Team 3 blog

Controversial art:
1) Aliza Shvarts:
- For her senior art project at Yale, Shvarts decided to artificially inseminate
herself while periodically taking herbal abortifacients to force miscarriages.

- Her exhibit includes footage and preserved blood from the miscarriages.

- "For the past year, I performed repeated self-induced miscarriages. I created a
group of fabricators from volunteers who submitted to periodic STD screenings...
From the 9th to the 15th day of my menstrual cycle, the fabricators would
provide me with sperm samples... 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."

- Shvarts claims that the project was made to spark conversation and debate on
the relationship between art and the human body.

- Her project: a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a gallery of Green Hall. Hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting wrapped around this cube; lined between sheets are layers of blood from Schvarts’ miscarriages mixed with Vaseline to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting. Then videos of the miscarriage process are projected on 4 sides of the cube.

- Yale student Opinions:

Sara Rahman ’09 said, in her opinion, Shvarts is abusing her constitutional right to do what she chooses with her body

Jonathan Serrato ’09 said personally, he found the concept of the senior art project “surprising” and unethical. “I feel that she’s manipulating life for the benefit of her art, and I definitely don’t support it,” Serrato said. “I think it’s morally wrong.”

- Media:
Yale Student Insists Abortion Art Project Is Real, Despite University's Claims of 'Creative Fiction' -Fox News
(http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351730,00.html)

“The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body,” said Helaine Klasky, a Yale university spokeswoman.
(http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24579)

Controversy Over Abortion Art - NY times
(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/arts/design/19arts-CONTROVERSYO_BRF.html?ex=1366344000&en=b424c0d3c5925368&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)


Additonal sources:
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24559
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24704
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/bad_americans/abortion_goo_gi.php


Videos of her miscarriages were removed from youtube shortly after Aliza Shvarts press release about her exhibit.

Another piece of her art work: " My first Period"



Disarticulation. 12 in. x 12 in. x 24in. Plaster, vaseline, towels, rubber bands, latex gloves








2) Nursery Rhyme, " Ring around the Rosie":

Claim:
"Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down." began in the mid-1300s during the "Black" or Bubonic Plague.

- The " Ring around the rosie," refers to the practice of carrying flowers and placing them around the infected person for protection.

-"Ashes..." is the imitation of sneezing sounds made by infected individuals.

- "We all fall down" describes the mass amounts of people dying from the disease.


Evidence against claim:

- The earliest verions of the " Ring around the Rosie," rhyme ever printed is in The Old Nursery Rhymes, a version of Mother Goose stories in 1881.

- For the plague claim to be true, children would have to have been reciting " Ring around the Rosie," for 5 centuries and never once thought to write it down.

-Supposedly there were versions of the rhyme in 1790s in Massachusetts, but no supporting evidence has ever been presented.

-There are more than one translation and version of " Ring around the Rosie,":

William Wells Newell published this version in 1883:

Ring a ring a rosie,
A bottle full of posie,
All the girls in our town,
Ring for little Josie.


Charlottle Sophia Burne's 1883 Shroshire Folk-Lore:

Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
One for Jack, and one for Jim,
and one for little Moses.
A-Tischa ,A-Tischa, A-Tischa.

-If " Ring around the Rosie," was made in the 1300s
about a bacterial disease, wouldn't each version resemble in
theme? If not, how could anyone prove the claimed "Ring around
the Rosie," was the first version. And the others merely distorted versions.

- If there was evidence to prove the claimed "Ring around the Rosie," was the original
how did it stay exactly the same for 5 centuries, and variations only
created in the late 19th century?

Both sides can be debated, no one knows for sure.
If the Black plague wasn't the basis for "Ring around the Rosie," then what was?

http://hnn.us/comments/15455.html
http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.asp