(Image source: The Village Voice)

BY RICHARD LAYCOCK

ANCHOR JIM FLINK

You're watching multisource entertainment news analysis from Newsy.

Performance art is being taken to a whole new level by Brooklyn-based artist, Marni Kotak. 

She’s putting together a piece called “The Birth of Baby X”. As Yahoo’s Trending Now explains-- the performance is exactly what the name suggests.

“That’s right, she will literally be giving birth for the public to see. And that’s just the beginning. It’ll kick off an eighteen year project called ‘Raising Baby X’ where Kotak will document her child’s upbrining until college with weekly video pod-casts.”

The New York Post calls this quote “one of the most amazing debuts the art world has ever seen”. The Post talked to Kotak-- who explains why she is doing it.

“I hope that people will see that human life itself is the most profound work of art, and that therefore giving birth, the greatest expression of life, is the highest form of art … “

But people are split over whether the performance is art--- or just bizarre. A writer for Lez Get Real says...

“Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time I take the attitude that I may not like a piece of art, but the artist has a right to create it. I just found one of those zero point one percenters … This is as much a case of child abuse as beating a kid with a stick.”

Others defend Kotak’s idea of artistic expression. A writer for Babble says-- this isn’t anything new for the performance art canon.

“The history of performance art is full of people displaying bodily functions and physical feats: artists have slept, stared, stood still… There’s been plenty of nudity, blood and sweat...Giving birth fits in with this particular trajectory–it’s certainly going to be visceral.”

Finally-- the Inquistr explains-- this controversy is nothing new for Kotak...

“...whose résumé includes ‘staged re-enactments of her own birth, attending her grandfather’s funeral and losing her virginity in a blue Plymouth’ – and it certainly wont be her last, according to the art gallery’s website.”

‘The Birth of Baby X’ is set to run until November 7th but it is unclear when Kotak is actually due.

Transcript by Newsy