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. [Full article in link]
BrianIs AtYou
All of my nieces and nephews at my godson/nephew Nicholas's Medical School graduation. Now a neurosurgical resident at University of Arizona, Tucson.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
It makes a mockery of BOTH the sanctity of life AND a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion when faced with the dilemna of an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy. Even the tenuous legal grounds of Roe v Wade under which abortion is deemed to be legal based on a presumed right of privacy cannot possibly apply to a situation like this.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
It's being frivolous with potential human life. I am pro-choice, but this kind of self-indulgent callousness is not what I mean to support.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
That is certainly a reasonable position to take, Eru. I admit that my comment was more made from a visceral, emotional reaction than from a legal perspective. Still, I do think that if a state or local government were to declare something like this illegal, they would be on pretty firm legal grounds.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
Perhaps we can abstract this from the moral issue for a moment and ask first whether blood smeared on plastic sheeting constitutes art in and of itself.
Why would the fact that it is menstrual blood make it art if ordinary blood would not be?
I made a video of my daughter's wedding. Is that art? How about the childbirth videos that some families make. Are they art? If I took any kind of home movie of myself at all, what would make that art and not just self-indulgence? Why would the fact that this video is allegedly a forced miscarriage turn it into art when otherwise this kind of film would not be considered art? Is she being graded on her film-making techniques? (It doesn't say anything about that, does it. Only about her choice of "medium." Revealing, yes?)
Anyway, the project cannot stand alone without her polemic narrative, and for that reason it cannot be considered art, imo. She's saying that the medium is her message, but the medium as presented to the audience does not actually reveal the message. There's no way to tell from looking at blood or at a video of a woman collecting blood whether a two-celled life form is actually present. We have only her narrative, external to the project, to inform us that inseminations and abortions actually took place. Without that, her message is ... hey, look at me naked in the bathtub! I figured out how to smear my menstrual blood on plastic sheeting.
I bet she can paint with her feces too if she sets her mind to it, and even video herself collecting her "medium."
But seems to me as a research/art project, the plug should have been pulled on this thing by whatever Human Subjects committee functions at her school. Because she's definitely harming herself, taking all these drugs all the time. No committee would allow a professor to do that to any research subject, and really she should not be allowed to do that to herself. She's still a student, not an entirely free-standing crazy political artist.
And as V's comments (and others here) suggest, whatever political point she's wanting to make is just One Huge Backfire.
Yale is now saying it thinks it was a hoax.
The woman denies it.
Since there is no committee that gets to define what art is for all of us (this isn't France, you know. ) I would say that if she wants it to be art it is.
Is it any good? Is it repugnant? Is it ethical? Very different questions.
Interesting, Ax. So in your opinion, what is art is determined subjectively by the artist? Does the audience make their own decision, or must they always accept the creator's definition?
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
Art is like a roach motel. Once it's in the category, it can't get out.
I've been working under this definition for some time now--that art is what one calls the product of artistic intent--and I'm quite happy with it. It doesn't make any subjective judgments about quality, utility, et al. Those can still be made, but I think that saying only "good" art can be called art is silly. Why except art from every other human endeavor? Does a baseball game have to involve professionals to be baseball? Does a business deal have to make money to be business? Does a relationship have to last a lifetime to be a relationship?
Of course, it also means that in my opinion, the vast majority of art isn't very good.
axordil wrote:Is it any good? Is it repugnant? Is it ethical? Very different questions.
Those questions are much more important to me than the vague, undefined, amorphous question of "is it art".
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
axordil wrote:Is it any good? Is it repugnant? Is it ethical? Very different questions.
Those questions are much more important to me than the vague, undefined, amorphous question of "is it art".
In defense of the vague question, it's a convenient shorthand. But it can become in the wrong hands (as opposed to those on the keyboards here) problematic. If, by dismissing something as Not Art, what's really going on is a dismissal of the ideas behind that something, or the person expressing those ideas, it can turn the art/not art question into a judgment of the worth of a human being, not of some image that person created. It's been used that way a lot over the centuries, alas.
I do not say that it is not an important question. It's just not that important of a question to me.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
AtYou
) I would say that if she wants it to be art it is.