybe someday...)

UPDATE 1 - 4/17/08 10:10pm

Yale: Student's Art Project Only 'Creative Fiction'

"Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art," a Yale spokeswoman, Helaine Klaski, said. "She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body."

Ms. Klasky went on to suggest that Yale would not have permitted a project of the sort described in the student newspaper. "Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns."

Phew! My faith in humanity has been restored . . . for now . . .


UPDATE 2 - 4/18/08 11:20am

I am confused

Shvarts, Yale clash over project

...But while Shvarts stood by her project and claimed that administrators had backed her before the planned exhibition attracted national condemnation, the university dismissed it as nothing more than a piece of fiction.

...But in an interview later Thursday afternoon, Shvarts defended her work and called the University’s statement “ultimately inaccurate.” She reiterated that she engaged in the nine-month process she publicized on Wednesday in a press release that was first reported in the News: repeatedly using a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself, then taking abortifacient herbs at the end of her menstrual cycle to induce bleeding. Thursday evening, in a tour of her art studio, she shared with the News video footage she claimed depicted her attempts at self-induced miscarriages.

“No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen,” Shvarts said, adding that she does not know whether she was ever pregnant. “The nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties.”

Told of Shvarts’ comments, the University fired back. In a statement issued just before midnight on Thursday, Klasky told the News that Shvarts had vowed that if the University revealed her admission, “she would deny it.”

“Her denial is part of her performance,” Klasky wrote in an e-mail message. “We are disappointed that she would deliberately lie to the press in the name of art.”