but it’s the same look over and over and over

But this begs the question as to why women feel the need to do this “for themselves.” Let’s say your answer is that it makes them feel good, or empowered. But why? And why isn’t the standard the same for men, then? I don’t see men needing to be as revealing as this to get attention. Their successes stand on their own.

If a piece has worth simply because it attracts vitriolic comments, then there are some true artists hanging out on the Gawker/Jezebel forums. Some people can attract dozens, possibly even hundreds of angry, aggressive comments merely by writing a single-sentence post feigning extreme ignorance or insensitivity to the…

I hate that this has turned into an anti-women, anti-feminist bullshit cesspool. She basically just handed the microphone to a bunch of angry MRAs, who are using this situation to talk shit about feminism and women.

Maybe she felt like this was a highly controlled setting, if she was the one controlling it (even at moments it appears she isn’t). And in that context, re-creating an incidence of trauma can be quite empowering. Since I assume Sulkowicz has had to become quite hardened to her trauma, this could also be a way of…

I think the comments alone prove her piece has worth

The comments are pretty brutal on that site, but maybe that’s part of the point.

I have/had diagnosable PTSD (not something I’m proud of exactly). They highly recommend you do not recreate traumatic events alone. It makes it even more difficult to move forward if you keep recreating traumatic events. You have to recreate them but move forward in them, which is how EMDR works. I could not function…

She’s asking too much from them. This has to be exhausting for everyone involved, but apparently not for her. She’s been invigorated by the whole thing, which is bizarre. But I think the fact that they’re not very supportive of this project says a lot about how they feel about it. I mean she’s doing her thing as an…

It did. I feel like this fails because it does not move any conversation forward. The conclusion of the second project is people have difficulty trusting* a rape victim who creates a pornographic film that repeats the events of their rape. People disliked her after the first project because she was catching attention…

I think if she had done something very similar but used third person in the questions, different performers/sex acts/time stamp she could have had something. “Is this rape?” is a very powerful question.

I remember the big fuss over the video for “Smack My Bitch Up” and the reveal at the end. That got people talking over sexual violence, drugs etc. This video seems to rely too heavily on people knowing Emma’s backstory. That is where it seems to fail.

That’s interesting: How would I feel about the piece if I stumbled across it with no background knowledge?

The simplicity of the footage and the questions relied too heavily on the background history to create its meaning. Without that, it could not stand alone. That is where I feel it failed. The most meaningful part of the footage to me was that moment where she is alone. That seemed like art. The rest seemed like a lazy…

Because it had all that baggage behind it the audience had to deal with their biases toward that particular case as well as the other moral quandaries, which either makes it more complex and real or more confused and messy.

Yeah, i mean it just proves her point in some way because people’s reactions to it are more indicative of who they are rather than who she is. I guess it’s one of the benefits of having an open-ended art project so that even the cyberattack becomes part of the performance and also leads to more prominence for the…

Whatever happens to that site can be recuperated as being part of the aesthetic experiment. So, basically, it was never bad news for her that the site went down, quite the contrary.

“You can’t get involved and break up a fight nowadays the way lawsuits are and everything? Liable to get yourself arrested. Nah. Let’s just stand here and enjoy it. Matter of fact, get yourself a Honey Bun and while you’re at it, get me one too. Two is even better than one. That ain’t right. Look. The little one just…

Sorry if I see two ladies fighting I am not trying to stop them. They clearly said in the video multiple times security has been called and the police are in the way. There is no way in hell I am interjecting myself into that mess.