Aliza Shvarts as Bad as the Taliban, PR-wise
Yalies: If you would like to commit a grievous crime, now is the time, as you are almost guaranteed to fly under the radar, because we are all way too busy discussing Aliza Shvarts-Embryo-Art's menstrual cycle and senior project.
Yale's administration is now threatening to ban the aborto-agitator's project if she doesn't 'fess up to making it up. YDN explains,
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. ... "I am appalled," Yale College Dean Peter Salovey said in a statement Friday. "This piece of performance art as reported in the press bears no relation to what I consider appropriate for an undergraduate senior project."
School of Art Dean Robert Storr also condemned the project in a written statement Friday.
"If I had known about this, I would not have permitted it to go forward," Storr said in the statement. "This is not an acceptable project in a community where the consequences go beyond the individual who initiates the project and may even endanger that individual."
Storr accuses Aliza of "avoiding intellectual accountability" for screaming ABORTION! in a crowded theater. Another administrator said the Shvarts-induced PR disaster is as bad as the time they admitted an ex-Taliban leader as a student.
Now that everyone's favorite kinda-slutty-for-needleless-syringes Yalie commands about 50% of YDN, plus headlines in every newssource this side of the Milky Way, there's much to read. After the jump, a highlights guide to the latest, including info on Shvarts' much-maligned adviser.
Also, may I please call attention to the fact that, in the above image, Aliza is standing on not one but two soapboxes? Girlfriend literally needs double the platform to get her message out.
In this article, YDN reports that Yale is "investigating" disciplinary action for every faculty member and administrator involved in rubberstamping Shvarts' project. In this article we discover Aliza's adviser is a Finnish provocateur who enjoys "social engineering" (which sounds kinda eugenics-y, but actually refers to the large-scale hoaxster-ship Aliza is currently engaged in) and maybe doesn't understand American media or something.
In this YDN guest column, Aliza sticks to her abortofacient story and gets a little high on the power it - and the ensuing PR disaster - have given her:
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.
Conserva-pundit and law professor Ann Althouse (who, oddly enough, holds a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts) turns Shvarts' logic into an argument to kill Women's Studies:
Ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman's body... So that's what passes as insight at Yale these days? If I was going to get livid and horrified about something it would be that a great university sucks so many young women into the into the intellectual graveyard of Women's Studies. Think what these women could be studying instead of this endlessly recycled drivel. If you care about women's bodies, study science and help us with the limitations of the body. But to imagine you are helping us by restating meager platitudes is just very sad.
One YDN columnist compares Shvarts to a prostitute. Another calls her project "the most execrable ever." Yalies debate the merits of free speech, while Jezebel offers a Halloween How-To for scoring Aliza's awesome style. Even Perez Hilton, he of Microsoft-paintbrush-drawn cumshots on celebrity faces is weighing in:
WTF?!?!?! Ewwww!!!!! ... Ewwww!!!! ... Double EWWWWWW!!! ... This is TOO MUCH!!!!!!
Catholics want us to pray for Aliza. "Jesus wept." Shvarts-Embryo-Art has her own page at Museum of Hoaxes and basically every organization that has ever had ties with her is frantically trying to establish distance, now.
One interesting outcome is that Aliza has performed the previously unthinkable task of uniting pro-lifers and pro-choicers in their utter disgust for her. The former thinks she is the devil; the latter thinks she "trivializes" and is generally kind of wack-o and gross. Aliza Shvarts: Uniter, not divider. For her next trick, Our Lady of the Embryo-Strewn Labia will create world peace by sneezing onto a sheet of origami paper.
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April 21st, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I think I’ve just become pro-life because of this wacko. I am also not even the least bit impressed by the highly latinate explanation of her project (try to fully unpack the phrase “locus of ontology?”)…clearly it makes me thinks she’s overcompensating for something. She will be shunned for the rest of her days; good luck getting into grad school or becoming an art director or curator!
April 21st, 2008 at 12:25 pm
She’d probably be more impressive if she tried using the soap.
April 21st, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Got any other pictures of her?
April 21st, 2008 at 12:36 pm
girlfriend is standing on six soapboxes. check that shit.
April 21st, 2008 at 12:42 pm
She wanted attention and now she’s got it. If artists have no original talent, they rely on being hysterical and causing a spectacle. The best thing to do is just ignore her.
April 21st, 2008 at 12:47 pm
She wanted attention and now she’s got it. If artists have no original talent, they rely on being hysterical and causing a spectacle. The best thing to do is just ignore her.
April 21st, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Looks like a screenshot from an 80s movie.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:11 pm
this is all such bullshit. stop posting about her.
there are hundreds of other art majors with better, more well-thought-out projects being presented this week. there are so many more talented and reasonable people at this school.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:12 pm
“Aliza Shvarts-Embryo-Art”
.
Genius. I shall use this.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:15 pm
“he off [sic] Microsoft”
This typo tripped up my reading.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Yale didn’t admit Hashemi to the class of 2010 — he was in a nondegree program.
April 21st, 2008 at 2:00 pm
The best part was Chase “Crazy” Olivarius-McAllister demanding the resignation of Dean Salovey.
We always knew she was a little touched in the head.
April 21st, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Is there literally no other picture of this girl in existence? Seriously, I’ve seen this one everywhere.
April 21st, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Talk about hijacking a news cycle - the story showed up in my German language news today (Der Spiegel, actually): http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/wunderbar/0,1518,548255,00.html
April 21st, 2008 at 5:53 pm
@worthless: No doubt there are other art majors with better projects. But, as you have apparently failed to notice, IvyGate is a gossip blog, not a bastion of web-based art criticism. Which makes the Shvarts debacle relevant, and other projects not.
April 21st, 2008 at 6:18 pm
getum.
April 21st, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Here’s the official comment from the loony dipshits at Yale’s “Women’s Center”:
“Whether it is a question of reproductive rights or of artistic expression, Aliza Shvarts’ body is an instrument over which she should be free to exercise full discretion.”
…
Freaking idiots.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Svarts is a wacko, but no one is more wacko than the advisor(s) who took a look at her senior project proposal and said yes. Endangering one’s life (whether by actually attempting to impregnate oneself and induce numerous abortions or instantaneously becoming the target of all “pro-life” anger and vitriole) should not be allowed to receive credit towards a bachelor’s degree.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:10 pm
I thought Chase made some good points, even if this whole Shvarts farce is tasteless and juvenile. Why should freedom of speech only apply to those who say something agreeable? If she was prevented from pursuing this because of health concerns then that is one thing, but it is too late for that and so the only reason she is being thwarted is because people are disgusted or angry. The ONLY way Yale can prevent her presentation without looking hypocritical would be to say that the blood poses a health risk, but they have already chosen a cowards stance by denying that they ever agreed to this in the first place (which they clearly did).
April 21st, 2008 at 8:21 pm
How are you so sure the university’s lying about this being performance art? Clearly this girl’s off her rocker and capable of anything, so why wouldn’t she be capable of pulling this off as performance art? They would be a lot more sane than actually doing the damned stunt when her intent was merely to provoke controversy by “exposing ambiguity” or however she explains it in Deconstruction jargon.
Yale’s not challenging her legal right to do what she did, they’re just saying that they won’t hang it up in their gallery. This makes a lot of sense given all the bomb threats they’ve received since this thing went public. Even if this was a free speech issue, free speech takes a back seat when public safety is at stake (that’s why you can’t yell Fire! in a crowded theater). But that point is moot since her speech rights don’t entitle her to a spot in the gallery, just because she should be allowed to do something crazy/offensive/immoral (depending on whom you ask) doesn’t mean that the University has to hang it on the fridge.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:49 pm
the university can’t stop her from doing any of this. they CAN stop her from receiving credit for it for her degree. and they SHOULD if she has endangered herself and/or others (and her own human blood dripping from her “installation” onto onlookers fits that description).
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:13 am
Shvarts lied: No one died.
Bush lied: Thousands died.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:16 am
Shouldn’t Zeta Psi be chanting something about loving Yale Sluts right about now…
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:16 am
Shvarts lied: No one died.
Bush lied: Thousands died.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:45 am
Evidently, taste is very much lacking at some of our peer schools. I realize now that the reason ivygate does not blog Brown that much is because we are way too COOL and we screen our admits a little more carefully than others..Glad we are not part of these deranged “juicy” stories
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:23 pm
So far as I can tell, she didn’t endanger anyone other than , possibly, her. And if this is her senior project for credit, she had to have been telling advisors about it. Those advisors, whoever they were, apparently approved at the time–so it’s not fair to screw her over now. Why is everyone so worked up about this?
I suppose people need to be made uncomfortable from time to time. But wouldn’t it have been better if she had just made a painting and sold it for a couple thousand dollars to hang in some high-rise apartment?
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Actually, depending on your views on abortion and if girlfriend is lying or not, up to 9 might have died
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:34 pm
The fact that Yale hasn’t suspended her and ushered her into hospital care (mental or otherwise) indicates that she performed no induced miscarriages. Her insistence to the contrary is in the interest of continuing the media controversy which IS THE ARTWORK itself.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:51 am
So you are saying that Aliza Shvarts = Milli Vanilli?
Living a lie - no matter the subject - is not art. In many ways her ‘performance art’ is no different than that of the hoaxer who got past Yale admissions. Actually - that person was able to create a richer, more compelling narrative.
Shvarts just yelled “LOOK AT ME!”
April 25th, 2008 at 10:00 am
chase olivarius-mcallister’s op-ed was genius. too bad aliza that no one is saying the same thing about her art.
April 25th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
almost as bad as this
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Starving-A-Dog-is-Wrong?page=24
http://www.petitiononline.com/ea6gk/petition.html
its pretty pathetic that this is what art has become–perhaps such artists can transgress through masochistic acts instead