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.

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.

I’ve no patience for such idiocy. Performance art is the modern “bread and circuses” for the pseudo-intellectual cosmopolitan elite of our day.

Again, no power. No more than the morning after pill.

Good night :)

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!

“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.

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?

No, I’m not, Gavin.

You might want to reread the italicized portion of my comment.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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