The Ming Period

It starts here, in 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.

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."

The "fabricators," or donors, of the sperm were not paid for their services, but Shvarts required them to periodically take tests for sexually transmitted diseases. She said she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages...

"I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity," Shvarts said. "I think that I'm creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be."

The display of Schvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

Cue predictable outrage - and some serious doubts about whether she really did what she claims she did.

And it turns out that she didn't. It's all a "creative fiction":

A Yale University student’s bizarre claim to have repeatedly impregnated herself and induced abortions that she videotaped for use in a senior art project is a work of “creative fiction,” the university said yesterday.

Aliza Shvarts’s senior project, set to go on display next week, included video of her bleeding in her bathtub, as well as plastic sheeting layered with a mixture of Vaseline and post-abortion blood, the Yale Daily News reported yesterday.

“Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art. 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,” a Yale spokeswoman, Helaine Klasky, said in a statement sent by e-mail to reporters. “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.”

So there you go: drawing attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body. And, of course, to Aliza Shvarts.

Ms. Shvarts has long displayed a keen interest in issues relating to human reproduction. Her account of her first menstruation, “The Ming Period,” appears on a Web site devoted to such stories, My1stPeriod.com. In 2006, a Yale journal published a photograph of one of her creations, “Disarticulation.” The sculpture, said to be made from plaster, Vaseline, towels, rubber bands, and latex gloves, resembles male and female reproductive organs.

Ms. Shvarts outlined some of her personal philosophy as she took part in a performance art event Ms. Lindman organized earlier this month at Federal Hall in Manhattan, where members of the public were invited to stand on a soapbox and speak their piece.

“We have this huge f—ing institution telling us: ‘That’s what power looks like. That’s what empowerment looks like.’ It’s these patriarchal, heteronormative trappings of a voice, of a right to speak, but really I think we should think more about it,” the Yale student said, according to a video posted on YouTube but removed last night. “We need to stop being sheep.”

Ms. Shvarts also railed against those who take a narrow view of what constitutes art. “People have to stop being so dismissive about what art is. It has to stop hanging on the wall. It has to be something lived, breathed every day,” she said.

Comments

[dearieme]

The indoctrination certainly worked on her.

[grassmarket]

No, now she's saying it happened after all.

http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24528

[Alcuin]

I am reminded of the beggar in the Monty Python film Jabberwocky, who cuts bits off himself for money. And of Nigel Neale's play "The Year of the Sex Olympics". And freak shows of past centuries. Is there any end to the deranged behaviour that people are capable of? What next, cat burning as an art form? This is little better than snuff films (if there ever were such things), or Ogrish.com. But we are so "sophisticated" these days and our moral senses are so dulled that we just accept this as an example of how Liberal we are.

In a recent post on Rwanda, Norm noted that while professional people walked by on the other side as massacres were perpetrated around them, it was peasants who saved some of the intended victims. That is where "liberal values" (aka moral relativism) can lead. I say this wretched woman deserves all the opprobrium that comes her way. She should get a real job.

[DaninVan]

"Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project,"
Maybe an 'F' would give her a reality check. No explanation, just an 'F'.

[Fabian from Israel]

F. This is what power looks like. :)

I like it.