Friday, April 18, 2008

Friday in the world of the absurd

Unlike everyone else, I haven't a good reason for not posting, at least not one I'm willing to share. Similarly, I don't have much to give you, but I hope that this one item makes up in quality what this post lacks in quantity.

At Yale, art student Aliza Shvarts' senior art project aims to make a statement about a woman's constitutional right to choose, the right to free speech, and to make a statement about the relationship between art and the human body. What'd she do? Well, she did what any free-thinking art student did, she artificially inseminated herself as often as possible, forced miscarriages, videotaped the forced miscarriages, and preserved the blood for display as part of the project. Wonkette says that the miscarriage fluids will be mixed with Vaseline and suspended in a cube from the ceiling, and I think I recall something about images from the miscarriage videos projected onto the walls. A miscarriage of justice indeed, Wonkette.

You can say whatever you like about the right to choose, about the morality of abortion, and whether this kind of thing ought to be protected speech. We've been talking about that stuff for decades, and this project (sorry Ms. Schvarts) will neither solve problems, create new ones, nor provoke any serious debate. So, I'm not going to talk about lofty ideals. But, there's something here that disturbs me.

Frankly, shock art, in my opinion, cannot hold a candle to reality. Even though Ms. Schvarts lived this experience, she did it in the confines of an academic setting. Her experience cannot hold a candle to the lived experience of a woman who had to face down the question of whether an abortion is right or wrong for her. Ms. Schvarts did this for play, for art. Art is not life, at least not at Yale. It's a show, a farce, an absurd mockery of the brutal reality that some women must live in our times.

Ms. Schvarts, you've pissed me off.

6 comments:

Jack Gonzo, MD said...

wow...what the fuck is wrong with that crazy bitch?! I say these words with all due respect of course...but WHAT THE FUCK?! Dews wouldn't even pull something like that

Dews said...

whoa whoa whoa, when did I become the moral low-point for us all here?!?

All things being fair, my support for reproductive rights (if you will) spring from my strict libertarian values preventing government restrictions over one's ability to make decisions, not from a moral standpoint.

besides Gonzo, i can't have kids, no wombz and such.

Dewey, Cheatem, & Howe said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dewey, Cheatem, & Howe said...

If there was something that screamed "like, seriously, wtf?" this is it.

Rosanne said...

It was all a hoax: http://www.yale.edu/opa/

Still a stupid, stupid art project.

Jack Gonzo, MD said...

lol serious mental problems if true...no shit