Doofus Of The Day #1,068

 

Today's award goes to a performance artist (?) in Australia.  A tip o' the hat to Australian reader Andrew for the link.

WARNING:  Some of the pictures at the link are distasteful to those of more conventional morality.  The same goes for some of the story details.  Caution is advised.

A Melbourne artist who was going to be paid $25,000 by the Federal Government to livestream her attempts to get pregnant by self-insemination has hit out at a decision to pull her funding.

Performance artist Casey Jenkins — whose previous works include ‘Casting off my womb’ where she knitted from a ball of wool inserted in her vagina — said her new project is “reconceptualising conception through a queer lens”.

Titled IMMACULATE, the project will see the 41-year-old perform monthly live self-inseminations with donor sperm, which she says will “elevate the experience of queer reproduction and disrupt heteronormative parenting narratives”.

The government’s major arts funding and advisory body — the Australia Council for the Arts — approved a $25,000 grant for the project in August, knowing the full details of it at the time.

However, they have now pulled the plug on the funding.

. . .

Ms Jenkins’ previous projects include ‘Waste Not’, in which Ms Jenkins slowly chewed yarn and tinned food over six hours, feeding the paste onto the ground to spell the message “You Will Lay Her Life To Waste”.

Audience members were then invited to sweep the work into a pile which was wrapped and discarded.

She also produced “Casting Off My Womb”, in which Ms Jenkins knitted a 15m long passage from yarn inserted daily in their vagina to mark one full menstrual cycle ... “The work explored the dissonance between an individual’s quiet desires and potential, and intense community expectations regarding what they should do with their body, based on perceived gender,” she said.

There's more at the link (please note caution above).

I utterly fail to see any artistic merit (or sense) in Ms. Jenkins' performances as described.  Exhibitionist?  Yes.  Radical feminist?  Sure.  Art?  Not in my book!  In good taste?  Anything but!

One hopes Ms. Jenkins might grow up to be a more normal, balanced human being . . . but since she's already 41 years old, I suspect such wishes are far, far too late.

Peter