Yale Daily News

Updated: Sunday, November 22, 2009 11:46 a.m.

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Adviser no stranger to raised eyebrows

Staff Reporter, Staff Reporter, Staff Reporter, Staff Reporter
Published Monday, April 21, 2008

Behind every Yale art major, there is an adviser.

With the recent media coverage about Aliza Shvarts ’08 and her incendiary senior art project, Pia Lindman, a little-known lecturer at the School of Art, has been thrust into the spotlight. But the attention was not wholly unfamiliar to the performance artist, who has raised eyebrows with provocative performances of her own in recent years.

From building a working public outdoor sauna in New York City — nudity encouraged — to recording herself emulating the grief-stricken expressions of suffering war victims, Lindman just may...

#1 By (Anonymous) 9:54a.m. on April 21, 2008

Thank god she doesn't have tenure...

#2 By Out Wrong 5:09p.m. on April 21, 2008

Anyone who opposes this art is simply an enemy of liberty and equality.

#3 By (Anonymous) 5:17p.m. on April 21, 2008

This article is disgusting slander. The YDN never successfully contacted Pia. Where is ANY REAL SOURCING in this article? What they did was look at some websites and impose their prejudices on her.

Look the title of the article:
"...no stranger to raised eyebrows"

Clear bias from the beginning of the piece.

#4 By Marcus 7:10p.m. on April 21, 2008

So, has she ever produced any art? Or does she just conduct performances where she claims to produce art?

#5 By (Anonymous) 10:54p.m. on April 21, 2008

somebunnys getting fired

#6 By (Anonymous) 1:45a.m. on April 22, 2008

Why is everyone operating on the assumption that Shvarts actually did all of this?! She clearly faked the whole thing. This is nothing more than a provocative hoax.

Think about it - which makes more sense? A high IQ student maims her body, potentially rendering herself infertile with mysterious "herbal" abortion pills (sounds a little too easy, doesn't it?) while a career professor jeopardizes her university appointment along with a student's life (something potentially criminal), and Yale deliberately lies and says the project is faked (something that would easily be rebutted by a simple blood test)?

-OR-

A student brilliantly puts on a big acting show - something she confesses to angry Yale administrators to keep herself out of mandatory psychiatric protective care and/or from being expelled - and gleefully generates a media firestorm with no real harm done while her adviser conveniently is nowhere to be found so that she doesn't have to lie to keep the story going?

It's SO clear people. This didn't happen. Please calm down.

#7 By annoyed 2:41a.m. on April 22, 2008

can people please stop thinking they are the authority on what is or isnt art? that isn't the issue here.

#8 By Wondering 11:43p.m. on April 22, 2008

So what does "disciplinary action" mean? Fired? Suspended? Slapped on the wrist? Curious minds want to know.

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