The Aliza Shvarts Thing
April 18th, 2008 | brainjuice
I’m surprised at how many of you are freaking out over this thing. (And a little disturbed at the tenor of some of the responses, too.)
Seriously: you believe this is real? My money says the physical “art” doesn’t exist, not as described. I mean, I’m open to being wrong. But right now, I think the press release itself is the art piece. In fact, I would imagine any final presentation would be a collation of the media responses to the press release, broadcast as it was during a visit from the Pope to her country of residence. She’s going to be hoping someone sticks the PR in front of scary old Ratzinger.
(And if there is a physical piece, I bet you it turns out to be food colouring, latex and bits of chicken. I mean, use your heads.)
You may not like that a press release can fulfil the terms of art. (And if you don’t know what defines art, go back to your old school and tell them to finish the fucking job.) But, as a conceptual piece, it’s quite incredible. As Charlie Stross said, it’s the “most inspired publicity-stunt debut in the art world since Damien Hirst.” And that was twenty years ago. If she’s doing what I think she’s doing, Aliza Shvarts might be the first “great” conceptual artist of the internet age.
is the award-winning creator of graphic novels such as 
I’ve been kind of freaked out by all of the freaking out, too. Especially given that the sponsoring faculty isn’t speaking to the press (yet). Those tenured Yalies love the spotlight!
There’s another possibility.
As a friend of mine pointed out, it’s possible she’s a shill for the “pro life” crowd in the USA, trying to portray morning-after abortifacients in the worst possible light with the goal of getting them banned (or at least moved to prescription-only status).
Remember, the young earth creationists aren’t above funding gullible young fanatics to work through geology PhD programs so that they can claim to have gen-yoo-wine geological scientists on their side.
Cut ‘n paste from the LJ feed:
Actually, if she didn’t actually do it, it’s a big fat fucking yawn. If your art is so over that it’s almost the default advertising technique, it’s time to move on.
Of course, the art world will eat it up anyway. They love anything that allows for their five seconds of attention whoring/importance.
I don’t know about the idea that she’s a “Pro life” shill… if you really wanted to do that, surely there isn’t much distance in using someone who is an Artist? You *expect* something a bit crazy.
Surely, if you had a serious agenda you could plant a few choice articles in the big broadsheets and tabloids about a woman in some backwater place that no-one’s ever heard of doing the same thing. It’s not as if there isn’t precedent for such a move. No-one cares as much about the retractions as they do about the original articles.
It’s a shame that Artists don’t come with stock like Companies and Corporations do… if she can continue to whip up this amount of Interest, then she’s really going to be The Next Big Thing.
[…] Warren Ellis on the Eliza Shvarts thing. Some more from Ellis. Some of Shvarts’ art. […]
I can’t find the site again, but I just read something this morning about authors selling stock in themselves. The future is now.
Someone’s already poked some pretty good holes in the story - such as, the whole “self-insemination” thing hardly ever works, so there’s little chance she’d be able to do it multiple times - so Warren’s probably spot-on with this one.
i hope that’s what she does, otherwise she’ll be like the guy who starved a dog to death in a gallery to prove a social critique point. i know you hate dogs, but you see what i mean.
in any case, Brazilian artist Yuri Firmeza back in 2006 did an expo with the press releases and email exchanges with journalists about the fake expo of ficticious Japanese artist Souzousareta Geijutsuka. local press shit-stormed him afterwards.
I give her a lot of credit. How many art students can you name? From now on, you’ll always remember Aliza Shvarts.
Well through various other rumours about the internet, yes she’s pulling your chain. The press release IS part of the project to initiate a public response.
Some of you might remember something similar, though a lot more funny and less offensive, done by Shepard Fairey. He was going to RISD and had an assignment to create a piece of art to impact people in everyday life, so he pasted the head of Andre the Giant over the Governor of RI’s head (or maybe the mayor of Providence)on a billboard overlooking the highway. It kicked off the “Andre the Giant has a Posse” phenomena and led to a career in graphic design using the image for his OBEY designs. He basically created an art project that effected the general public and created a life of its own - there’s no clear line between the public reaction and the fandom, and the initial piece of artwork itself.
Of course it didn’t make us question how low humanity has sunk.
What makes the reactions to this woman’s work so startling , I believe, are 2 things:
1) The current trend that offensive crap can be called art.
2) The trend where students of IVY league schools feel they have the right to do REALLY stupid things in the name of art, “making a statement”. (like the girl entering the airport with the electronics w/ LED’s on her shirt made to look like a bomb).
This “abortion art” seemed to be the next logical step forward into hell.
Someone please tell me America isn’t the only place where we have to worry about these retards with money and time on their hands?
As pointed out on pandagon, if safe abortion was as easy as this press release made it out to be, it wouldn’t be the controversial issue that it is.
just for the record, the “guy who starved the dog to death” (that would be Guillermo Habacuc Vargas) didn’t really do that either.
link one and link two
yeesh. i thought people who read science fiction were skeptics by nature.
With all the other weird stuff that Warren posts on this site, I admit I was taken in by it when I first saw it.
It is still in pretty poor taste, even though I now realise that it’s not real. And like Tracey Emin’s bed, I don’t really consider this art.
@Colin, it is art, you just don’t consider it to be good art. I don’t eat scrapple or liver, but I don’t argue whether it’s food.
[…] internet is all abuzz this week about Aliza Shvarts, a Yale student who issued a press release claiming that she artificially inseminated herself, then […]