I don't think that I commented when this story initially broke. As I understand it, a female student at Yale claimed that she had repeatedly been inseminated and then induced a miscarriage and was producing a senior art project with the materials from the experience.
It later came out (but wasn't confirmed) that this was some kind of performance art piece, and that she had not been inseminated.
Regardless of where one stands on the issue of reproductive rights, I think just about everyone would agree that this was just an unbelievably horrible idea, even as a performance art piece. (And for her own health's sake, it sounds like it would have been injurious.)
I must admit that I have never been particularly fond of performance art. It tends too frequently like the performer is just being too artsy with their bad self. I was at something years ago where an older woman (stage name: Kotex - does that tell you something) just said common words at an extremely slow rate while a pigeon was perched on her shoulder. Others were amused. My only thought was that if someone would just make sure that she had her thorazine dose, then we could all go home.
Shvarts submits alternate project
Aliza Shvarts ’08 has submitted another art piece in place of her controversial senior project that purportedly documented nine months of self-induced miscarriages, the University said this week.
The announcement — which came Monday, a week and a half after Shvarts’ initial project inspired nothing short of a national controversy — puts to rest the question of whether the Davenport College senior’s art exhibit would ever be displayed. Last week, the University forbade Shvarts from installing it unless she admitted the piece was a work of fiction. She did not.
In the announcement, University spokeswoman Helaine Klasky said Shvarts requested permission to substitute a different piece of art in place of what Klasky termed “the performance piece” she had originally planned as her senior project.
“We welcomed the solution that Aliza proposed,” Klasky said, “as we had been unable to determine with clarity whether Ms. Shvarts had in fact undertaken actions injurious to her health in carrying out her original project.”
The director of undergraduate studies in the School of Art, Henk van Assen, approved her request, the statement said.
But the matter of whether Shvarts’ project actually entailed nine months of self-inseminations and repeated miscarriages, as Shvarts claimed, or was merely ill-conceived performance art, as the University said, remains unresolved.
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