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Apr
17
What. Ever. From the Chicago Tribune:
A Yale University student’s senior art project, which she said documented her bleeding during repeated self-induced abortions, sparked a protest on campus, an outcry on the Internet, and debates over morality, medicine, art and academia.
And — it was all faked. Senior Aliza Shvarts told Yale officials Thursday that she didn’t get pregnant and didn’t have abortions. But that didn’t stop an outpouring of emotion as the story spread.
I swear – like I said before. God – please, do not have one of my kids test my unconditional love for them this way. I’m just not radical enough to say, “You go grrrl – cool.” Call me…whatever.
My original post. I go with the comment about the mental health issues. How did this student get into Yale? Don’t answer that.
From the New York Sun on it being faked:
The Yale Daily News reported this morning that 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 the post-abortion blood.
“Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art,” a Yale spokeswoman, Helaine Klasky, 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.”
Hmm – does the fact that she didn’t actually do it make it any less a red flag of serious mental and physical health concerns?
Hattip to this comment for the Sun article.
UPDATE: Feministing blogs about it last night here and points to this Yale Daily News item that has Shvarts sounding rather schizophrenic in the true sense of the word:
“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.
Pia Lindman, Shvarts’s thesis adviser, and Davenport College Dean Craig Harwood could not be reached for comment Thursday. Art Director of Undergraduate Studies Henk van Assen deferred comment to the Yale Office of Public Affairs.
To all who argue that no mental health issue is involved, I completely disagree. Something that needs attention is going on this young woman’s mind and clearly she is trying to find a way to express it – but, IMO? She’s not doing a very good job of it. In art, fiction or oral storytelling of her efforts.
Be sure to read the comments at the Yale article.
Update x2: From the author, via Feministing:
As an intervention into our normative understanding of .the real. and its accompanying politics of convention, this performance piece has numerous conceptual goals. The first is to assert that often, normative understandings of biological function are a mythology imposed on form. It is this mythology that creates the sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist and homophobic perspective, distinguishing what body parts are .meant. to do from their physical capability. The myth that a certain set of functions are .natural. (while all the other potential functions are .unnatural.) undermines that sense of capability, confining lifestyle choices to the bounds of normatively defined narratives.
Just as it is a myth that women are .meant. to be feminine and men masculine, that penises and vaginas are .meant. for penetrative heterosexual sex (or that mouths, anuses, breasts, feet or leather, silicone, vinyl, rubber, or metal implements are not .meant. for sex at all), it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are .meant. to birth a child.
When considering my own bodily form, I recognize its potential as extending beyond its ability to participate in a normative function. While my organs are capable of engaging with the narrative of reproduction . the time-based linkage of discrete events from conception to birth . the realm of capability extends beyond the bounds of that specific narrative chain. These organs can do other things, can have other purposes, and it is the prerogative of every individual to acknowledge and explore this wide realm of capability.
Here’s the comment I left:
I’m with Kate on this – what other functions is she talking about re: ovaries, fallopian tubes and the uterus?
They give me cysts and cramps? How exactly does a project about a process by which one can get pregnant and then can choose to try to not get pregnant show us how the reproductive organs are inside us for other purposes?
“Wide realm of capability”?
I wish she would enumerate because I’m missing those ideas.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:03 pm April 17th, 2008 in Abortion, Blogging, Civil Rights, Health Care, Marketing, Media, Social Issues, Women, Writing
Comments
17 Responses to “[update] Yale art student’s art project now called creative fiction hoax”
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[...] The student who created the project says it’s not real, only a creative fiction [...]
“Hmm – does the fact that she didn’t actually do it make it any less a red flag of serious mental and physical health concerns?”
Ummm… yes.
I was thoroughly disgusted by this “project” when it was real, but as a hoax it’s actually artistic.
Certainly you don’t question the mental health of art that discusses rape or murder, while actual rape and murder are of course reprehensible.
Go back to watching Dexter and don’t worry about this one.
Russ – thanks for reading and commenting.
I never wrote about whether I thought it was or wasn’t art – I’m still not sure.
But regardless, history includes many brilliant artists who had serious mental health issues. Ms. Shvarts wouldn’t be the first.
Not sure who Dexter is?
Faked or not, it’s absolutely devoid of decorum. There are ways, and I’m sure a creative mind can determine them, without touching off these types of sensitivities.
Perhaps I’m cynical, but I fail to see how this “art” project sparked any real discussion about abortion. Indeed, here in the comments we’re debating whether it’s art and if the student suffers poor mental health.
This is the type of “academic work” being produced at one our nation’s premeire colleges? I am certain that we have subsidized this “college education” via the federal student loan program. Why? What does it benefit the taxpayers who subsidize and pay off these loans when students like this (who could never get a real job in the real world) default on their loans. If Fingerhut wants to change higher education in this state then slash arts programs. You want to be an artist, do it on your own dime.
Honestly? If abortion is not murder, if the right to choose resides strictly in the consciousness of the mother, then there is absolutely no reason to object to this, even if it wasn’t fake. As a piece of pro-life agitprop that has snagged the attention and shifted the position of hundreds of thousands, I find it a compelling piece of work. I’m not surprised she’s at a top university, nor do I think she is mentally ill.
bonobo,
Abortion is murder. “if the right to choose resides strictly in the consciousness of the mother” – no bonobo, a human life resides in the womb of a pregnant woman, you however trivialize it as a mental exercise.
“agitprop”? – yes, this is very much like Russian propaganda – lies to promulgate a devoid philosophy of moral relativism.
I agree with you, she does belong in a top university, which have become our nation’s mental institutions.
Joe
If abortion is not murder then this is similar to cutting or other behaviors that could harm the self so it’s still pretty disgusting.
If there were an aesthetic component you could put it on par with body modification, but I think (if it were a real project) it would be both more dangerous and have no innate appeal.
However as a hoax all it does is make us confront our feelings on it, and while we can rationally evaluate where this _should_ fit in our “outrage hierarchy”, finding ourselves having a greater or lesser reaction could actually teach us about ourselves.
Like perhaps we do feel that abortion is murder.
Joe doesn’t get it, to the extent that this work takes a side, it was a radically pro-life project. Russ, your last paragraph gets right at the nature of the work, and I agree with you that the hoax aspect makes it much easier to grasp the abstract argument, but it would never have worked if most of us were not taken in. If it were purely a body-mod/cutting thing, you’re right – it would have been pathetic in every sense of that word.
That it has to be revealed as a hoax for us to “get it” says more about the audience than the artist. On the other hand, I agree with you that the fact that she could have it both ways (causing her audience to engage in uncomfortable self-examination without the actual mutilation) is a much more impressive achievement than actually engaging in the behavior as performance would have been.
I think we’re on the same page mostly.
I would say that not being able to sit through an arbitrary amount of gore to get to a point is not really damning for an audience.
point taken.
Although perhaps I have given her too much credit.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24559
“This is the type of “academic work” being produced at one our nation’s premeire colleges? I am certain that we have subsidized this “college education” via the federal student loan program. Why? What does it benefit the taxpayers who subsidize and pay off these loans when students like this (who could never get a real job in the real world) default on their loans. If Fingerhut wants to change higher education in this state then slash arts programs. You want to be an artist, do it on your own dime.”
I can’t let this go.
Joe, this is the basic difference between your kind and the rest of the sentient world. If we do what you want we literally throw the baby out with the bath water. Art is a subjective, nuanced discipline and people who view their lives and works as having no other intrinsic value than generating profits cannot grasp the concept. I could go on about the long history of subsidized art going back beyond the Middle Ages but what of it? If one can’t get any appreciation from ANY kind of art and appreciate the value it gives to our lives and culture than my words will not resonate with anything in your heart.
Yes of course there is so much we could do with the money we don’t spend on arts programs – for children as well as adults. The Air Force still wants their next generation fighter and a whole host of arms manufacturers are waiting for that precious socialized taxpayer money to fund their weapons of mass destruction to continue to bring “freedom” to brown skinned people at the business end of a rifle. Socialism is great for Bear Stearns and Halliburton but bad for the arts. Our precious taxpayer dollars must go to something both tangibly profitable and destructive to life far more than anything Ms. Shvarts could ever launch.
I fear for the world run by people with your worldview. What a cold and dark world that would be.
I fear for the world run by people with your worldview. What a cold and dark world that would be.
I fear a world run by people who are arguing in support of this worthless garbage even more.
Russ:
Read.
ALL.
My.
Comments.
Again.
Slowly.
Try NOT to move your lips.
Concentrate.
Bad American. No need to be a condescending *sshole. I completely understood what you were saying. I piggybacked off you last comment. Please read it sl-o-o-wly so you get it:
You fear a world that is run by people who do not want to subsidize the arts. I fear, even more, a world run by people who defend this girl’s work.
Please try to keep your self-perceived ginormous brain from over-thinking a simple comment.
That was the POINT – I was NOT defending her work just Joe’s blanket statements. But right wingers always seize on these isolated incidents to smear all publicly funded art.
I always love it when righties get their knickers twisted when someone calls them on their stupidity and artlessness. Don’t like it? Too bad.