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aliza shvarts
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It looks like Aliza Shvarts' 15 seconds are up: the plucky Yale senior has submitted a new, non-embryonic art project in lieu of her original project, a representation of nine months of self-induced miscarriages that included her own blood. (She would have failed the course had she not displayed any work at all.) In related news, those gross frat boys who held up the "We Love Yale Sluts" sign in front of the Yale Women's Center have been found not guilty of intimidation and harassment charges stemming from the incident. [YDN, Feministing]
Avant Garde Assholes
Excellent essayist and Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum weighs in on the Aliza Shvarts controversy and decides that our favorite art agitator isn't actually all that original, especially when compared to a batty Brit named Mary Toft. "Many artists, including photographer Cindy Sherman and multimedia artist Judy Chicago, have incorporated menstrual blood into their work. As for those maybe-miscarriages and their role in performance art, hoax or some combination thereof, Shvarts has nothing on 18th century Englishwoman Mary Toft. In 1726, Toft became a sensation when she managed to convince the public and much of the medical community that she was repeatedly giving birth to rabbits." [LAT]
updates
Our favorite art school provocateur, Aliza Shvarts, may not get to show her controversial abortion art project — predicated upon a series of artificial inseminations and alleged miscarriages — after all. According to the Yale Daily News, "The University will not allow Aliza Shvarts '08 to display her controversial senior art project at its scheduled opening Tuesday unless she confesses in writing that the exhibition is a work of fiction, Yale officials said Sunday." In addition, two of Shvarts' advisers, lecturer Pia Lindman and School of Art Director of Undergraduate Studies Henk van Assen, who allowed the project to go forward, have been disciplined. Shvarts has also weighed in on the debacle: "I started out with the University on board with what I was doing, and because of the media frenzy they've been trying to dissociate with me...Ultimately, I want to get back to a point where they renew their support, because ultimately this was something they supported." [YDN]
the week that was
This Week We Dealt With A Load Of Crap
- Slut Machine took one for the team and Intern Betty filmed her getting a colonic. Crappy hour indeed.
- Speaking of Crap: If Aliza Shvarts smears her uterine lining all over Boot Barn and no one is around to see it, did it really happen?
- We learned why mommy's face no longer moves.
- The kind of mommy who reads Baby Couture!
- Paul Janka + Tyra = Our pop cultural worlds colliding
Reader Roundup
Best Comment of the Day, in response to Ice, Ice, Baby "I heard that posh fertility clinics not only get you pregnant, they raise and fuck up your kids for you, too. It is a full-service kind of thing." We say: you can even go back a year later and get the "mommy makeover" at a reduced price! • Worst, in response to One Thing Is Certain: Right Now, Yale University & Aliza Shvarts '08 Are 100% Annoying: "Fucking Jews; right you are." We say: there is no excuse for outlandish anti-Semitism. Banned.
crimson tides
Aliza Shvarts: The Halloween How-To For Harvard Students
Aliza Shvarts '08 is more than just an alleged abortion-inducer; according to our commenters, she is also a style icon of sorts. In fact, we predict that come Halloween, students all over Cambridge and other rival Ivies will be dressing up as the suddenly-notorious art student from that other East Coast institution of higher learning. In order to help them along, we decided to create a handy guide to recreating Aliza's look... Black leggings? Check! Fringe boots? Check! Leopard-print shorts? Of course. Everything they need to create a Shvarts costume (except for the discarded uterine lining), after the jump. More »
clips
Earlier: One Thing Is Certain: Right Now, Yale University & Aliza Shvarts '08 Are 100% Annoying
Chris Rock Was Right: Abortion Is A Choice Between A Female And Her Friends
With all this talk about Aliza Shvarts and her (im)possible abortions, it got me thinking about how women decide whether to keep or terminate a pregnancy. For those of us have gotten pregnant, was the opinion of the dude who knocked you up ever the final say in your decision of whether to keep it or get an abortion? Probably not, which is normal, since it's your body, and ultimately, your choice to make. In his 2004 HBO stand-up special Never Scared, Chris Rock talked about how a man can't really offer anything other than support for a woman with an unplanned pregnancy and how a woman's friends play bigger role in helping her come to a decision. ("[They're] like, girl, why are we even talking about this? Ain't we supposed to go to Cancun next week? Get rid of that baby!") It's funny 'cause it's true. Clip above.Earlier: One Thing Is Certain: Right Now, Yale University & Aliza Shvarts '08 Are 100% Annoying
period pieces?
One Thing Is Certain: Right Now, Yale University & Aliza Shvarts '08 Are 100% Annoying
I seem to be the only one of the Jezebels online and — lucky for me! — now we're hearing that Aliza Shvarts is disputing Yale University's claim that her performance piece was a work of fiction. Reports the Yale Daily News:
Shvarts stood by her project, calling the University's statement "ultimately inaccurate."...But Shvarts reiterated Thursday that she repeatedly used 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."Oh, Christ. Anyway, interested (and still-awake) readers can learn more here. I, for one, have had about enough of this youngster and am going to exercise my right to control my body and go to bed.
University Calls Art Project A Fiction; Shvarts '08 Disputes Yale's Claim [Yale Daily News]
updates
Yale: Abortion Art Piece Was "Creative Fiction"
So it turns out that Aliza Shvarts, the Yale student who said she impregnated herself only to abort her embryos using "herbal" methods several times over for an art project, totally pulled one over on everyone. (Well, everyone except Moe.) She didn't really get pregnant a bunch of times, and she didn't really give herself abortions. According to a statement issued by Yale spokesperson Helaine S. Klasky, the entire stunt — Shvarts' press release, visual presentation, and narrative materials — was all part of Shvarts' real art project: Proving people are gullible weenies. More »
i call bullshit
Just How Do You Give Yourself An Herbal Abortion?
So guys, you know you're sort of playing into the babykilling hands of Yale fetus artist Aliza Shvarts here. Not because, you know, her method was maybe a smart way to address the Meaning Of An Embryo — as in, an embryo achieved via modern methods and stripped of all the mostly well-intentioned mix of very palpably human phenomena that generally places such things in unwelcoming uteri (i.e. lust, pleasure, intimacy, emotional attachment, faulty use of prophylactics, the possible attendant never-acknowledged romantic debate over whether said failure is attributable to A "Reason" that can only ever conclude in "I just can't right now") (or, in the case of miscarriage, the tragedy of the body's refusal to abide the desire to procreate) — but because she claims she expelled them through use of legal and herbal abortificients and that is totally an absurd (or "absurdist", whatever) joke. Right, Google? More »
avant-garde assholes
Yale Senior Undergoes Multiple Self-Induced Miscarriages In The Name Of Art
Update: It was fake.
Yale University senior Aliza Shvarts, left, swears she's not trying to "scandalize anyone." Her art is definitely not designed purely for "shock value,". Even so, it's hard to know what to call Shvarts' senior thesis, "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." Yup, in an attempt to start a dialogue about art and its relationship to the body, Shvarts is displaying plastic sheeting reportedly smeared with the uterine blood and tissue from her various miscarriages and projecting video of herself miscarrying into a bathtub. "I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity," Shvarts tells the Yale Daily News. "I think that I'm creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be." The thing is, Shvarts' art isn't so much commenting on politics or ideologies but her own need for attention.
