Aliza Shvarts, Yale Student, Artificially Inseminates Herself, Tapes Miscarriages For Art Project:


Aliza Shvarts, a senior art major at Yale, artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages for her senior art project. The Yale Daily News has more details on Aliza Shvart's miscarriage art project.

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process....

The display of Aliza Shvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Shvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Shvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Aliza Shvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.



Watch the video @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/17/y...ly_n_97194.html






I hope she dies by mutilation of her organs in public view.

Edit: This has been proven untrue. http://www.yale.edu/opa/

This post has been edited by Synesthesia: Apr 17 2008, 07:45 PM

It's 10 weeks, i know all about this because i had to take classes when i was pregnant with my daughter.

Really 10 weeks? Even better. Make it harder for them to get an abortion!

I love how all the people going on about how she killed the fetuses were hoping that she died a horrible death.

Ok then.

A murderer should be murdered... eye for an eye.
Do you have somethin to say... specifically to me? Make haste with it already.

I find that self-righteous and hypocritical.

Oh well. It works.

You're right... because here I was thinking that murders still happen in countries with the death penalty.

Whatever. I just spilled a jar of olives all over my bed. Puts the whole abortion thing in perspective.

Yeah we should have public executions... this will teach people not to ever commit the crimes. I find it weak & laughable to be a pacifist towards transgressors.

your perspective is skewed. you go on and on about the degradation of america and its government, yet you condone public execution. i find it funny how you overtly state your disdain for capitalism and communism, but some of your opinions of what should and shouldn't be acceptable can be found in both.

anyway, my opinion on the fake article: personally, i don't have a problem with it. i'm about 70% pro-choice, which basically means, although i would find it unnecessary and idiotic to have an abortion when the pregnancy is a result from engaging in consensual sexual intercourse (or, as in the article, any form in which the woman is intentionally impregnating herself), i still believe the would-be mother has the right to abort. maybe it's because i don't believe a fetus is fully "alive" until ~third trimester, but that's discussion for another thread. ;o

My perspective is divine. No matter how horrible you think it may seem. As far as the American government... it's all gonna change, for the better, at least. Trust me.

But since this thread is practically dead, mods... you can close this thread or delete it. Was a waste of time -.-

it's not that i think it's "horrible"; i'm just confused with your train of thought.

Do you actually want it closed, or doyou just not care? Because if it's the latter I'll leave it open in case other people have something they want to say.

Well no... it was a hoax obviously, unless we should speak about how they defamed this poor girl. At first I was enraged with her, now I feel bad for her. It's pretty messed up. Either way; there's no point in discussin the act of what was claimed because it never happened. Plus it's my thread...

Ok, whatever. Might as well stay open, but it's up to you.

-Topic Closed-

Elba PM'ed me with an additional link:

http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24528

"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."

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IMO, she miscarried zygotes or maybe even embryos, at the most, if she even ever did get pregnant.

my my what a turn of events well, she certainly is gaining nationwide attention.

i agree; from her explanation, she timed her experiment with her cycle. therefore it's not clear whether or not her eggs have even been fertilized.

Wait, is this art exhibition or a science experiment?

I'm pro-choice, VERY pro-choice but even I can see that this type of behavior is utterly absurd.

Art. But then again the newsletter is completely f**ked. I heard the author might get expelled from Yale, well that's what my mom told meh -.-

Why's this open again? o.O

Unfortunately, your mom didn't make that decision.

Why would it be closed?

funny i could say the same to you... you're ugly as shit.

Thanks for attempting a comeback.

not even a comeback... just givin you a reality check ^^

uh cuz i requested it since its no longer a true story. and we're way off topic.

It is a true story, dumdum. Didn't you read?