would opening with a dead baby joke be really, really tacky?
My friend Joseph is a great source of interesting links. Last week he sent me a link to an article about a Yale art major’s final project in which she artificially inseminated herself and induced miscarriage herbally numerous times over a nine-month period. The student, Aliza Shvarts, filmed herself experiencing the miscarriages in a bathtub and is projecting the videos on to the sides of a large cube suspended from the ceiling. The cube itself will be lined with plastic sheeting filled with a mixture of Vaseline and the miscarriage blood.
“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”
Almost everyone I’ve talked to about this project has had an extremely strong reaction, usually quite emotional, and occasionally concerned with her motivations. Personally, though I think any discussion of her motivations is irrelevant to the validity of the project, I believe that the artist was truthful when she stated, “I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity.” The project has inspired, I’m sure, countless discussions as to the ethics and ideologies of her actions and how they relate to art - even going so far as to redefine the subjective idea of art itself.
An interesting point, to me, is that while the project is undoubtedly offensive to most or all of the anti-choice faction, I’m sure it’s given a couple of people on the other side of the fence cause to re-evaluate their stance. After all, Shvarts deliberately and repeatedly inseminated herself for the express purpose of forcing miscarriage.
She said she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages.
I can’t possibly fit my entire argument into a single blog post, but I’ll close on the final notes of the conversation I had with Joseph about it. The connection a woman feels with an embryo growing inside of her has been documented time and time again; it would have been incredibly difficult for any woman to create life inside of her and then lose it. Although I haven’t seen Shvarts’ videos, I have no doubt that they are extremely emotional, heartwrenching, and difficult to watch. Perhaps Shvarts’ project should not be evaluated so quickly as “a disgusting abuse of a woman’s body” or the negligent destruction of life. Perhaps Shvarts is commenting on the preciousness of life, or on the beautiful complexity of our ability to create it. Maybe she’s saying everything. After all, as she stated, this project was about stimulating political and ideological discourse, and that’s certainly what she’s done.
2 Responses to “would opening with a dead baby joke be really, really tacky?”
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April 23rd, 2008 at 2:35 am
I’m glad you’ve left a comment option (but I wish the comment box was a little bigger).
On the topic at hand, I’ve been recently informed that this was all a hoax.
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1732162,00.html
But of course, challenges to this claim have risen as well.
I suppose the controversey is all it takes to induce emotional exchange among strangers. Be it real or unreal, her performance is talked about in a context as if it were real because it addresses a very real issue.
April 24th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
my blog response to the above comment.