“Ceci N’est Pas Aborted Baby Matter”
It's real! It's fake! It's real! It's- oh, hell. In the matter of Aliza Shvarts' reproductive organs and senior art project, who can even keep track? In a new interview with the Yale Daily News, Shvarts disputes Yale's designation of her abortion-goo-cube and menstrual-snuff-films as "creative fiction," and admits that even she isn't sure what happened:
Shvarts stood by her project, calling the University's statement "ultimately inaccurate." ...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."
What is reality, anyway? What is truth? We have here the story of one mildly deranged art student who somehow took an entire 24-hour newscycle hostage. We have many questions but not a single sufficient answer. For instance: How supernaturally powerful must this girl's uterus be, if we are to believe it withstood nine maybe-pregnancies followed by nine abortions in just as many months? Aliza Shvarts, we dub thee "Wonder Walls."
More urgently: What poor, abused YDN staffer was forced to witness this?
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.
It's like some terrible staring contest, and I'm pretty sure someone blinked, I just don't know if it was her or us.
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April 18th, 2008 at 2:42 am
it wasn’t a blink, it was a wince and it was definitely us.
April 18th, 2008 at 8:48 am
I almost puked.
April 18th, 2008 at 8:51 am
I can only imagine the complete pandemonium at the YDN last night with all this indecision… hundreds of global newspapers calling in demanding details, two conflicting stories and, best of all, Mangino and the next 3 or 4 people in power all gone being tapped. Must have been a total shitshow.
April 18th, 2008 at 10:12 am
I’m waiting for the facebook/personal life/embarassing photo analysis of this girl to be posted. Don’t disappoint us IvyGate! We NEED your investigative reporting!
April 18th, 2008 at 10:22 am
That meat ad on the front page, right below this post is really, really disturbing.
April 18th, 2008 at 11:48 am
it was my fuckin’ kid she aborted!!! Ohhhh yeeeeeeeeah ;)
April 18th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
to abort publicly
to arouse widespread disgust
April 18th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
A+++++. Would do business with again!!!
April 19th, 2008 at 12:19 am
a response video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=IojbKzHIX6c
April 19th, 2008 at 9:27 am
She was able to find a way to get a guy’s sperm inside herself. I’d guess that was a first for her four years at Yale. Bravo.
April 19th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
“alone in a shower stall bleeding into a cup.”
one girl one cup?
April 19th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Shhh! I’m varting.
April 20th, 2008 at 7:15 am
I’m sorry – regardless of how you feel about her project, publishing her contact info online is plain bad taste. Those interested can go to the Yale phonebook and look it up themselves.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:22 am
posting an address online is “bad taste” compared to the “art project”?
Wow – moral relativism turns everything on its head, doesn’t it.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:04 am
Both are in bad taste, but I’m not drawing comparisons here. I’m pointing out that the unworthiness of this particular action, irrespective of what I may think (not much) of Ms. Shvarts’ creative pursuits.
I don’t see how that constitutes moral relativism.