The Interesting Case of Aliza Shvarts

[jackofallgeeks]

"Officials said Shvarts' description of her creative process as well as her
subsequent denial that the description was fictitious were all just part of
her performance."

For those just joining us, a senior at Yale's art program is in the middle
of, I think, a
rather interesting news flurry regarding the controvercial nature of her
most recent project. Pardon me if this is too graphic -- it's definitely a
bit too squicky for me -- but Shvarts claims that she artificially
inseminated herself and then self-induced 'miscarriages' using certain
herbal concoctions. She says she did it so that her 'miscarriage'
corresponded with her period, so she never knew if she was actually
pregnant, but that blood from her period would constuitute part of the
exhibit.

There was, apparently, a big outrage over this, which then turned into Yale
saying the story is a fiction and part of the 'performance' of Shvarts' art,
and Shvarts herself standing by her story and claiming that Yale is just
trying to save face after giving her permission to do the project.

I'm inclined myself to believe it's all a great farce, that the whole thing
is a performance including the school's denouncment of Shvarts and 'removal'
of her exhibit from the art show. I think they're all in on the game and
that her art is in seeing how we the people react to this manufactured
scandal. It's got all the right pieces, from a controvercial (even
grotesque) art piece, and a school's persecution of an artist, and claims
that the institution is putting on a pretty face because they're getting
negative attention. And I think that the fact that this is Yale and not,
say, Maryland University or Boston College, adds credence to this hypothesis
because not only COULD Yale get away with a stunt like this, they'd probably
give it a go, too.

That being said (and maybe this speaks to why I think it's a hoax), I don't
get why this is an issue. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm personally
appauled that anyone could possibly think this exhibit -- the insemination
and the blood and the 'miscarriages' -- would be a good idea. If it
actually happened the way Shvarts says it did I think she's a rather
wretched human being on a number of levels -- but all for reasons that set
me apart from what it is our society seems to think is OK. We have
abortions every day, and while it is a controvertial topic, as it stands now
our society approves of if not condones abortion. Sex itself
is in a strange, half-taboo position in society; we won't talk about
consensual intercourse in polite company (or public TV), but all sorts of
violence is thrown about casually and society condones pretty much anything
that goes on behind closed doors between two consenting adults (unless you
live in Virginia or Utah). And those two points seem to be key in this case
of a girl inseminating herself and subsequently inducing miscarriages -- it
happens every day in America and no one thinks anything of it, she's
just abstracted it and turned it into an art piece -- not art like Classical
Art, I propose, but art in the more modern sense of saying something.

I know why I'm repulsed, because what she's claimed to do is squarely
against a good deal of what I think is right and proper. What I don't get
is why the society that condones this same behavior in private is in an
uproar over it in art.

Comments

[mmeubiquitous.livejournal.com]

As you can probably imagine, as a pro-life Yale alumna, I've been following this pretty closely. And I gotta say... I haven't even *thought* that the university could be in on the stunt. That's *brilliant*. if true... wow. I wouldn't put it past a number of the people involved. Dean Salovey, for instance, is rather known for his use of theatrics in the classroom.

I sincerely hope this *is* just a big study in public controversy... That's far, FAR more interesting, not to say moral, than what it currently purports to be.

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

I think it's almost certainly a hoax. Knowing how universities work (though not Yale specifically), I'd bet that the prof was in on it, but that the university leadership didn't even know the content of the exhibition until someone complained.

That said... while I know you disagree with me on this, surely you can recognize that there's a big difference between thinking that women ought to have the legal right to terminate pregnancies if they believe it is the best course of action, and thinking that having an abortion (or inducing a miscarriage) is morally trivial. There are plenty of things that I think folks ought to be able to decide for themselves that are of the greatest moral import. The mantra of at least one strand in the abortion debate (including, in my experience, most of the folks seriously involved in pro-choice policy, as opposed to internet crazies), is "safe, legal, and rare." Yeah, there are folks who think that abortions are no more morally fraught than appendectomies - but they're only one faction in the pro-choice camp, and not, I think, the mainstream.