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Apr
17
Update: The student who created the project says it’s not real, only a creative fiction project.
Please, God. Do not let my kids grow up to be artists like this one. It would really test that unconditional love thing parents are supposed to have for kids.
Some info from the story:
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.
…
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.
I want to be more radical in many ways, but I just don’t think I can go this way.
Thoughts?
Hattip to this comment by Charlie Stross.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 3:22 pm April 17th, 2008 in Abortion, Culture, Social Issues, Women
Comments
9 Responses to “[update] Yale art student: Inseminates self, takes abortion drug & videos own miscarriages”
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“The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body.”
I fail to see how a collection of medical biohazard waste (with video documenting the production of said waste) qualifies as “art.” I won’t even go into the repeated, deliberate weirdness involved with the abortifacient drugs.
It probably qualifies as a pathology in the DSM-IV, though.
Hey, if this is considered art,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPlQsEyHQOo
(it’s in the Modern Museum of Art in NYC), then I don’t see why this student’s project can’t be.
(FWIW, I don’t think either qualifies as art.)
Yeah, the mental health implications of her idea of art and her employment of her body in creating that idea of art really disturb me. But I obviously don’t know this person. I’m saying, as a woman who has given birth and as a mother.
This is disgusting. I cant add much more than that to this.
This is, perhaps, one of the sickest things I’ve heard of in a long time. I’m appalled and I don’t appall easily. And I agree with Len on the pathology of this behavior.
[...] My original post. The New York Sun’s item on it being a hoax, sort of. I go with the comment about the mental health issues. How did this student get into Yale? Don’t answer that. [...]
UPDATE: It’s not real – kind of. The student now says she never did those things and it’s really just a creative fiction project.
Read more here.
O…M…G…!!!!
Can I puke now???
Fact or fiction, this is in very poor taste and this person has made a fool of herself.