Letters to the Editor
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READ THE ARTICLE, PEOPLE!!!
It's been discussed already, but the throngs of knee-jerkers has yet to stop. She is NOT aborting fetuses.
Can we all take a second to actually read each other's posts, or gee, the source material ?!! I thought Salon attracted educated readers.
She is not aborting fetuses, she may not even be aborting zygotes. She is having unprotected sex and then inducing menstruation.
Let's wring our hands a bit more then, shall we, and condemn her to hell when we lack even a basic understanding of the truth behind the fanaticism.
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It's not true
Per a statement from Yale, she didn't do any of it. It's "creative fiction."
http://www.nysun.com/news/national/yale-students-art-project-creative-fiction
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What would you do?
If a woman stood in front of you and told you she was going to do this for your entertainment, or edification or whatever, what would you do? I would try to stop her, because I think it's messed up and puts her body through way too much stress and possible danger.
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Turns out it was fake....
Ms. Schvarts has admitted that this whole thing was a hoax. She faked the pregnancies and the abortions. So, ok, great, no dead feti, but this chick is totally crazy. I think faking it is probably far more insane than doing it in the first place. Or just thinking of the whole thing.
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Duped!
check out the article below
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Now that ismore like it.
Update: then a goos point is made.
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It's art
With the update I would say it is art. Women have ore to offer than just their wombs for reproduction.
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ugh
I am both pro-life and pro-choice. I think that abortions are a horrible thing, but I also recognize the need to keep them safe and legal for the women who really need them.
Frankly, even though this is just a ruse by this student and apparently not real, stuff like this just pisses me off. Creating a living thing inside you, many times, then destroying it, many times, for the sake of 'art' is just plain old fashioned retarded, not to mention indicative of a severe lack of morals and ethics. But preying on the outrage that such an incident understandably causes, even if the incident itself is falsified, is also morally outrageous. The only thing she's accomplished here is to disgust a lot of people physically, and outrage a lot of people morally. If that's her idea of art, she's welcome to it. If she thinks she's done anything but further damage the precarious position of legal abortions in this country, then she is even farther off the deep end than we might have originally thought.
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...If fooled, you can't get fooled again...
What's this I'm reading about a hoax!
Does this mean that my entire Shvarts collection is fake? That these esthetically mingled excreta belong to some stranger?
Well, hell.
Would they be worth anything if she died, do you think?
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What is art?
You know it when you see it. The fact that there are so many "you"s means it's ridiculous to try to come up with one definition. But you don't need to have a single, all-encompassing, definitive set of guidelines to be able to judge for yourself when something is or is not art. If other people want to see her exhibition, fine. And it was fine with me even when I thought she might have been actually trying to induce miscarriages. But I still think there is an ethical problem with trying to jerk the public's collective chain and call it performance art. There is a lot of good performance art out there, but "performing" a media spectacle is not something I think we need more of.
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irresponsible "art"
Did no one think, "While this might bring a lot of attention to Yale, it is probably unwise." "This might turn a good number of fence-sitters away from supporting pro-choice legislation!" or "Hey, this might start a 'dialogue' with some rabid pro-lifers who might come after you with a gun!" or "This might inspire a fellow 'artist' to blow up the gallery, creating a unique 'happening' for people to ponder the current polarity on abortion rights politics, using mangled body parts, blood, and charred building materials as a medium?"
Art can be controversial; hell, it *should* evoke an emotional response from its audience. But controversy isn't synonymous with art.
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I'd wager real money that most of this is hype and
the blood smeared on the plastic is menstrual blood (which technically COULD have contained a fetus but probably didn't). Same for the videos on the toilet. Heavy flow. Period.
The visual effect would be exactly the same and, to me, the "9 months" project length is a giveaway. I don't believe anybody could get pregnant and abort so many times in such a short span, given the low odds of pregnancy occurring in any single event of intercourse (artificial or otherwise).
That's my theory and I'm stickin' to it.
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powned!
You all do realize that this thread, and all the other threads in the blogosphere, is part of the project?
Me, I hate performance art, but this one pretty much blows me away. It hit every hot nerve out there.
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The Hoax
It's sort of amazing how many people obviously aren't reading the part about how she isn't really doing any of this. It's a purely conceptual piece, and in that, I think it's successful.
That aside, body issues in art are nothing new. Anybody familiar with Orlan? She basically made an art career out of having plastic surgery and videotaping it. Marina Abramovic carved her own body during performances. Granted, these are very different because they are doing these things to themselves and not crossing the kind of ethical lines that a project like Svartz's would, had it been real. (yes, i was one of those reviled art majors, but for the record I never felt a need to involve bodily fluids in my work)
Aside from the ethical issues, do you really think any gallery would display this, for the biohazard concerns that would come from something like this?
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"part of the project"
Yeah, I realize that, C-Bob. That's why I think it's completely stupid. OO, look! If I do something completely ridiculous, people will talk about me! And other people will talk about those people talking about me! And then more people will talk about those people talking about people talking about me! It's like a viral game of Telephone, with no teacher.
I hear her friend? Is going to do a documentary? About the comments sections in the blog commentary about the official Yale statement about the news article based on the fictional press release about the exhibit about the miscarriages that didn't actually happen.
Did you hear that too?