So I guess I'll post about the Shvarts hullabaloo. It's a classic cycle of life: impregnate, abort, repeat. Then Yale says, "ha ha guys, it was all a joke! You can take a joke, right?" And then Aliza (the artist) says, "no, but seriously, it's not a joke." And Yale says, "will you excuse us for a moment please?"
Is this art? Of course! Is it weird? Of course! But if art has become a means of challenging and developing the public consciousness on a subject, which I think it largely has, this is some damned fine stuff. The best part isn't that she did a lot of abortions on herself. The best part is that the entire world was so eager to accept that it was a hoax and go "whew! I knew it couldn't be real." But it still might be...
American society has this kind of funny tendancy to think of everything like a movie: "sure, it's morally repugnant, but then the movie will end and we will have learned a valuable lesson without any lasting damage." Ha. Life don't work like that. There's nothing like thinking somebody's killin' babies to make you question whether it's ok to kill babies, and there's nothing like not knowing for sure whether somebody is killin' babies to send everything to shit.
Personally, I applaud Aliza, at least on one level. I might question her sanity a little, because I'm sure it can't be pleasant to bleed extensively into a cup every month, but her dedication paid off with the most provocative artwork/human experiment in years.
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Sheesh. You're a little fickle. Viz., you weren't so hot on others' art project ideas that involved pain and making people uncomfortable. Maybe it was the humanitarian aspect. Ethical issues are, after all, much more delicious when in a practical, if not aesthetic, vacuum. I mean, I guess this was a little less the-adjective-for-messiah-complex than other ideas you've heard, and more creative, but still. Your objection to those other ideas had more to do with the pain, it seemed, than with the actual "art." Maybe it's different when you know the person? Or maybe it's a matter of degree of pain - it's worse to staple yourself than to "bleed into a cup" and simultaneously "kill babies," as you put it. Wait - that doesn't make sense...
An small correction - I see you said "killin' babies" rather than "kill babies," which has a different ring to it, but doesn't change my point. The situation is sufficiently ambiguous that irony doesn't change it.
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