This is wonderful explanation of an artwork that has been condemned without being understood.
This is absolutely one of the stupidest things I have ever read. Hey Aliza: A dog and a cat are not different animals only because we call them different names. Nor does our "act of naming" create, in any sense, the difference between a pregnancy and a period.
Just because you make something unclear in your sick little experiment doesn't mean it reflects a larger ambiguity. If I have a glass of Pepsi and a glass of Coke on the table and I close my eyes and grab one, the fact that I don't know which one I'm drinking doesn't mean that the sodas are different only because they're called "Pepsi" and "Coke."
All your experiment has done is give women's rights, Yale, and art itself a bad name. Don't insult our intelligence by trying to suggest it wasn't for shock value - it was, and is, all for shock value.
It doesn't matter how many intellectual buzzwords you try to use to justify it, you fail to present any kind of logical argument for why this piece is worthwhile. But it did give you lots of attention, so congrats! You've given the people who hate everything you believe in so much ammunition they're still trying to figure out what to do with it. No religious fundamentalist could have ever given the anti-choice movement a gift like this. I'm sure the women out there who are pregnant and struggling with a real rather than manufactured choice, and the women out there who are fighting the valiant fight to protect the options given to those women, can't wait to thank you.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
A foul and repulsive pile of “intellectual” sounding gobbledygook. Get over yourself and your contemptible pretensions. I pity the poor schmuck you marry someday (assuming that horror ever comes to pass). You’ve certainly helped make my mind up regarding one matter; Yale is not the sort of place that I’d want my children to continue their studies once they hit their college years. You need some serious psychiatric counseling and plenty of it.
Brilliant concept. I only wish I could go and see it for myself.
This is a disgrace. And to think some of the most intelligent individuals in the world attend this distinguished university. If the school approves this, I can only hope that my children will never attend Yale. This has nothing to do with whether or not one is pro choice or against abortion. The deliberate action to PURPOSEFULLY waste life displays a conscious disregard for the value of life. Those who purposefully set out to have an abortion before conception has occurred and who purposefully carry out a plan to abort a fetus after conception are guilty of nothing less than premeditated murder. Where is the social value in this so called "art". To describe this action as art offends and disgraces the individuals who are true artists. Miscarriages happen naturally and not through a concious course of action to bring about the action. Please do not call it a miscarriage any longer. This is nothing less than a premeditated act before conception to conceive and purposefully, with concious disregard for the life of a fetus she WANTED to grow inside of her.
As a pro-life advocate this makes me very sad, and it brings me to tears. What a waste of the miracle of life that GOD gave women.
I can only pray for the babies lost, and that of her soul.
A brilliant explanation? This is still so stupid. I am ashamed that you are going to get a Yale degree and I am ashamed that you were ever admitted to Yale. Thank you for the bad PR.
What did I sit in the library for weeks writing my senior paper for? I could have instead impregnated myself repeatedly and spouted some gibberish. Your explanation isn't compelling. It's just ad hoc bs to try and justify your failings.
Brilliant parody.
This woman is a disgrace to her family and to the University.
She is evil. There is no other word to describe her complete lack of respect for the life of her own children.
She claims that she is proudly displaying the blood of her own progeny for the sake of art. This is no less evil than displaying the tattooed skin of concentration camp victims for the sake of art.
Utterly disgusting. If her intention was to shock, it succeeded. I hope her parents are proud when they visit the bloody remains of their grandchildren which their daughter will have on display at this once fine University.
Art? Hitler was an artist too.
Aliza has Free Speech rights. This is all about the First Amendment. Let's not follow the gov't down the path of censorship. After all, censorship is becoming America's favorite past-time. The US gov't (and their corporate friends), already detain protesters, ban books like "America Deceived" from Amazon and shut down Ron Paul. Free Speech forever.
Last link (before Google Books caves to pressure and drops the title):
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-38523-0
I was very annoyed with your project when I first read of it because it had no theoretical lens through which to be viewed. However, since you have written an intelligent statement on said work, I retract my initial annoyance with such a flippant way of dealing with something so serious.
While I commend your desire to subvert the normative structure of language and bodies, it seems as though you spout off a number of buzzwords that anyone trained in the arts will recognize to have value without you actually putting any value into your work.
Congrats on the self-aggrandizing publicity but I do not think you have sparked any discussion of the authority of naming things. I think you would do well to go back to Semiotics 101.
You may have got one over on the people that are too outraged to push for meaning but your peers who are tired of pretentious, superfluous "art" projects can see through it's transparency to understand that you are clinging to Art as Sanctuary.
You are putting up walls that protect you and your project from critique by your intention to subvert. Any attempt to find meaning ends up supporting your claim that the public can't handle such outrageous art.
If you want to encourage a discussion about the body and naming and function, perhaps you should study those who come before you and do it better. (Stelarc comes to mind...)
So, my question: What is your ultimate goal with this? Have you achieved it by getting reactions such as those from more conservative individuals? Or by getting reactions such as mine?
BTW: I think you are going in the right direction with your comment on naming the blood that comes after a possible conception as either miscarriage or period and how that decides so much but I think you stop short. Can you elaborate?
girl you crazy.
Sorry, but no amount of metaphorical bs can overcome the fact that you are "cuckoo for cocoa puffs" and are in desperate need of psychiatric attention.
And Chase O, your support of this project indicates that you and the rest of the Women's Center continue to make a mockery of women's rights and further establish the Center as a fringe group on campus and not at all equivalent to both the cultural houses and the religious centers.
This is a well-written piece of B.S. that covers for a publicity stunt.
According to this piece, the purpose was to “recognize [her body’s] potential as extending beyond its ability to participate in a normative function.” And also according to Aliza, the normative function of a woman's reproductive organs is to reproduce.
She she impregnated herself and miscarried--a frequently natural reproductive event--or simply menstruated. How did this at all mess with our notions of what is normative? Taking birth control pills is more exciting if you're trying to show that you can defy the expectations of your body.
While the form of your artwork is, in a word, disgusting, you do provide persuasive arguments in this piece for why you did it and what its purpose is.
Though the furor you have caused has undoubtedly tarnished Yale's reputation (which is extremely unfortunate!), it does oddly make your piece more "effective".
So glad you wrote this. Excellent.
This reasoning could be used to justify anything. Why not exhume the decaying corpses of your ancestors to demonstrate the ‘ambiguity of the body’ and ‘tyranny of the family’—where does your great-grandmother’s corpse end and the worms begin? Your cleverness does not begin to cover the stench of solipsistic moral rottenness that you exude.
It's a wonderful parody of feminism.
"Morality is always dreadfully complicated to a man who has lost all his principles." G.K. Chesterson
While I can buy her argument that the male/female masculinity/femininity thing is a myth, i am pretty sure the uterus is meant for birthing. She might as well argue that eyes aren't meant for seeing nor ears meant for hearing.
Aliza, why are you using the inaccurate term "miscarriage" instead of the correct "abortion"?
This is very convincing. The piece is clearly very well thought-out.
Brilliant perhaps, but to what end? Inducing pain on those who have experienced unwanted miscarriages? What's to understand before condemning? The discussion to include condemnation or the praise was the purpose of the "art" was it not? Chase O, what an inane comment.
I'm a Yale Professor. I give Shvartz an "A" for pretentious nonsense. I give her advisor an "F" for trying to teach her to be anything other than a clone of the advisor's silly posing. I give the Yale administration an "F" for running scared from the real story, which is the fact that students at Yale can fall into majors where they learn nothing other than the ability to parrot incomprehensible crap.
articulate and coherent, and yet there is no meaning to this particular "artwork" without the context of the normative it seeks to refute.
context can be everything, certainly, but the truest art generates its own context and, with a little bit of luck, introduces it to society.
proust said, "art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. an artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature."
this girl needs to suffer more, until she actually has a "nature", and something of worth to say about it.
two thumbs up Aliza
If you care about discourse, write an op-ed. What you did is insane. To call it art is a mockery.
You are one sick person.
You've got to be kidding me. As long as you are gullible, anything can be conceptualized to mean anything. This woman artificially inseminated herself, then intentionally induced miscarriages. What rational and well-functioning person does this intentionally? For what, for art? No, for attention, for confusion!
Yale is setting a very dangerous precedent if this exhibit is allowed to be shown on campus. This is not free speech, this has crossed the line into the wanton creation and destruction of human life, which is indefensible for any reason -- especially if the reason given is for "art." This is not art. It neither beautifully nor truthfully renders an aspect of humanity, and it doesn't appear to demonstrate significant technical mastery of a discipline. It is a publicity stunt.
I hope all Yalies, especially donors, who care about the reputation of their university will see to it that this exhibit does not go forth, and that the advisor who failed to exercise the judgment necessary to prevent it from going forth is fired. As for this confused young woman, who is as misguided as she is articulate, I doubt she can be forced to accept counseling, but I'm not sure that she's the sort of person that Yale should want to have as a face of their campus. Wherever she goes, people will think, "Yale."
Next, we'll be cloning people for "art." Why not, if we can create and terminate pregnancies for show?
Ah, undergrads discovering decon...
*yawn*
-andrew
Or, alternatively, these are the ravings of a clearly ill individual who has no respect for life and really needs some inpatient mental care. Abortion equals death, death does not equal art, ergo abortion does not equal art. Ms. Schvarts, if this is supposed to be an art project you should fail based on the fact that it's not art.
I did a web search and came across an article called, “ The Ming Period,” a piece written by Aliza as she anticipated - and got - her first period. The first part of the story recounts how Aliza’s mother gave one of the artist’s friends a great talk about first periods.
The story ends with this paragraph:
After a trip to the girls’ bathroom and a harrowing experience with the pad dispenser, I got on the school bus to go home, excited to tell my mother the news. I expected a lot from that talk. I expected secrets to be revealed, meanings to be exposed, and to emerge somehow closer to my mother and her adult world. I remember beaming as she sat me down on her bed with a package of pads and launched into a similar version of the talk she had given my friend. But about five or ten minutes into it, her then-boyfriend got home from work and walked into the bedroom. She looked at me, handed me the package, and nothing more was said. My first period remained an event shared only by the Mings and me.
One must ask, is the use of “reproductive by-product” in an art piece a way to garner attention for a milestone that was a disappointment in young adulthood?
"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."
If this is her purpose, she could've shoved some food up her butt, filmed it, and called it art. At least that I would've gone to see.
Your parents must be so proud.
Seriously, anyone white knighting you and defending your actions still is a fool along with you and your desperate bid for attention (hence the press release.)
"...it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are 'meant' to birth a child."
No, they're meant to bleed out and be smeared with vaseline on a cube?
This is on par with the man who let the dog die and is the sad state of "modern art" today.
People just don't get it.
They don't even seem to understand WHY they are so righteously outraged at this entire episode.
The reason is is the HUMAN body is SACRED....whether they recognize this basic truth or not, it's true.
In this gross degradation and sacrilege to herself, to her body, and to the people she induced to cooperate with her, and to the potential embryo's she may or may not have conceived, she completely dehumanizes and objectifies her own self, and those others as well. The philosophy she embraces in these actions is one that belong to monsters like Joseph Mengela.
.
What it means to be human, a HUMAN woman is SO much more then she will ever grasp.
http://www.theologyofthebody.net/
What's REALLY scary is the realization is she didn't just 'pop' out of a vacuum. She IS the synthesis of all that is best and bright at Yale...and she's a monster. A cute little pigeon toed monster with a sweet smile.
This terrifies the powers that be at Yale, and they are frantically trying to cover it up with a false claim that dear Aliza 'made the whole thing up.' But like any sociopathic narcissist, Aliza will not be cowed and insists her story is true.
I think it is.
But...
What really should frighten the Yale board of directors is that Aliza wasn't and isn't alone, and she is just one of a whole brood they've engendered with the godless, liberal, relativistic philosophy spewed from academia these past 40 or so years.
Go Aliza!
you show them girl!
dove
fascinating argument and piece. I actually think your piece is enhanced with our uncertainty that the pregnancy events even occurred, considering the internet hysteria over the piece.
Best,
Lianne, UCLA-B.A., CalArts-MFA
I think this "artist" should seek mental help.
all you people need serious help... especially those who are encouraging this nonsense.
If this is the goal of your project, I then have to pose the question: If you were seeking to show that your organs can do other things beyond their normative function, that "biological function[s] are a mythology imposed on form", do you feel you have accomplished it? In my own perspective and opinion you have not shown anything that a uterus is not already capable of doing- shedding menstrual blood and/or aborting a fetus. Nor in my perspective have you de-feminized the uterus or its function - both the menstrual cycle and the act of miscarrying are uniquely and biologically belonging to the female sex (though the concept of femininity becomes a gray area when one takes into consideration the role of gender identity). By exploiting its reproductive nature, have you really freed the uterus from its mythological function?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair
seems appropriate.
You should be ashamed of yourself. To treat life so carelessly. Unbeleivable
Wow, what a load of high-winded nonsense, all of which is mean to fool folks into thinking that Shvarts is saying something profound. What's her BIG point? That "it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are 'meant' to birth a child." Yawn. Philosophers, scientists and others have argued over the body, nature, and meaning for centuries. Clearly, Shvarts has read none of this. If she had, she'd recognize how trite her point is, and she might be able to address this issue in a more sophisticated manner.
My art piece.
It's a penis made out of my own scat on Shvarts' brilliant art.
It's a postmodern spontaneity inspired by late Foucault's critique of modern power structure! I was intrigued to add more details to portray feminist critique of scientific epistemology, but that could've been too deep.
So I just decided to stick with penis shaped scat on Shvarts' art instead. And I am not just trying to get attention. This is my art.
"it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are “meant” to birth a child."
Uhhh...that's exactly what they are meant to do. It's a reproductive system, not your appendix.
Enjoy your twenty minutes of shameless self-promotion. I bet you made your parents proud.
I cannot believe anyone approves of this. It is sick.
I found this page by following the links from a story on the New York Times website. I'm very glad I did.
Ms. Shvarts' concept and her explanation are excellent. I was particularly struck by these sentences:
"This ambivalence makes obvious how the act of identification or naming — the act of ascribing a word to something physical — is at its heart an ideological act, an act that literally has the power to construct bodies. In a sense, the act of conception occurs when the viewer assigns the term “miscarriage” or “period” to that blood."
I wonder if Ms. Shvarts is familiar with the history of the practice of "abortion" in America.
To quote N.E.H. Hull and P.C. Hoffer's "Roe v Wade: The Abortion Rights Controversy in America" (2001, U. of Kansas, pg. 13):
"Well into the 19th century, English and American home remedy and medical manuals listed common abortifacients as ways of restoring the natural menstrual cycle, not because the euphemistic phrasing was necessary to avoid legal prosecution, but because abortion was simply one of the many ways in which women dealt with gynecological and obstetric matters."
The act of naming is not just ideological; it is also, with rare exception, dependent on social context.
Ms. Shvarts' work powerfully evokes the cyclical nature of historicity.
You are a self-absorbed, pathetic loon looking for attention. Well you got it. Congratulations.
This woman didn't just 'pop' out of a vacuum. She IS the synthesis of all that is best and bright at Yale!!
And she's a monster. A cute little 'pigeon-toed' monster with a sweet little girly smile.
I imagine This is catching the "powers that be" at Yale by complete surprise. They are are so clueless while frantically trying to cover it up with claiming that dear Aliza 'made the whole thing up.' But like any self- respecting sociopathic narcissist, Aliza will not be cowed and insists her story is true.
What really should concern the Yale board of directors is that Aliza wasn't and isn't alone. She is just ONE of a whole brood they've engendered with the godless, liberal, relativistic philosophy spewed from higher academia these past 40 or so years. Their confusion must be something akin to how the intelligentsia in Pre-world war II Europe felt in Germany when they began to see their pure and idealistic musings on race and eugenics become death camps, or for those in Eastern Europe who saw their pompous ideals being born into gulags and purges. Personally, I think this intellectual spawn will be the daddy of them all...it's *just* now percolating up to the surface, and the smell is fetid already.
Just think if you can...of a whole university filled with bright eyed spunky individuals, going out to our world be doctors, lawyers, statesmen and CEO's who all have similar philosophical foundation to that which created Ms. Aliza's blood smeared philosophy that she so eloquently defends in her explanation of her 'art project'. Nothing good can come of it.
I find it terrifying.
d~
Yawn on the art, but you have created an entertaining whirlwind. Way to jerk everyone's chain!
Spin it however you like, but the intentional premeditative destruction of life (just for the sake of your twisted definition of art) is a shame. You are NOT a pioneer, breaking societal constraints on what is the proper use of various organs. Rather, just like the kid who kills a small animal just because he can, you assert your dominance over something that can’t speak or fend for itself. The most innocent and potentially benefiting of all creation...a developing child. Funny how those who hold such little regard for life are always ones who have been born already. Shame on you!
Please, let's just ignore this poor creature. In just 24 hours, she's managed to become tiresome.
Who is this idiot named "Chase O"? Are you a Yalie too?
Huh?
You certainly think of yourself as brillaint.
Your act is pure evil, pure self-indulgence, pure cynicism.
You have singlehandedly brought your generation to a new all-time low.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE let your next art project be your self-sterilization!!!!
Pitiful and pathetic. I guess blowing a guy's head off could be considered art as well.
You are obviously hugely impressed with your own intelligence, Aliza (as are your friends anon and Chase O). Eloquent as your rationale may seem, it's a bunch of crap. The fact that you didn't know whether or not you were pregnant doesn't change the REALITY that you either were pregnant or were not.
so what exactly are the ovaries and uterus for, then?
When I was in college I took alot of acid and wrote rambling rants, they may have sounded like this tripe.
Man, I wish I could have turned in tripe like this for my senior essay.
Is this some delayed way to celebrate that first menstruation that your mother so callously ignored in favor of her "then boyfriend"?
While the fate of the embryos is ambiguous (wether they were created or destroyed), you made sure your fate was unambiguous by testing the "fabricators" (nice way to depersonalize the men) for STD's. Nice.
The possibility of a new life was sacrificed for the chance to "stimulate discussion about the form and function of the human body" and a senior art project. An embryo as a politicized art project.
Life subjugated to art as a political statement? Who are you? Nero?
She's probably going to make a ton of money when she sells her "art" project.
1)If it's fake, she's a ruthless businesswoman who doesn't care about the Yale name.
2)If it's real, she's still a ruthless businesswoman
It's not that brilliant, it's not wonderful, it's nothing that hasn't been said before, it's not shocking, it's not sick, it's nothing but someone who doesn't have to work fulltime, who doesn't live the average American's experience, who has the luxury of attending an Ivy League school, who is a part of the elite crowd at an elite college and has plenty of time to do things non-elite people wouldn't even think of because we're working too hard every day, forty to sixty hours a week, paying our rent, paying our bills, working our asses off to get what this girl has been given to her on a silver platter. And yet she tries to show us what life is considered and what it isn't considered? I think we know, Aliza, thanks for the offer but we know what the reality of life is because we live it and you simply don't.
Gosh, all my doubts about even the possibility of "understanding" "the real" (as opposed to the...) dispelled by today's revelation that I not only have an understanding, but that it's a "normative understanding”...Yay!
Luckily: "It creates an ambiguity that isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership."
"This ambivalence makes obvious how the act of identification or naming . the act of ascribing a word to something physical . is at its heart an ideological act, an act that literally has the power to construct bodies."
So I guess "Deconstruction for Dummies" got tedious after the first few pages. Or perhaps I should say "One can nearly localize that liminal moment of abruption in which the Deconstructive Aliza was sundered from both the palimpsest of the text -- her reading as text -- and from that Aliza still yearning for a dialectic coming together (or a snack and a nap.)"
A central difficulty in her descriptions lies precisely in such language. The notion of naming as an act of control or at its core an act supporting the very coming into being of the named is a central one, but it is not of necessity any more of an "ideological act" than any other encounter with the world as act. And to identify that naming as being "to something physical" as having the " the power to construct bodies" is not only clumsy, but acknowledges a continuing subscription to a metaphysics of presence precisely contrary to the point of the power of the act.
Aliza says "it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are meant to birth a child." Exactly what other purpose does she think they serve?
Not everybody with ovaries and uterus needs to have a child or even to engage in heteronormative sexual acts. However, no amount of using words like "ontology" can substitute for plain reason and facts.
Obviously this "person" has no idea of the pain surrounding a real miscarriage. I am currently expelling the baby that my husband and I tried for 18 months to conceive. This "person" has thrown our pain, and the pain of thousands of others out there who struggle to conceive, in our faces by the callous "art" of a miscarriage. This is not art. This is a blatant misunderstanding of the real emotion surrounding the loss of a pregnancy. This "person" and all of her supporters should be ashamed. This is not art.
"...it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are 'meant' to birth a child."
In keeping with this piece of brilliance, I am going to test the "myth" that my lungs were meant to facilitate the transfer of oxygen from the air into my red blood cells, by jumping into the nearest lake and holding my breath. And I'm going to call it art...
Yale is not really going to let this go on? I can't imagine they won't hear from alumni/donors who graduated in better days... This is incredibly damaging to Yale's image. I can't imagine not thinking of this every time I hear the name "Yale" now.....ick...
You are sick and mentally ill. I hope you get help.
I'll admit, this had me wound up for a while. Until I read her paper and realized she honestly has no real idea about what she is doing besides stirring up trouble.
It's too bad she didn't think it over more, though. If the piece truly contains her blood "smeared with vaseline" then I suspect it will be destroyed by the local board of health as toxic medical waste.
In that end, all that will be left of her art is this short amount of furor and possibly the dismissal of her adviser for the embarrassment and damage to Yale's reputation.
It is amazing the price you pay for a Yale education and they don't even teach punctuation.
You present that your piece hinges on the 'fact' that it is ambiguous whether or not you had a miscarriage. That confuses me, because in my mind even if I can't ever know for sure, there is certainly a fact of the matter. So I just cannot accept your postulate that the ambiguity " is embodied in the physicality of the object." It seems to me that what is embodied in the physicality is exactly the fact of whether or not you had a miscarriage, something that could have been determined at the time it occurred.
But let's say we accept that there is an ambiguity that is so deeply invested in the physical form simply because you have not provided the facts we would need to make an absolute judgment, I don't understand how that leads to the conclusion that you have destroyed the myth that the uterus and ovaries are meant to bear a child. Also, I don't understand how that 'myth' is damaging in a parallel way to the myth that penises are 'meant' to be in vaginas.
I hope you'll understand my comments as someone who wants to understand interpret this piece in a positive way and defend it in the face of so many who call for its complete rejection.
not only is your "art" disgusting, but sickening. also, your op-ed was boring. on one level, I don't care about your point, because what you actually did was so incredibly offensive that it doesn't matter. morality - and simple human empathy - are apparently, in your world, not as important as art.
on another level, you're embarrassing everyone at yale. I can't believe we are getting the same degree -- I actually produced something valuable and real.
finally, you've given all the art majors a bad name.
nicely done.
I can see what she's trying to do here, especially when she says this, "The reality of miscarriage is very much a linguistic and political reality, an act of reading constructed by an act of naming — an authorial act."
Everything about the pro-choice movement is a play on word. Blood vs products of conception... Miscarriage vs Induced Abortion.... It's a good point, but wow how imoral of a way to go about it. I hope she construed up a fake reality rather than actually do what she claims. Is she really doing a blood test? Crazy!
This girl is psycho! She is trying to take what we see as decent, moral, and pure and say that it's completely wrong since our body parts allow for more than one function.
"it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are “meant” to birth a child."
Umm... sure our body parts allow us to sin, but that doesnt mean taht we should!
I'm so sorry you aren't able to formulate a straightforward sentence. Fortunately, I managed to make it through college without being brainwashed by such deconstructionist nonsense. I take heart from Professor's comments (# 24) that education may not have disintegrated completely.
Aliza, congrats on going through with your process. I don't think I could possibly write something about your project that would ever please you, so I won't try.
And if y'all folks really care about human life, go feed someone in Haiti and stop haranguing this serious artist.
She's gotten the attention and sparked the debate she wanted.
I don't approve, but wow--we all played into her plan.
This will hurt Yale's yield rate by 0.2%.
Interesting. However, not interesting enough. Your "art" is merely trivializing abortion. You are undermining everything that not only Pro-Lifers fight for, but Pro-Choicers as well!!! Abortion is not a matter to be taken lightly. You are disrespectful, ignorant and selfish.
is is long, but I wrote a stunning conclusion, I promise!)
So okay, you're making things intentionally ambiguous.
(Because preganacy doesn't have to be a mystery. And, there's no necessary mystery
surrounding the blood itself either.
I'm no scientist, but I'm pretty sure implanted cells look a little different
from menstrual blood. I mean, you'd have to go looking for it, but it'd still be there.
Something to think about if you've really got it all saved like you say you do.
(-But I'll get back to that-)
But I don't see how creating ambiguity reclaims anything at all from
"the heteronormative structures that seek to naturalize it"
I mean, the press/public response has had no trouble labeling
what you're claiming to do here. (Whether they support or oppose this project)
You say that the point is that "these organs can do other things, can have other purposes."
But what "other thing," what "other purpose" has been shown?
What happened is either menstruation or an "induced miscarriage."
Either way, neither one of those is really new. Abortion was already invented. So don't
expect to get the patent rights on it. (I'm with the commenter who said that the pill
better illustrated the idea that uteruses don't have to be making babies all the time)
ALso, I can't think of anything more "heteronormative" than relying on sperm
for this project. (and to get your degree!)
You can call them "fabricators" but I think we all know where sperm comes from.
Not that I think any of this is real. It doesn't have to be, so why would
you even have to bother?
But moreover, the premise that you could get these "totally private" donors'
sperm within 30 minutes of needing it is kind of unbelievable.
Not that I don't find it interesting that the press doesn't even think of taking
one second to villanize these guys. Obviously abortion is all the lady's responsibility.
Even though these "donors" totally knew what this project is about. There, I've found a real point to your project, and you can have that on the house, I guess....Although as far
as performance art goes, there are a lot less convoluted ways to make the point that in society's eyes when sex gets ugly (rape, unwanted pregnancy, don't make me go on) it's the lady's fault.
Maybe I'll make that art project--And I'll make a million dollars! (why not) And when I do, it'll be real damn clear.)
Don't get me wrong, I want to superimpose this idea on your project so bad.
I'm waiting for you to turn the tables on this thing. Hoping this flaky
article was just a big old red herring.
That can happen in performance art, right?
But if not, well, that still leaves a million dollars left for me.
(it'll go to charity, I promise)
As someone said before me, Hitler was an artist, and So was Nero (a musical artist that is) both were horrible people. You can't justify what you did at all. Prochoicers can't even justify this. Miscarriage isn't the correct term for it. MURDER is. And to think people go to jail for murdering and thats where you should be.
People like you who just throw away a human life for selfish reasons make me sick. Especailly since some women are sterile and desperately want to have kids and CAN'T. You need help, a lot of it.
I'm not a fan of po-mo or performance art, but anything that puts a weed up the ass of militant pro-liars is a good thing, IMO.
Oh, and to #64: Boo hoo hoo, another infertile woman who thinks the whole world has to cater to her hurt feeeewings by outlawing abortion and never talking about it. Funny how a 22-year-old art student isn't really a "person," to use your sneer quotes, but a hypothetical zygote is...typical pro-liar "logic." Nobody owes you a baby, lady. Deal with it.
Oh yeah... good luck explaining this to the childern you decide are worthy enough to live. (if u have any)
"The reality of miscarriage is very much a linguistic and political reality, an act of reading constructed by an act of naming — an authorial act."
No-the reality of miscarriage for me was 48 hours of contractions and agonizing pain-both physical and mental-that no matter what you do you cannot stop your body from doing what it must-expell this tiny being that you carried within for a few short weeks, Yet it was that very process of miscarrying that left me with a sense of awe over the body's innate ability to take care of itself.
My first miscarriage was so painful I would say I would wish that pain upon noone-but I can now say I would wish that pain upon you-since you have absolutely no real knowledge of what you speak. It was the one time in my life I thought I would die from the pain alone-until a shot of Demerol kiicked in. I would wish you the pain without the Demerol.
Funny-for years I have had an image in my head of a ceramic piece (I am an artist too) which would represent that first horrible miscarriage. You just gave me the impetus to finally get it out there. Thank you.
Of course my piece won't get into a gallery because I don't have an art degree from Yale.
"These organs [ovaries and uterus] 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."
Oh, I get it: ovaries and uterus equal tube of red paint.
So, underneath your excessive use of the Microsoft Word thesaurus, let's see what you were trying to say...
Your project was an attempt to redefine the function of the uterus. All right, then. How exactly did you redefine it? You didn't do jack. I hate to break this to you Aliza, but we ALREADY KNOW that the uterus is capable of miscarrying and shedding menstrual blood.
This is like somebody taking a piss into a cup, holding it up, and shouting, 'BEHOLD! I HAVE REDEFINED THE FUNCTION OF THE BLADDER!'
Epic fail.
yale will die a slow death. Through its own words yale stands for everything; thus it stands for nothing. As an alumni, I am disgusted.
God forgive yale. Only He can.
Patrick Moore
SY '96
First of all, #79, "b.g." :
"anything that puts a weed up the ass of militant pro-liars is a good thing, IMO."
Including intentional abortion obsessively repeated 9 times?
As for your comments to #64, well; did it make you feel good to "put a weed up her ass"?
Whenever fortune lays you low, as it will, I pray you will be surrounded by #64's rather than #79's.
Only in America would they call this art.
This is sickening, and I can only hope that sooner or later, someone will find some law that's been broken and will test this horror for her blood to determine if it is real or not. Then, I hope she will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Will that ever happen? Probably not. But how different the world would be if such Hitleresque people didn't exist!
Do not forget the likes of the Nazis, who, in the name of Art and Science, tortured fellow human beings to death. How exactly are you different from, say, Ed Gein, who formed his victim's skins into lampshades and death masks? I suppose he found alternative uses for the body as well.
This sad piece of human excrement is a serial killer waiting to happen. In fact, she's started already.
Yawn -- to borrow an expression, just another PERIOD PIECE...
Your art is about naming. While what you did to create this project is troubling to me (and, judging by the comments before this one, to other readers as well), my comment has instead to do with your stated goal. You say, and are correct to say, that your effort attempts to nuance our understanding of the "act of identification or naming." Yet, in this editorial and in your project overall, you do not pause to discuss your own acts of naming: using the word 'miscarriages', for instance, instead of 'abortions'. Or, more obviously, 'fabricators' for 'men'.
The implications of these choices are important: together, they may be interpreted to represent the ideological quilt, the foundation if you will, on which your project is constructed. And insofar as you fail to offer a coherent explication or justification for this foundation, I think your art has failed itself too.
You seem to want the consumers of this art to be unsure of the identity of the blood--was it blood involved in the narrative of reproduction, or blood that was uninvolved in this narrative? And yet, even while urging ambiguity, you give yourself away in this editorial's first line: "For the past year, I performed repeated self-induced miscarriages."
Here the ambiguity is jarringly removed from the very beginning; your art doesn't (for me, at least) raise issues of identity, because you have revealed from the start the true nature of your bodily effluence.
You write that "Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether the there was ever a fertilized ovum or not." (sic) Here, you are simply wrong.
You correctly state that "the act of ascribing a word to something physical — is at its heart an ideological act." But you already have ascribed a word--'miscarriage'--to your experience. Did you even bother to look up the word ‘miscarriage’ before you used it so callously? The Oxford English Dictionary defines it thusly: “The spontaneous expulsion of a fetus from the womb before it is viable.”
Therefore, there’s no ambiguity as to “whether the there was ever a fertilized ovum or not.” Your project is cloaked in a vocabulary that assumes an interpretation along a ‘narrative of reproduction’.
You write yourself that, at one level, this project is "a myth". Indeed, you say later that "The performance exists only as I chose to represent it." This latter claim is patently untrue; you write using words that have been encoded with other, established meanings. You fail to control for these other definitions as they poison your artistic endeavors with bias. What could have been a perhaps pristine endeavor has been marred.
Max Clarke
Northwestern Univ.
In the end what real purpose is this “art” serving? Just because something is said in a new and different way does not make it valid. This is a perverted and disturbed version of art, from a perverted and disturbed mind.
You wanted to start a conversation about the human body, writing, “…it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are “meant” to birth a child.” So, what are they meant to do? I can think of no other conceivable purpose for them. You are not showing any new function of the female reproductive system, but you are however affirming the fact that it can not be used for anything else, your “art” is self-defeating.
You also belittle pro-choice supporters like myself. Abortion should not be the brush in which you use to paint. It should be a private decision that is thought through responsibly and respectfully. You have taken the right to choose, which sometimes dangles by a thread in this country, and made a mockery of it. It is truly baffling what little concept you have of the world around you.
This “art” piece should be considered an outrageous affront to everyone who considers themselves an artist.
As for your op-ed piece, you are a master of the pretentious.
The main thing Ms. Shvarts has done with her little project is attempted to push societal norms, just like others have done, much more successfully. There will always be debate on hot topics such as abortion, regardless of whether its done in a doctor's office for "truly" personal reasons or in a bathtub for art.
On a personal note, Ms. Shvarts, I find your art to be simple, choice, completely unoriginal (you were going for most shocking really and nothing else) and you will never stand the test of time like true artists. You should have thought about your project more thoroughly than a couple of minutes. Now you're backpedaling with pretentious babble that can continue infinitely just to get a grade. Any college graduate, including myself, can attest to that. Enjoy your attention.
For all of those who doubt the talent on display here--perhaps those who describe Aliza's ideas as "high-winded nonsense"--go and register for a library card (or if you're a Yalie, then go and acquaint yourself with SML for what sounds like it'll be the first time) and pick up a copy of Ian Hacking's _Historical Ontology_ (HUP) and *read* it. Be careful tho: his essay "Making Up People" might actually blow your tiny minds. If it does, then I guess we're all winners.
For those of you who have stooped to describing Aliza as "sick, or depraved or whatever, or who espouse the canonical metaphors and narrative lines you've absorbed from our "political" debates, and never thought to question, many works suggest themselves: Freud's _Civilization and its Discontents_, or if you're rightly concerned about your own inability to think independently then M.Foucault's _Discipline and Punish_ should alleviate your more obvious symptoms.
And remember folks Aliza's well made point about how this project "isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership" surely reverberates all the more loudly in light of the fact few of us adding to this carpet of verbiage (myself included) have actually witnessed the physical exhibit. We're all effectively ontologizing through acts of readership--few of us (except a handful of YDN journalists and a smattering of Yale administrators have seen this piece).
Clearly this project is iridescent: it shines a light on both our most deeply held assumptions about our worlds, and also, for some of us, the basis on which our knowledge is based.
Mama clearly didn't hug her enough.
What passes for an education in this day is beyond me.
Sounds like a candidate for mental floss. Seriously, is anyone trying to get this girl some help? She clearly needs it.
Hey, Ricardo...this is a hoax. It would have been biologically impossible to do what Shvarts claims to have done.
But even if it hadn't been, guess what? *It's still her body.* The zygotes -- not "babies," not fetuses or even yet embryos, but zygotes -- would have been hers to do with as she would.
And I have no qualms about what I said in my previous comment. I am so, so tired of infertile women who think that the entire world ought to twist itself into knots to avoid offending them. So you couldn't conceive. Adopt a kid or move on. Nobody is obliged to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term and offer you the kid on a silver platter. Get *over* yourself -- your desire to cuddle something does not trump my desire to not ever have children.
"Whenever fortune lays you low, as it will, I pray you will be surrounded by #64's rather than #79's."
I'm so, so scared by your entreaties to an imaginary being in the sky. But I probably will be surrounded by #64s, since nursing is a pink-collar profession and therefore tends to attract the Oprah-watching, scrapbooking, "OMG GOTTA HAVE A BAAAYBEEEE!!!" types. Ugh.
you're all a bunch of manipulated weirdos. You've ALL become the art project
#79...what you s said to #64 is horrible. she is going through the worst thing she can imagine and yet you are a complete jerk to her. you must have been one of aliza's donors.
aliza...you are a very sick girl. you are not even worthy of being able to use the term miscarriage or abortion. a miscarriage is a very traumatic experince that is very emotional and painful (i know...i've had one and it's made on impact on me for life). abortion is a choice women make who find themselves in terrible situations. those women do not go get pregnant on purpose so they can have an abortion. what you did is MURDER!!!!!!!!!!!! PRE-MEDITATED MURDER!!!!
i have my masters and read through your explanation and all it is is garbage! you say nothing, you explain nothing. all you accomplished with that is to make yourself look even more stupid that you already do.
i hope you are sterile and someday very much desire to have children but can't b/c of your stupid actions over the last year.
you disgrace all women! esp those who have had the real experience of miscarriage or abortion.
may God have mercy on your soul when you stand before him! and may he be with any babies that you killed.
This truly makes me a little embarrassed to have an art degree.
I think the comment of the pro choice person #3 and #87 pretty much sum it up for me. I'm pro choice too.....thanks for selfishly screwing up women's rights they've fought for years. I'm not so sure you can't be prosecuted for this....after all...we can't use fetuses for stem cell research...why should one individual gain recognition and be able to call this art? Just because you call this art doesn't mean it is.....Your total incencitivity for women who have actually faced this real choice is incredible.
Aliza, I'm so sorry biology decided to give you a uterus and ovaries. It's seriously a cruel force of nature that gives the XX organisms the capacity to create and carry offspring for future generations. And it's even more cruel that the uterus and ovaries were created for that purpose. Let's get rid of all reproduction and bring on the end of life as we know it.
The ancients worshipped the goddess because of her reproductive capabilities. Misogynists strive to oppress females by saying they are not deserving of respect because of their reproductive abilities. True feminism celebrates the beauty of the woman's unique role in childbearing.
Congratulations on promoting misogyny. The uterus and ovaries are so awful we should get rid of them completely. Everyone should undergo sex change surgeries to become men instead of women.
Go womyn's center and Aliza. Teach nature against its sexist capacity to give women ovaries and a uterus.
i support the artist & will always support a woman's right to choose -- her autonomy over her own body & reproductive system.
Guys, is it not obvious to you that this is a parody of the way extreme leftists think? This sentence really gives it away:
"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."
b.g (#96)...i feel so bad for your patients. you are a nurse but have absolutely no compassion. that is terrible! i sincerely hope that you do not work with pregnant women. you will scar them even more if you are around them when their child dies.
and obviously you need to relearn info...just because you have a miscarriage, it does not mean that you are infertile. and as a person who has lost 2 childern, most women with loses do NOT have the mindset of the world owes me a child.
we will always be offended by moron's like your buddy aliza but we are better b/c we know how to take the high road. we don't ask others to pity us. we just ask that we get the same respect others do when their loved ones die.
and obviously you will never understand b/c you don't want children. in that case, you need to butt out b/c you have no clue what it's like and never will. you're right...our want doesn't outweigh your not wanting. both sides are valid. that is your choice, and ours is ours so don't tell us to get over it and adopt.
why don't you go find your buddy and fabricate something for her next idiotic project!!! it's morons like you that just fuel fires of persons like her.
Brilliant Explanation.
To all those who think this is the epitome of "misogynism", "derange"-edness, etc. please go read a newspaper.
Protesters - If you think artwork is what you need to fight against, your ignorance and naivety are heartbreaking.
I didn't read all the comments so if it's been said already please forgive me, but to everyone saying how disgusting this is, how she's such a bad person, how it's against God, etc. you all are missing one little thing...did she really do it or not? Given that she said that there is no record of anything, the name of the drug she used to abort, the names of the people who donated, etc. and all she did say was she had them check for STDs, used a 'needleless syringe' and merely took the abortive medication on the day she would normally get her period. Well, it's all her word against the world. So give it a break. Now if you all are saying the idea of someone doing that, if it was indeed done, disgusts you then okay, I can understand that, but in this case, no one knows if she's serious or a creative liar (or artist).
That's just my opinion anyway, based on the key 'fact' stated in the article.
People, people, people, listen to #106 and #40. We're being Sokal-hoaxed: this whole thing is likely a fabrication produced merely to freak people out, and maybe to make fun of how ridiculous art can get these days. Note that Yale admins met with her and let her go without ordering an arrest, an expulsion, or psychiatric treatment. They are on record as calling this "performance art," so she must have told them that she didn't really do it, and her art project is based entirely on producing a sensational mindfuck. It's working--people are buying it, and tempers are flaring.
# 84 My goodness , what you said is cruel. I quote you below .#64 was describing her emotional pain from a miscarriage. Do you have no compassion?
I'm not a fan of po-mo or performance art, but anything that puts a weed up the ass of militant pro-liars is a good thing, IMO.
Oh, and to #64: Boo hoo hoo, another infertile woman who thinks the whole world has to cater to her hurt feeeewings by outlawing abortion and never talking about it. Funny how a 22-year-old art student isn't really a "person," to use your sneer quotes, but a hypothetical zygote is...typical pro-liar "logic." Nobody owes you a baby, lady. Deal with it.
I really appreciate this clear-headed essay, which helps confirm that the artist had a serious intention for the piece, not merely as an attention-mongering stunt. However, I do think that the connection was very weak between the first part of this essay (regarding the sense-making of ambiguity) and the second part. The attempted connection to what sexual organs are "meant" to produce was shaky at best, and felt tacked-on. It made the project sound a bit more 'undergraduate' than it needed to. I just don't think the ambiguity of period/miscarriage really touched on societally-determined purposes of the body. If anything, that interpretation only arises from the shocked reactions of the public, which views negatively the idea of induced miscarriages. This, however, belies the idea that the piece was not intended to shock. The second part of the artist's essay is absolutely invalid unless you take into account the shocked reactions.
While I understand that the human body can inspire art, I fail to realize why a miscarriage would be considered a form of art. What is artistic about the death of a human life?
Art should celebrate life, not the bloody removal of it.
I have to take a little issue with some of this:
"For me, the most poignant aspect of this representation — the part most meaningful in terms of its political agenda (and, incidentally, the aspect that has not been discussed thus far) — is the impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood."
Actually, you COULD take a pregnancy test that looked for HcG (human chorionic gonadotrophin) in your blood. Even a pee stick could detect it, but for sure a blood test would find even 3 ppm. HcG is produced when the fertilized egg implants in the uterine wall, and it would be detectable, albeit in small amounts, two weeks after fertilization.
"Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether the there was ever a fertilized ovum or not."
Only because you didn't test, not because it's not possible to know.
You might want to do a little more research on the physiology and hormonal markers of conception and pregnancy. Try looking at natural family planning books and information about early pregnancy. Get to know your medium a little better.
Katherine
MFA, 2006
mother, 2007
Try inseminating yourself and not aborting; then see if you can identify yourself as something other than pregnant.
Anyone who finds this letter intelligent is easily impressed by fancy words.
Whatever this thing turns out to be, it's a huge waste of time and effort, and this person and her advisor(s) should be medicated. Just conceiving this idea is repulsive enough, but wrapping it in hyper- academic crap language just makes it that much worse. Surely, an education should do more than enable someone to do more than this...What a shame all around.
just because no one understands you doesn't make you an artist...
even if this is just a performance piece and the insimination never happened, i think you did this without thinking it through. while i find your statement interesting...i agree that its a crock meant to explain away something that is unfathomable.
while i don't necessarily side with the "god factions" and the "you're evil" statements...i think you are misguided...pretentious...probably elitist and more than a little dumb.
but what do i know...i am not an 'artist'.
This whole project is fiction.
Her advisors wouldn't have signed off on it if it was real.
She stirred the pot of controversy and the public responded.
Wow--the expected reponse was created.
Where's the art in that?
All she did was provide a forum for people to express their own specific views. She deserves an "F."
This project lacked inspiration from the very beginning. Sad, lackluster attempt at manipulation on a grand scale.
Yale--I'm disappointed this ever saw the light of day.
Of course, with such pretentious twits as Ms. Shvartz, the "normative laws of society" should only be "transgressed" when *she* feels like breaking them.
Just try and steal her purse and see. She'll call the cops; she won't give a damn that you were trying to show that property is "just a social construction" and test the "limits of the normative social taboos against stealing".
Stealing purses, after all, is no less (or more) a "transgressive work of taboo-breaking art" than Shvarts' nonsense. Come to think of it, it'll probably won't be long before some "performance artist" attempts *that*, too.
I suggest giving the next guy convicted of robbery in New Haven three to five years... and an "A" in a Yale art course.
P.S.
All this assumes Schvarts isn't simply putting us on, either as a parody or for publicity (or both), on the "as long as they spell my name right" principle.
I find this appalling. It’s absolutely disgusting; not in medium, but in meaning. You apparently have no regard for human life, and should exterminate yourself, in that case. I have always been pro-choice, but this is ridiculous, this is taking it to the extreme. You need to be committed. You are on a whole new level of sociopath, that I can’t even comprehend as an artist myself. You are a horrible person. People are out there trying their damness to become pregnant, to have a family, and you are nullifying the experiences of grief with this self-proclaim art. It is the worst case of dehumanization that I have ever seen. And I’m sure you are proud of yourself, getting this kind of response, that’s what you were aiming for, wasn’t it?
I do not feel that this should be allowed as her senior project and to be honest if she needs it to graduate I would not feel a bit sorry for her if she did not. The whole thing real or not is disgusting and disgrasful.
Aliza is wrong when she says that there is an "impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood". It is in fact quite possible to perform a test (actually, more than one kind) to determine whether the blood was simply the result of a normal menstruation, or a miscarriage.
My sympathies to your parents for wasting their hard-earned money sending you to Yale. Imagine being at Yale and this self-indulgent pile of crap is what you decide to spend your time on. Art school is always a risky proposition (my daughter is RISD 2006) but in your child's case, it seems to have done more harm than good. My condolences on both your talentless child and your wasted dollars.
"This ambivalence makes obvious how the act of identification or naming — the act of ascribing a word to something physical — is at its heart an ideological act, an act that literally has the power to construct bodies. In a sense, the act of conception occurs when the viewer assigns the term “miscarriage” or “period” to that blood."
Well, not exactly. By calling the act one way or the other we don't yet alter its nature. (I wish life were so easy! I would just call myself a 'billioner' and wouldn't look for a job after graduation.) There are some objective features of reality that make an object eligible for correspondence to a term. A lion is not yet a rabbit if we decide to call it 'rabbit'. The decision upon the word (the linguistic sign) may be arbitrary, but the term (or the concept) that corresponds to the object is not: It depends, at least in part, upon the features the object has. A lion is different from a rabbit, if only because a lion could eat you. (Deconstructionists took power of linguistic expression to the max, and claimed that there is no matter of fact about reality independent from the signification that we assign to it, but this doctrine is very unpopular among philosophers of language today because its best characteristic is it shock-value -- otherwise it is simply implausible.)
In Aliza's case, it is the concept of abortion that is at issue. (call it 'xyz', 'shmabortion' or 'rabbit') According to the common understanding of this concept (which is indeed vague (not ambiguous), as most concepts are), this particular case is, ironically, fairly clear. If the egg was inseminated, and Aliza's intervention prevented its further development into a baby, then Aliza aborted; if, on the other hand, the egg was not inseminated, after all, Aliza just had a period.
Don't let the issue of uncertainty be conflated with the issue of term-designation either. The fact that neither Aliza nor we *know* about what transpired doesn't affect the matter of fact about what actually happened. Perhaps an analysis of the blood samples could even establish this fact.
In my suggestion, I resist Aliza's invitation to eradicate the objectivity of conceptualization. I do this because the despite the prima facie quandary that the project presents, it lacks the rigor to put the puzzle properly.
A better art-project for this purpose would be to shit one's pants before leaving one's house in the morning, and then, query the passers-by whether one can be properly called a shit-show. Now, that is indeed vague. Or even ambiguous.
I'll join the many others who soundly condemn this project. It has the subtlety of a three-year-old child pounding on a tin drum, demanding attention from her elders. And it mocks what can be a terrifying and heartbreaking experience. I'm sorry, Ms. Schvarts, but the word "sophomoric" best distills the artistic vision of this project.
I reject those who wish you harm personally; I find that as repugnant as the thesis of your project. But I hope someday you will understand, both intellectually and emotionally, the offense you've inflicted on others.
unless we posit a very hands-on deity in our metaphysics, bodily organs are not "designed for," "made for," "intended for," or even "best used for" anything at all, simply because there is nothing outside the physical world to determine. a cursory look at the evolution of a species shows that organs are used to serve different functions within different environments; some organs grow and others are eliminated; some organs change and others stay the same, some of the organs that stay the same do the same things, and some organs that stay the same do different things. this sort of thing happens all the time. many organs, such as the human heart and lungs, have necessary uses while we are alive, but to say that this is their "intention" invites the question "intended by who?" the artist's exhibit poses the question of whether her uterus and ovum can be used as art and an occasion for political discourse, and, judging from the fierce debate surrounding this piece, the answer is surely in the affirmative.
to the women who have responded that the artist's piece trivializes the pain of miscarriage or abortion: why should someone having a different experience than you offend you? as someone who has worked in reproductive health, i have seen a variety of responses to pregnancy loss and termination, ranging from little pain to agony, joy to grief. a range of experiences exists. why is that a bad thing? you grief does not give you authority to dictate anyone else's experience or actions, nor does it shelter you from being challenged in a debate.
to the people who freak out every six months about the horror that is performance art and how people who know about french theory and two-syllable and sociobiology are ruining america: let me know when you have something new to say.
those concerned about certainty: the artist could have done a pregnancy test. she chose not to. she chose not to have the tissue examined. what is not observed is not known. she did not posit anywhere that she could not have known, just that her artistic project did not involve the pursuit of this knowledge.
This is yet another blatant display of disgusting "performance art" on college campuses across the country. While this one certainly takes the cake, the vileness of many of the other instances is still, well, vile.
"Birth control has
Brilliant, aliza.