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42 Responses to “She’s Ba-ack.”
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If it looks like a hoax, and quacks like a hoax…
So, tomorrow will we hear that the whole back and forth between her and Yale is ‘Performance Art’ as well?
Liars and their lying lies….
I suspect she fears a religious extremist coming to visit her and let her experience a belated abortion.
Just considering this project’s effect on “The Agitator” is spectacular. This lady, through her words has managed to get such an interesting and powerful reaction to her use of her body.
Take this blog! Normally, Radley writes posts complaining about the police trying to stop people from putting drugs in their own bodies. But, for these two posts, this young lady managed to get Radley to editorialize about this woman’s body, what this woman should or shouldn’t do to her body (or at least what we should think of her for it), and, my favourite, to joke about letting people beat her up.
Can you really tell me that isn’t art?
- Gavin
I’d have berated her if she sliced up some puppies, put them in a jar, and called that “art,” too.
It may well be art. There’s plenty of bad art in the world. But condemning her for doing something repulsive and unethical doesn’t confer merit on her value as an artist. Generating a reaction from people doesn’t make something more or less artistically significant. Provoking outrage isn’t in and of itself “art,” even if the provocateur claims it is.
Gavin: It’s not art. It’s culture jamming. While I normally defend this sort of thing, I usually draw the line when actual blood is involved. Morality is not about simple rule following. Almost anything can get ridiculous when taken to the logical extreme.
@MikeL, If culture jamming isn’t performance art, what is it?
@Radley, I just wonder how your new found sympathy for drug warriors will serve you!
- Gavin
Attention vile wench: your 15 minutes are over. Shut the fuck up already.
Gavin: It’s culture jamming. While real art and culture jamming share some common ancestors, they are not the same.
Gavin - Radley doesn’t have to approve of drug use to be anti-drug war, nor does calling this woman vile make him pro-life. It’s really not that hard.
Even I don’t have any particular interest in seeing a video projection of the student bleeding into a cup.
Other than that, sounds great!
I do find it rather telling, and interesting that Shvarts raised the issue in the second article, that it’s impossible to determine whether one cup of blood was just menses, or whether it contained a 2 week old fetus — which has no organs, consists of 2 layers of largely undifferentiated cells, and is invisible to the naked eye. That the possibility of having aborted a morally insignificant glob of cells arouses such passion speaks to the profound significance of her work. Good job!
#11
It’s a shame your mother wasn’t an artist.
P.S. The sentence above is art.
To recap: Shvarts used words, and said she did a bunch of gross things.
The response? To say she should be beaten up (Radley), or to say people who get what she’s doing should have been aborted (Frank Stein)!
The debate I propose: which is more vile?
I think some people are missing the point here. Though I’m not morally outraged at what this woman did to her own body, I am highly critical of the “it’s art because I say it’s art” line of reasoning.
Feel free to call it whatever you want; just don’t be surprised when I call it all into question.
#13
I got a reaction out of you - my art was a success!
Well, by that criteria, all Hitler did was say a few words too. I don’t think he personally killed anyone. Yet I think many people would call him a murderer.
For the logically challenged, I am not comparing Ms Shvarts to Hitler. Rather, I am merely citing this as a piece of evidence disputing the implication that someone who merely speaks unpleasant words should be expected to be invariably immune from any sort of punishment.
Do I think she should be beaten up? No. However, if she is indeed telling the truth, I view her actions as being murder. It’s like conceiving a baby merely to sacrifice it after birth. If I were a police officer, would I arrest her? No. But I certainly would not have anything to do with her, professionally or personally.
And, I think, that if anyone seriously tried to lock her up in a room full of women who had miscarried Radley would condemn it…
tarran,
Seriously, you don’t see the gulf between instructing people to kill others while someone is their rightful military commander, and telling people you menstrated after using a turkey baster?
Sometimes, words are just words.
- Gavin
[...] 18, 2008 · No Comments According to Radley Balko and the Yale Daily News, Yale senior Aliza Shvarts is now denying that her abortion painting was a [...]
Gavin,
When you say, “words are just words”, what is it you are trying to convey? Here’s a hint: Words have meaning.
Simply saying that something is art IS sufficient to make it art. Whether or not it is any good as art is the question.
Zeb,
By that line of reasoning, everything becomes art…meaning nothing is art. It renders the whole field into such subjective depths that it becomes meaningless twaddle.
When you say “it’s art because I’m saying it is”, you’re creating reality out of thin air. On the other hand, when I deny that the lint hanging from my shirt is art, I am certainly not DENYING reality.
Both of us can’t be right about the same issue. Either it’s art or it isn’t art. You saying, “it is so”, does not in effect MAKE it so.
Generating a reaction from people doesn’t make something more or less artistically significant.
I strongly suspect that the reaction is part of the art, though. This is fairly standard stuff within the realm of performance art - the reactions generated are co-opted by the artist as part of the work itself.
By that line of reasoning, everything becomes art…meaning nothing is art.
No. If everything is art, then everything is art. If everything is physical, is nothing therefore real? If everyone is happy, is no one thereby happy?
Besides, if the claim that labelling something as art makes it art, that doesn’t make everything art. It only makes into art what is labelled as art. Not everything is labelled as art.
Justin,
The intention of “words are just words” was to suggest that Ms. Schvarts only engaged in speech, and not a speech act (”I thee wed”) or any kind of solicitation or conspiracy to commit violence (”You are ordered to build death camps in which to kill Jews and Gypsys”). She just lied or didn’t lie about using a turkey baster before she menstrated.
- Gavin
That the possibility of having aborted a morally insignificant glob of cells arouses such passion speaks to the profound significance of her work.
JJH2, yeah. Now that her timeline is better spelled out, I’m no longer as outraged. Why? Because all she did was get her period on time, which is how 30% (I think, that’s the number that’s sticking in my head and is open to correction) of conceptions end.
I looks as though she got the fertilization part down pretty well, and if she’s got well-functioning ovaries, high-quality eggs and a cozy uterus, chances are good that she conceived at least once.
Her mistake (as far as the effectiveness of her “art” is concerned) was in not waiting until she’d observedly conceived. Even then, she was highly likely to miscarry. I say this as someone who’s had a positive pregnancy test and then miscarried within two weeks.
Had she truly been committed to her artistic statement, she’d have waited 6 weeks or more - to the point where the “embryo” transitions into the “fetus” before inducing the miscarriage.
Because yes, what she ultimately did was vile in its intention but so flawed in its execution as to be meaningless. She defeated her own damnable purpose.
Saying something is art is not sufficient to make it art.
I can say I leave the dog turds in my yard because I think they’re art. That doesn’t make them art. Maybe I just lied because I’m too lazy to cleanup my yard.
Her true motivations for doing what she did are unknown to us. What she said could easily be lies or obfuscation of her true motives.
Something is not art until it is accepted by someone other than the artist as art. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If all anyone else sees is a dog turd, then its a dog turd.
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.
Really? What else can my ovaries do but spit out hormones and eggs in a periodic fashion? What else can my uterus do but respond to those hormones and bleed every 28 days or play host to an embryo? Let’s see, they can develop tumors, or endometriosis, or fibroids, they can malfunction in all sorts of ways, really. But as to proper physiologic function? I’m pretty sure they’re rather limited in these capacities.
I truly can’t figure what she’s trying to say.
Actually the average for successful conception is 1 in 3, but that is really beside the point.
Like I said, I wasn’t sure on the percentage. Seems I flipped it
Tybalt,
You are right, of course. If everything is physical, then everything is physical, etc…
However, as I understand it, art is supposed to transcend the ordinary. I wouldn’t call a picture of me sitting in my cube doing what I’m doing art…unless it was in some special context unknown to me at the moment. When in that special context, the picture may well be elevated to above normalcy.
So, if you treat art in some egalitarian sort of way…Beethoven is the same as bleeding in a cup; then the whole field becomes ridiculously static, and normal.
“condemning her for doing something repulsive and unethical”
No offense intended here Radley, but what fucking business is it of yours what she does with her body?
At most all she did was cause her uterus to spit out some cells and blood, it’s not like she took knitting needles to a full term fetus or something.
In neither article did Radley advocate the state stepping in to punish the woman in question. There’s nothing inconsistent in saying that something should be legal yet also believing it is immoral or in advocating social punishment (e.g. shunning) for a legal act.
It’s anyone’s business, now that she publicized her actions as “art”.
Anyone who knows about it has every right to condemn or praise her. Our free speech is just as free as hers.
Had she kept her weirdness in the privacy of her home, and among her trusted partners, then no. It’d be none of our business.
Bronwyn - you’re side stepping the substance. Having the right to free speech does not justify saying someone is “repulsive and unethical”.
I mean I can disagree with your comments but if I say they were dishonest and sleazy, it would be fair to ask me what I base that on, wouldn’t it? (And, to be clear, I ain’t saying you are either of those things.)
No, I’m not, Gavin.
You might want to reread the italicized portion of my comment.
Bronwyn: #24
“Her mistake (as far as the effectiveness of her “art” is concerned) was in not waiting until she’d observedly conceived. Even then, she was highly likely to miscarry.”
Er, if you read the second link, which is her article, she expressly contends that part of the purpose of the exercise was that neither she, nor anybody else, know that she had “observedly conceived.” If she had, then it wouldn’t be ambiguous as to whether it was simply her menses, or an aborted, invisible-to-the-naked-eye fetus in the cup.
JJH2
And I will still argue that that ambiguity took all the power out of her “art”. For heaven’s sake, my husband and I have more directly enacted her method every month for the past *counts* almost 2 years. Granted for *counts again* 15 or so of those months I was either already fertilized or otherwise naturally inhibited in that capacity.
So again, what’s her point? What’s the art?
tde
Anyone can call anyone else’s behavior vile if they so choose. Whether that characterisation is justified is up to the listener to decide and, if they so choose, challenge. Which, of course, is why we’re all hanging around here.
I still see no issue with calling her behavior, her “art”, sick-minded and certainly ill-advised, and I would also argue, stupid.
And with that, I will sign off for the night, as I’m stuck using a computer with a faulty U key. And if you counted how many fucking Us are in this comment, you would understand my frustration
Jeez, is this ever annoying!
JJH2, and it woldn’t be an aborted fets in the cp (fark the missing us - o there’s one! - se yor imagination), it wold be an embryo (if it was anything.
Again, no power. No more than the morning after pill.
Good night
Seriously, is anyone ever going to actually make an ARGUMENT as to why what this girl did was wrong in any way? Merely saying it, over and over, and in different ways, doesn’t make it so.
I’m not sure she’s saying that the alleged abortions were not a hoax. If I’m reading between the lines correctly, she’s saying that the hoax was part of her “art”.
I’ve no patience for such idiocy. Performance art is the modern “bread and circuses” for the pseudo-intellectual cosmopolitan elite of our day.
It may well be art. There’s plenty of bad art in the world. But condemning her for doing something repulsive and unethical doesn’t confer merit on her value as an artist. Generating a reaction from people doesn’t make something more or less artistically significant. Provoking outrage isn’t in and of itself “art,” even if the provocateur claims it is.
I do not know where you studied art, but whoever instructed you in that field misled you. ‘The first axiom of all creative art—whether it be in poetry, music, dance, architecture, painting, or sculpture—which is namely, that art is … a presentation of forms, images or ideas in such a way that they will communicate, not primarily a thought or even a feeling, but an impact.’
So, there is art on one side, and your delicate sensibilities on the other.
In my town the right to lifers drive a big box truck through town with their artists’ rendition of aborted fetuses painted upon the side. Many people write letters to the newspaper about this wanting to ban this box truck.
So, there is the first amendment on one side and your delicate sensibilities upon the other.
People have the right to their own bodies and to use their bodies how they like. Should the state control our bodies? Here is an idea, if you don’t like the art work, state that, rather than condemning the artist. It is pretty comical how people can not separate the artist from the art.
Bronwyn #36:
The snide point to make is that there is obviously some kind of ‘power’ there, given the outrage she’s caused among so many people. Obviously, lots of other people think it’s a “big deal.”
But more importantly, “art” doesn’t have to be exotic. There’s a lot of art in the “everyday” - that is, the experiences that are common to all people, or to half the population in this case - presented in a way that is new or unusual and which inspires thought about the experience.
A few years ago the NYC MoMA had a video installation of a German artist, who had filmed the last year of his life through multiple fixed cameras in his apartment. After his death, the MoMA set aside a room, filled with hundreds of cameras, to replay , in real time, hundreds of continuously running video clips of his life. There was nothing exotic in what he did; he worked, slept, showered, shat, met with friends, drank coffee, etc. Nothing that we all haven’t done a thousand times before. But to see the last year of someone’s life presented in real-time, on 100+ video cameras, was completely mesmerizing. The art of the everyday.
By video cameras, I meant TV screens.