Would've been a terrible miscarriage of justice if this had turned out to be real.

Uhm, most stories/movies/whatever out there are based on lies. Some more, some less entertaining.

UHG, PAGE DOWN!

What does it say?

University calls art project a fiction; Shvarts '08 disputes Yale's claim
Zachary Abrahamson, Thomas Kaplan and Martine Powers
Guest Columnists
Published Thursday, April 17, 2008

According to a statement released by the University today, Aliza Shvarts .08 was never impregnated. She never miscarried. The sweeping outrage on blogs across the country was apparently for naught.

The supposed senior art project of the Davenport College senior was a .creative fiction,. a Yale official said Thursday afternoon as students on campus and bloggers across the country expressed colossal outrage over what Shvarts described as a documentation of a nine-month process during which she claimed to have artificially inseminated herself .as often as possible. while periodically taking .abortifacient drugs. to induce miscarriages.

.The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman.s body,. Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky said in a written statement e-mailed to the News this afternoon.

But Shvarts stood by her project, calling the University.s statement .ultimately inaccurate..

Klasky said Shvarts informed three senior Yale officials today . including two deans . that she neither impregnated herself nor induced any miscarriages. Rather, the entire episode, including a press release describing the exhibition, was .performance art,. Klasky said.

.She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art,. Klasky said. .Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns..

But Shvarts reiterated Thursday that she repeatedly use a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself. At the end of her menstrual cycle, she took abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding, she said. She said she does not know whether or not she was ever pregnant.

.No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen,. Shvarts said, .because the nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties..

This afternoon, Shvarts showed the News footage from tapes she plans to play at the exhibit. The tapes depict Shvarts . sometimes naked, sometimes clothed . alone in a shower stall bleeding into a cup.

Pia Lindman, Shvarts.s thesis adviser, and Davenport College Dean Craig Harwood could not be reached for comment Thursday. Art Director of Undergraduate Studies Henk van Assen deferred comment to the Yale Office of Public Affairs.

Yale.s statement comes after a day of widespread outrage all across the country following an article in today.s edition of the News in which Shvarts described her supposed exhibition, which she said would include the video recordings well as a preserved collection of the blood from the process, which she said she is storing in a freezer.

In an interview Wednesday, Shvarts said the goal of her exhibition was to spark conversation and debate about the relationship between art and the human body. She said her endeavor was not conceived with any .shock value. in mind.

.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..

Shvarts said her project would take the form of a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Shvarts said she would wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around the cube, with blood from her self-induced miscarriages lining the sheeting.

Recorded videos of her experiencing her miscarriages would be projected onto the four sides of the cube, Shvarts said, and similar videos would also be displayed on the walls of the room.

Many students on campus expressed outrage when told of the concept, saying it trivialized abortion and transgressed any reasonable moral boundary. On Thursday, the general public seemed to agree; by early evening Thursday, news outlets from The Washington Post to London.s Daily Telegraph had reported the story, and the blogosphere was ablaze in horrified debate over the supposed exhibition.

The project . at least the way Shvarts presented it in her press release and her interview . was immediately condemned Thursday by national groups on both sides of the abortion debate.

.It.s clearly depraved. I think the poor woman has got some major mental problems,. the president of the National Right to Life Committee, Wanda Franz, was quoted as saying on the Web site of FOX News. .She.s a serial killer. This is just a horrible thought..

The abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America also condemned the exhibition in a written statement e-mailed to the News on Thursday.

.This .project. is offensive and insensitive to the women who have suffered the heartbreak of miscarriage,. said Ted Miller, a spokesman for the organization

For the past year, I performed repeated self-induced miscarriages. I created a group of fabricators from volunteers who submitted to periodic STD screenings and agreed to their complete and permanent anonymity. From the 9th to the 15th day of my menstrual cycle, the fabricators would provide me with sperm samples, which I used to privately self-inseminate. Using a needleless syringe, I would inject the sperm near my cervix within 30 minutes of its collection, so as to insure the possibility of fertilization. On the 28th day of my cycle, I would ingest an abortifacient, after which I would experience cramps and heavy bleeding.

To protect myself and others, only I know the number of fabricators who participated, the frequency and accuracy with which I inseminated and the specific abortifacient I used. Because of these measures of privacy, the piece exists only in its telling. This telling can take textual, visual, spatial, temporal and performative forms — copies of copies of which there is no original.

This piece — in its textual and sculptural forms — is meant to call into question the relationship between form and function as they converge on the body. The artwork exists as the verbal narrative you see above, as an installation that will take place in Green Hall, as a time-based performance, as a independent concept, as a myth and as a public discourse.

It creates an ambiguity that isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership. An intentional ambiguity pervades both the act and the objects I produced in relation to it. The performance exists only as I chose to represent it. For me, the most poignant aspect of this representation — the part most meaningful in terms of its political agenda (and, incidentally, the aspect that has not been discussed thus far) — is the impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood. Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether the there was ever a fertilized ovum or not. The reality of the pregnancy, both for myself and for the audience, is a matter of reading.

This ambivalence makes obvious how the act of identification or naming — the act of ascribing a word to something physical — is at its heart an ideological act, an act that literally has the power to construct bodies. In a sense, the act of conception occurs when the viewer assigns the term “miscarriage” or “period” to that blood.

In some sense, neither term is exactly accurate or inaccurate; the ambiguity is not merely a matter of context, but is embodied in the physicality of the object. This central ambiguity defies a clear definition of the act. The reality of miscarriage is very much a linguistic and political reality, an act of reading constructed by an act of naming — an authorial act.

It is the intention of this piece to destabilize the locus of that authorial act, and in doing so, reclaim it from the heteronormative structures that seek to naturalize it.

As an intervention into our normative understanding of “the real” and its accompanying politics of convention, this performance piece has numerous conceptual goals. The first is to assert that often, normative understandings of biological function are a mythology imposed on form. It is this mythology that creates the sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist and homophobic perspective, distinguishing what body parts are “meant” to do from their physical capability. The myth that a certain set of functions are “natural” (while all the other potential functions are “unnatural”) undermines that sense of capability, confining lifestyle choices to the bounds of normatively defined narratives.

Just as it is a myth that women are “meant” to be feminine and men masculine, that penises and vaginas are “meant” for penetrative heterosexual sex (or that mouths, anuses, breasts, feet or leather, silicone, vinyl, rubber, or metal implements are not “meant” for sex at all), it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are “meant” to birth a child.

When considering my own bodily form, I recognize its potential as extending beyond its ability to participate in a normative function. While my organs are capable of engaging with the narrative of reproduction — the time-based linkage of discrete events from conception to birth — the realm of capability extends beyond the bounds of that specific narrative chain. 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.

Just as it is a myth that women are “meant” to be feminine and men masculine, that penises and vaginas are “meant” for penetrative heterosexual sex (or that mouths, anuses, breasts, feet or leather, silicone, vinyl, rubber, or metal implements are not “meant” for sex at all), it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are “meant” to birth a child.

The point is that they aren't "meant" for anything, in that there was no designer who said, "I am making these for purpose of teh bebbies!" when they were made. Of course, that's the function they serve most commonly, but evolution doesn't operate with a purpose in mind.

That is, quite possibly, the dumbest post ever.

The point is that they aren't "meant" for anything, in that there was no designer who said, "I am making these for purpose of teh bebbies!" when they were made. Of course, that's the function they serve most commonly,

but evolution doesn't operate with a purpose in mind.

the brain is only "meant" for thinking

Well, yes... what these organs were "meant" to do is up for metaphysical argument. However, what they actually do is make babies, and nothing else -- that's biological fact, and it's just as silly to insist that they serve some other feministically acceptable function as it is to insist that they are meant to make men happy or to fulfill God's divine will in some or other way.

I separated this from the rest of the post because it's important. No, evolution doesn't have any kind of coherent will, but by the very nature of evolution, the "purpose" of evolution is to reproduce more effectively. The species that continue to do so get to keep playing the game, the species that don't, get biology's ultimate "game over" screen.

I'm not denying that the uterus serves to make babies. But maybe uteruses also make men happy or fulfill God's will. How can you say they weren't "meant" to do that, if you can indeed demonstrate that it's something that they do?

Well, right, if you're willing to ascribe "purpose" or "intention" to a non-volitional force.

Part of the issue here is that you can look at something performing a function, and you can understand how that function works, but you can't read too much into that as far as what its creator meant to accomplish.

For example, what was this whole "art" thing meant to achieve?

this one line caught my eye near the end


What else would they be used for!?

This story confounds me and scares me greatly

This ambivalence makes obvious how the act of identification or naming — the act of ascribing a word to something physical — is at its heart an ideological act, an act that literally has the power to construct bodies. In a sense, the act of conception occurs when the viewer assigns the term “miscarriage” or “period” to that blood.

In some sense, neither term is exactly accurate or inaccurate; the ambiguity is not merely a matter of context, but is embodied in the physicality of the object. This central ambiguity defies a clear definition of the act. The reality of miscarriage is very much a linguistic and political reality, an act of reading constructed by an act of naming — an authorial act.

I have no idea why we value art. At all. I'd honestly be really interested to hear some perspectives on this.

And all that discussion about the purpose of uteri, (firefox spellcheck says that's right.)

it's jest feminist psychobabble. We're animals. Every single bit of us can be sorted into one of two categories : Parts that help our genes survive and reproduce now, and parts that used to help our genes survive and reproduce. Reproducing is the entire and only purpose of our existence. The desire to want to be more than that is probably natural, but too bad, you aren't.

English words should have English plurals. I notice you're not declining it to be in the genitive, like it should be. ("The purpose of uterorum")

English words should have English plurals.

The definition of sentience is an awareness of what you are.

The definition of sentience is an awareness of what you are. This is distinct and separate from our capacity for self-determination. This is nothing but sophistry.

This ambivalence makes obvious how the act of identification or naming — the act of ascribing a word to something physical — is at its heart an ideological act, an act that literally has the power to construct bodies. In a sense, the act of conception occurs when the viewer assigns the term “miscarriage” or “period” to that blood.