The Performance of Reproductive Rights

Since a few posts this week have addressed reproductive rights and a few have addressed art, I found a story that combines the two. I have been reading around this post for a few days now and, for some reason, I finally decided to clink on the link. Here is the story.

For her senior project, Aliza Shvarts, Yale Art student, documented a nine-month process whereby she inseminated herself and then took miscarriage inducing drugs. She then filmed certain aspects of the exercise and the film will debut this week. There have been some conflicting reports on the details. For example, a report from The New York Sun states she only took herbal medicine and she seems sketchy on other aspects of the story.

According to Shvarts, she believes "strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity." Here is her description of the project:

For the past year, I performed repeated self-induced miscarriages. I created a group of fabricators from volunteers who submitted to periodic STD screenings and agreed to their complete and permanent anonymity. From the 9th to the 15th day of my menstrual cycle, the fabricators would provide me with sperm samples, which I used to privately self-inseminate. Using a needleless syringe, I would inject the sperm near my cervix within 30 minutes of its collection, so as to insure the possibility of fertilization. On the 28th day of my cycle, I would ingest an abortifacient, after which I would experience cramps and heavy bleeding.

To protect myself and others, only I know the number of fabricators who participated, the frequency and accuracy with which I inseminated and the specific abortifacient I used. Because of these measures of privacy, the piece exists only in its telling. This telling can take textual, visual, spatial, temporal and performative forms — copies of copies of which there is no original.

This piece — in its textual and sculptural forms — is meant to call into question the relationship between form and function as they converge on the body. The artwork exists as the verbal narrative you see above, as an installation that will take place in Green Hall, as a time-based performance, as a independent concept, as a myth and as a public discourse.

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. For me, the most poignant aspect of this representation — the part most meaningful in terms of its political agenda (and, incidentally, the aspect that has not been discussed thus far) — is the impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood. Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether the there was ever a fertilized ovum or not. The reality of the pregnancy, both for myself and for the audience, is a matter of reading.

This ambivalence makes obvious how the act of identification or naming — the act of ascribing a word to something physical — is at its heart an ideological act, an act that literally has the power to construct bodies. In a sense, the act of conception occurs when the viewer assigns the term “miscarriage” or “period” to that blood.

According to Associated Content, a University Spokesperson- the academic analogy to some say-- declared this was a hoax. The artists disagrees though she is unsure if she procured any miscarriages.

There seem to be quite a few points about this, ethical, aesthetic, and academic. If this story were true and not fictional, what would be the ethical standard for her audience to judge the performance? While the purpose of her piece makes sense (the last paragraph and not the other incoherent paragraphs), there are certainly other means to make this point. Of course, this would reduce her argument only to the shock value and emotional content of her piece.

Second, does this work advance the dialogue and debate of the abortion debate? While certainly provocative, The New Republic notes that this piece of art does not advance the pro-choice argument because it removes the safety and privacy aspects of the debate.

Finally, I would add that in terms of a debate, this performance art would offer the same effect as the large photos of fetuses from the pro-life group, Justice for All. Both "performative acts" apply the same appeal to pity fallacy in which the emotional aspect of the message cuts of debate on the topic. When relying on fallacies, it seems that dialogue won't advance. Consequently, her advancement of a political discourse would fail as no one outside her own community would engage her debate.

Paperweight writer, I expect your full attention on this post...