Aliza Shvarts
April 18th, 2008 | researchmaterial
My first period remained an event shared only by the Mings and me.
44 Responses to “Aliza Shvarts”
- WHITECHAPEL Message Board
- FREAKANGELS Updated Fridays
- TWITTERNanojabber
- FILM/TV AGENTAngela Cheng Caplan
- LITERARY AGENTLydia Wills
- BUY THE BOOKCrooked Little Vein
WARREN ELLIS
Search
Archives
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
Complete Plan B Archive
Kieron Gillen - 09 Feb 10
The whole run of Plan B magazine has been released as a single 670Mb PDF. That’s 46 issues of some of the finest music writing of the decade. And a lot of posturing pretentiousness too. It’s like two of my favourite things for the price of one. Or none, as it’s a free PDF.
If you’ve any interest in music in the 00s, or music full stop, this is a great thing to just have on file. You’ll discover a new band every time you browse it.
Hell, it’s even worth getting if you’re one of the games journalist sorts. For the first 10-20 issues or so, I was doing games stuff for it. And Quinns and Mathew Kumar too, who I bullied into contributing. Very much written for the non-gamer about games which get pretty much no coverage, we had fun trying to decode the concept of Outsider Games.
Whole thing here. Go gets!
Coilhouse is Hiring! Apply Here.
Coilhouse - 08 Feb 10
Back around the time of Issue 03, we launched the Small Business Advertising Program to create affordable ad space for indie companies in the print version of Coilhouse. By the time Issue 04 rolled around, the number of advertisers had grown significantly – by this time, we had record labels, jewelry and clothing designers, sculptors, other magazines, web hosts, toy makers and graphic designers advertising in our pages. Click here to see them all. With editorial duties taking up more and more of our time as the weeks go by, the moment has come for us to seek help with the advertising side of running the magazine. We’re looking to hire an Ad Manager for our Small Business Advertising Program, starting with Coilhouse Magazine #05… and possibly subsequent issues.
Full details after the jump!
Read the rest of Coilhouse is Hiring! Apply Here.
Post tags: Coilhouse
State of South Carolina Secretary of State Subversive Agent Form
jwz - 08 Feb 10
Check the appropriate box. Do you or your organization directly or indirectly advocate, advise, teach or practice the duty or necessity of controlling, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, the state of South Carolina or any political division thereof?
[ ] YES [ ] NOIf yes, please outline the fundamental beliefs. If applicable, attach a copy of the bylaws or minutes of meetings from the last year.
"Inflection Points" Presentation
Open The Future - 08 Feb 10
For those folks who are interested, here's the Slideshare version of the presentation I gave last week at the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute annual meeting. I was asked to talk about foresight thinking, as the event theme was "The Big One of 2056: What Went Right?" a look at a fictional 7.8 quake in the SF region that was handled as well as they could imagine possible.
My goal was to offer a bit of reassurance to the audience that there is some real utility to thinking about the future, and to spell out (in a cursory way) the kinds of big picture issues they should keep in mind while looking ahead forty-six years.
Inflection Points
View more presentations from Jamais Cascio.
By and large, it was a successful talk. The post-talk questions were engaged, with little push-back, and I'm told that the overall response from the audience was quite positive.
The talk was video recorded, and I'm told will eventually be available to the public. I'll link when that happens.
CAN GIFTING ECONOMIES SCALE?
John Robb - 08 Feb 10
A gifting economy is different from a barter or market economy in that valuable items are given away to those that need them, without any quid pro quo, exchange, or payment. Gifting economics (lots of great papers on this topic) were/are the economic heartbeat of hunter-gatherer tribal cultures, the social organization where we spent 99% of our time as homo sapiens sapiens. Barter was, in contrast, a mechanism for economic interactions between tribes.
This gifting economic system wasn't based on pure altruism. It did have an enforcement mechanism to ensure compliance with the system over the longer term. On the positive side, there was an intangible increase in the social status (using personal or societal metrics) of a tribal member that gifted an item. On the negative, a failure to offer hospitality or gifts to those in need was considered a mortal slight that could incite violence or expulsion from the tribe.
There were also a considerable number of drivers for gifting at the tribal level. Here are some:
- The survival of the tribe, as a group, was more important than the survival of any individual. However, the loss of any individual could put the tribe at risk.
- The generation of surplus and innovation was highly uncertain. Sharing reduced that uncertainty to manageable levels.
- Sharing reduced internal friction that could put the tribe at risk.
Scalability
It's pretty clear that the societal drivers of tribal gifting economics and the mechanisms of enforcement didn't survive the transition to a global social system composed of billions of members. Simply, the connections between any two individuals (outside of immediate familial relationships) are too abstract for these drivers and enforcement mechanisms to be relevant. As a result, market based mechanisms for economic interaction have gained dominance.
However, the ongoing shift of the global market-based economy from a trade in rival goods (tangible items that invoke zero sum economics) to digital non-rival goods (items that can be copied at no expense or diminishment, endlessly) provides a window of opportunity. It may be possible to revive gifting economics for non-rival goods to amazing beneficial effect. Some ideas on how this could scale:
- Automated reputation metrics that enhance social status based on contributions.
- Mechanisms built using MMO gaming as a way to tie successful gifting to status improvement (leveling) or an ability to attract investment.
- The creation of an inside/outside barrier that separates a gifting economy from the global economic mainstream. Automated mutual interdependence (see my friend Bruce Sterling's absolutely brilliant story on this: "Maneki Neko").
Latest on SNOW
Jean Snow - 08 Feb 10
So what’s the latest on SNOW? I guess two new developments art that I added a dedicated Twitter feed, and also created a Facebook fan page. The Twitter feed is mostly just automated with new articles from the site — because some people actually prefer that over RSS feeds these days — but I do keep an eye on it, and will reply to questions and comments. The Facebook page is just another way of putting the site out there, and should be a good way of informing members of SNOW-related events as they happen.
Regular content updates have also continued over the past week, with a few new guest columns and my regular news items. Here’s a list of what you may have missed over the past few days.
- One Coin Comics
- Wired’s Personalized QR Codes
- Annapurna Moonrise
- Lone Expression: Tommy Guerrero
- Asato Z
- COLORS
- Shinjuku Disco
- Labyrinth of Woods
- Koukotsu
- Japan Pan Am
- BQLSI STAR LASER
- Mountain House by Atelier Bow-Wow
- Measuring Tape Toilet Paper
- Kuri
- No Man’s Land
- The 69th Tokyo International Gift Show
- Memories of Island Life: Ogasawara, 1992
- A House Made of Two
- 24-Hour Subway in Tokyo
- Tiltshift Generator for iPad
- Hair Club for Men: Style #326
- Droog Town House
- G-Tokyo 2010
- First Trailer for Kitano’s Outrage
- JAGDA 2010 Calendar for iPhone
I guess we all need attention… some just more than others.
seriously, somebody get this girl some therapy.
Either- she’s atttention- seeking and it’s all made up, or she is really, really in a mess. I feel pity for her. If this is the only way she can express herself, then, she might want to consider changing careers.
She’d make a great murderess- after all she has no qualms about making and then destroying life.
Maybe we could buy her a plant, start slowly, and show her what respect for life is.
I am pro-choice, I am however, not pro-stupidity for the sake of it.
SELFISH SELFISH SELFISH
Her parent’s must be so ashamed. and if they’re not, frankly, at least we see where the problem came from!
This girl is just out of her mind. She thinks she is stimulating meaningful public discourse when in fact all she has done is make an entire nation think she’s a total whackjob who gets a kick out of getting knocked up and having abortions. And pro-choice feminists will all be clamoring for her right to smear vaginal fluid and blood all over a cube of plastic? Oh yeah…well where my right to jerk off on their faces and hang them from a ceiling?
You want to work in porn?
I have never heard of such sickness since Dr. Mengle. I will pray for mental well being as it seems she needs it. Please post her picture to the nut job on msnbc and maybe he’ll award her the second worst person of the year behind Bill O.
Really? Did someone just make a Nazi reference? Really? No, REALLY?
Everyday in every way I am less and less impressed with the concept of human intelligence.
Disgraceful. Think about it. Not politically. But as a human being.
Though the expression or definition of art is purely a subjective matter, the lack of respect and value for your own life and health are definitely not. As a physician and respected member of the scientific community I cannot find words to convey the disgust and preoccupation for your actions. Any person of intelligence and with a stable and integral mental condition would have discouraged such behavior. I strongly advise you to seek professional counseling and contact any member of the medical community before undertaking any similar action in the future.
Does this chick do DVDA?
There are other things to consider in this situation and that is yes she has a very strange medium and it is questionably unethical,but not to forget there are processes in which artist follow before they are allowed to put a piece of work up. Letters of intent, artist statements, meetings with the curator, contracts etc are all part of the process of having work showed in a gallery. So someone had to have approved this. It is unfair for the artist to receive such scathing reviews, when the curator, and who ever it was that organized the show are getting the benefits of such controversial work (no publicity is bad publicity). Its a great time to ask who benefits from this work? Is it the artist? Is it the university? is it the gallery? The artist took a risk, and I applaud the artist who is capable of challenging the status quo in art. the work may be shocking, but at least it isn’t boring.
She has no artistic talent so she has to use shock in order to get noticed.
It sickens me to see lackluster no talent losers claim crap as art.
This was one of God’s creations. The fact that she has twisted a beautiful creation shows how desperate she is for any kind attention.
LEARN to produce quality work!
LEAVE the crap in the toilet!
Donkey!!!
I can only say that if this lack of repect for human life is all that Yale University can offer this country, it should close permanently. This so called art is insulting to decency, to human sensitivity, to any great artist the world has ever known, to morality, and to art herself. To ecuate death to art is absurd. On the other hand, may be her dried out brain and body, being pissed on by a dog, could be considered a masterpiece specially by her parents. SIMPLY DISGUSTING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I know what she did. But is that it? It doesn’t look like anything recogniseable.
This entire project by far the least creative thing I’ve ever heard of… strike that, it’s the second least thing creative thing I’ve ever heard of. The first was her mind-numbing screed against patriarchal hegemony visible here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmD-wLdCgVw
My first thought was – maybe she’s kidding, maybe this is all a great prank pulled by someone with some forward-thinking idea about the difficulty of self-expression. But instead, she seems to be a mind full of backward, boring ideas about institutions, creativity, and feminism. PLEASE, please, some self-respecting person at Yale, give this girl some reading material or a glimpse into an actual progressive, artistic world view? She’s so uncreative it doesn’t even deserve to be talked about… I’m just disappointed that someone so limited was accepted into Yale, a school I always knew to have higher standards for creative excellence. To commend her work for “challenging the status quo” is a joke.
They have a term for her in psychology: Sociopath.
Wow. So many critics.
Now I know where to come when I want anonymous, well thought out validation of my own work.
Why is everyone so hostile? Are these comments to a different post? Because, reading them and then looking at the photograph followed by the blog post, I’m convinced I’m not seeing the same thing everyone else is.
First, To think this is Yale’s product is ridiculous… this is the product of a seemingly ill human. Children and adults do outlandish even horrible things to get attention. This woman gave it a name “art.”
Quite frankly we all are playing into it right now and justifying it in her mind.
But it is so revolting… disgust just has to be expressed.
here’s an article about it, so you know EXACTLY what she did:
It’s the dream of many American parents to see their sons or daughters studying at an ivy league institution like Yale University, but thanks to a recent art project by Yale undergraduate Aliza Shvarts, moms and dads may be rethinking the benefits of such an education. For her fourth-year project, Ms. Shvarts artificially inseminated herself multiple times (“as often as possible”), then regularly took drugs to induce abortions over a period of nine months. She filmed herself having the miscarriages in a bathtub and kept the blood that resulted.
The delightful result of this off-putting exercise will be a gallery display in which a cube covered in plastic sheeting is suspended from the ceiling and drenched with Ms. Shvarts’s blood (plus a little Vaseline to keep things moist). Meanwhile, video footage of Ms. Shvarts experiencing her miscarriages will be projected onto the sides of the cube. This is one project that won’t be appearing in Yale’s recruiting materials.
1st it was Porn week at Yale now this.. WTF are they promoting there at Yale!
as a graduate from an opposing Ivy league school i must say this is very appalling. and Such negative publicity aNd freedom to the curriculum should cast shadows on the faculty! SOMEONE had to approve this before she proceeded!
people.. she’s done exactly what she set out to do. GET PEOPLE TALKING. Is it art? Is it not art? Is is an offense to the core of human nature?
people will continue to on agreeing to disagree.
Oh for fucks sake. Anyone want to comment on the difficulty of artificially inseminating oneself? Every fertility doctor in the country just uttered “bullshit” under their collective breaths. It’s either art as publicity or deliberately fucking with the intellectually challenged to further prod them towards the fear induced hell that libruls are ruinin’ our great nation that they’ve been marching towards over the past fifty years…or more.
Hey, Bexx, you’re right. And what the Unabomber did was art. And Michael Vick and the Boston Strangler and the Japanese Prison Camp Guards in World War II and …
I see it all so clearly now. It was art. It was just art all along. Thanks.
This makes me sick. Like I feel I might actually vomit. I can’t believe there are people this evil and insane running around with the rest of us. Literally, sick.
This psycho should have her uterus removed.
If it was all about ‘inspiration’, then why not make a painting of aborted fetuses or do something creative with photomanipulation?
Oh, wait… You actually need real talent for that, don’t you?
Have you people ever heard of Andres Serrano or Gottfried Helwein or Chris Ofili? Look them up. This girl is not the first artist to push the boundaries of what is acceptable or what the general public considers “art”. Thats the nature of art and at this day and age, everything has been done. Shock art is not a new concept. Yeah, it might be gross or unethical, but she has everyone talking. People are so angry because she is addressing abortion in a casual and callous manner, but thats her right as an woman and an American.
Supportive: Hitler got people talking. I guess Piccasso or other TALENTED people got nothing on him, huh?
No getting around it. There are simply always going to be people who subscribe to the philosophy that “it’s only art if I like it.”
And, sorry, but the fact that people like that exist, I say that people need to keep slapping them in the face. Philosophically, artistically, or, if the first two don’t work, a cricket bat.
I thought it was very clever on her part. It got all of you talking about, didn’t it?
this is evil, make no mistake. she opens the door to hell and the forces of hate, rage and anger. many of the artists do the same it is a question of degree
suckers!
postmodern ‘art’ stinks from a technical perspective, but the fundamental idea is to trigger a reaction … have to admit she got a lot of you.
still don’t find it very impressive, though. C+ at best.
This is fucking amazing is what it is. Here we bemoan the lack of authenticity, the lack of artistic courage in this age, and someone goes and does something like this. Co-opting your biology in the service of an artistic vision: it doesn’t get any more authentic than that. Risking your life for an art project: it doesn’t get any more all-in than that. If we want to live in a daring future world where extraordinary people do astonishing things, of diy solo flights to Mars and tight-rope walkers and real musicians again – that hazy wet dream of aggregate cultural output and epic individual achievement, then Shvarts is the kind of person who belongs in that world.
On the one hand I feel sorry for Yale, as she’s a huge embarrassment to them. But on the other…they’re the ones who let her in!
Sorry – this woman’s prank does not qualify as art, even with the broadest definition.
I feel REALLY sorry for her parents and any siblings with the same last name. How will they face her again? They must be so humiliated.
Anyone keeping count: 2 Nazi references, 1 Unibomber and several “sick”s.
FYI – This is act. something of hoax; the artist issued a statement of the project as a piece of ‘performance art’ designed to stimulate discussion. She did not actually impregnate and abort herself. Check out some news sites, any reputable ones should have issued an edit regarding this by now, if they carried the story in the first place.
This is THE most disturbing and revolting thing that i have ever heard in my life. Maybe I should just walk around my campus killing anyone in sight, pretty much what this girl did except to her OWN BABIES. disgusting and she should be locked in a mental institution for the rest of her life. People like this are what makes me fear for the future of this country. I am pro-life and respect the opinion of those who are pro-choice, however people like this are an embarrassment to those who support a womans right to choose and abusing the freedom that this country gives us.
[...] voor Warren Ellis) Verwante schrijfsels: Een heel normale vraag Wat is kunst? Smaakvolle kunst met [...]
There’s nothing more hilarious than seeing a bunch of children bickering about a non-issue they perceive as dramatically important because of their lack of experience. And by children, I mean “the majority of US citizens.” Come on, this is less offensive and more thoughtful than most 1960s shock art was. And get over the idea that a fetus is a human being, already. Sheesh.
It’s all made up, folks. You’ve been had. And the picture on this page is not of any fetal remains, seems some posters thought it was?
Hitler was an artist before he led the Holocaust.
Yale teaches nazi eugenics techniques.
Skull & Bones former members Prescott Bush & demon spawn George Sr & Jr.
Shame on Yale! Shame on Aliza Shvarts!!!
Killing for art is a crime against humanity.
People must think about the consequences of the actions and words.
This hoax by extremely offensive, people do not even seem to think about the con
I wish her mother would have aborted her.
Pope Benedict is in town. Maybe an Exorcism is in order? What a disturbing story!
[...] also apparently constructed an art installation addressing the same subject as part of a series she called “Disarticulation.” Both her [...]
[...] Aliza ShvartsMy first period remained an event shared only by the Mings and me. My1stPeriod. Aliza Shvarts. Disarticulation.Warren Ellis – http://www.warrenellis.com [...]