What does an artist who is seeking to get pregnant by a sperm donor do? Conduct a thorough and comprehensive survey of Israeli fertility policies? Show up with a camera at the sperm bank at Hadassah Hospital, Mount Scopus? Question donors and present all of her conclusions in an exhibition? If her name is Hagar Goren, then yes. Goren, a social and political artist, is presenting the project of her life at the Center for Digital Art in Holon: her attempts to become a mother in Israel.

This work in progress is being presented as part of the exhibit, "Free Radicals." The exhibition features works that go beyond the borders of art and invade other fields. Some of them seem like harmless pranks, others become a nuisance for the system they are invading. In Goren's case, there is an inherent contradiction in her personal project and her artistic project. The artificial insemination treatments and the association between the hospitals and the sperm bank create a close relationship, bordering on dependency, between the woman wishing to have a baby and the doctors who treat her. Goren, like every patient, seeks warm and supportive treatment from the medical establishment. However, at the same time, she is also investigating it and exposing its less pleasant aspects.

In the exhibit, Goren presents a video clip of her motives, interviews with donors, taped conversations with the health maintenance organization (HMO), video clips of her medical exams and research dealing with the institutional side of giving birth. Goren still has no idea what direction the project will take. She has not yet worked out a "happy ending." It is unclear whether the project will end in a birth, even though both Goren and the establishment would like it to end that way. "You have to be a mother!" the HMO secretary wrote her on a note.

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This sentence, which was written with good intentions (and became the signature displayed in the exhibition), reveals why this project is not simply personal; it is also social, public and very Israeli.

According to Goren's data, sperm banks were first established in Israel after the Yom Kippur War to provide a solution for Israel Defense Forces widows who wanted children. They also became one of the instruments encouraging births in the framework of the demographic battle. The huge surge in sperm banks occurred over the last decade with the legitimization of single parent and same-sex families. Around 1,000 women approach the 15 sperm banks in Israel each year, and approximately 800 babies are born every year through the sperm banks. Israel has the highest rate of technologically assisted fertility in the world.

The reactions Goren encountered in her immediate surroundings also clarified for her how much society is supervising, directing and perhaps even influencing her personal desires. "People in the grocery store ask me when I'll have a baby," she says. "One of the visitors to the exhibition wrote me: 'In my opinion, you should have a baby, but if you find someone, it's preferable to do so as part of a couple. If not, even try artificial insemination.'"

She says the secretary at the HMO told her: "Look, everyone who reaches this age says to herself 'I've missed the train so at least I should have a child.'"

Goren herself has still managed to clarify why she wants to get pregnant. She presents her deliberations in a display that is screened at the exhibition: "Hello, I'm Hagar, a 38-year-old Israeli woman. Not long ago I decided that I want to have a child even though I don't have a partner. I started looking into and finding out the options available so I could achieve this desire, and the question is to what extent is my desire to give birth really my desire and to what extent is it influenced by the surroundings in which I grew up. This process of working with the establishment clarified to me how giving birth in Israel is a political matter and also the role I play as a woman in the demographic battle."

It seems the need to review limits and also to create a provocation that would prompt questions led her at first to "making a child from Palestinian sperm. To engage in assimilation as the only real act that enables coexistence in Israel," as she says in the film.

"The seemingly radical idea of specifically using the sperm of a Palestinian is taking a stand against local racist thought. Most Jewish women want a man who is at least 1.80-meters tall, blue-eyed, fair-haired and athletic. In my case, when they heard I was an artist, they also pointed out that the bank had donors from Bezalel [Academy of Art and Design]," she says. This preference for a European, Aryan look appears also in the text of a conversation Goren had with an HMO secretary; the text is showcased in the exhibition. "What details am I allowed to know about the donor?" Goren asks her. "You can, for example, know if he is a medical student," the secretary answers in a determined voice. "Medical students or law students have excellent sperm. You can know what he's like; say if he is an actor or something like that. You can choose colors; you can know his height. Whether he's happy, quiet, refined, calm and tranquil."

"How much time does it take to decide?" Goren asks her.

"It's one conversation of an hour to an hour and a half. Even to decide," answers the secretary. "You tell her [the sperm bank official] what you want. Let's say you want a fair-skinned donor: She won't go for the dark ones. You want one with blue eyes, tall, you don't want short. She'll try and match it."

Goren, perhaps because of her acquired habit of doubting everything the establishment says, decided not to rely completely on the "super matchmaker" doctor as she describes her. She met mothers who got pregnant from sperm donors and doctors, and all that what was left for her to do was to find out about the missing link in this story, the donors.

Anyone who has ever needed a sperm bank knows from the get-go that there is and will never be an opportunity to find out the source of the donation. At the sperm bank, they made it unequivocally clear to Goren that she didn't have a chance of reaching the donors. But this did not deter Goren. "I asked the sperm bank if it would be possible to hang up a sign there offering to interview the donors anonymously and they refused," she said. "So I decided that if the donors were students, then it was worth hanging a sign on the bulletin board at Hebrew University."

And so she did. Some 50 donors responded within a short time to the offer, which included a payment of NIS 100 for a half-hour interview. The money, so it seems from the three interviews she has conducted so far and whose text appears in the exhibition, was also the main reason that motivated the donors to donate their sperm. For every donation of sperm, a donor receives around NIS 250. Donations are made once or twice a week over a long period. This information also debunked one of the myths that evolved around donors according to which they donate out of a desire "to make women happy who have no other way of having a child," as one mother once explained to her son.

"No one goes there out of generosity," says Goren. "All of them said that what motivated them was the money." Asked if they knew if children were born from their donations, the three answered that they did not know and also did not care. What other interesting information was uncovered? Well, not everyone is an outstanding medical or computer science student, as the secretary had promised. Two of the interviewed donated sperm during the course of their army service.

Goren avoided meeting the donors personally. A friend interviewed them for her. She only peeked when they entered the room. She did manage to confirm one myth, at least with this limited cross sample: Everyone, according to her, was good-looking.

Weren't you afraid to discover that not everything they told you was true?

"I don't know. The objective was not only to check what was arranged for me, but also to see that the donors actually exist. I was also interested in knowing what they felt about the idea of having a child. In this matter, they all agreed, they didn't feel an attachment to who was born."

Didn't you feel that transforming the personal project into an artistic project could harm your objective?

"That's how I always work. I collect material because it helps me think. Then I process it and shape it and check whether this thing exists without me. This is what is happening now in Holon. Clearly the thing I want most, like everyone who comes to the sperm bank, is that they will love me and treat me in the best way. I know that the camera creates a kind of threat and perhaps also sabotages this objective. I probably won't go back to the sperm bank in Jerusalem after an incident that happened there.

"However, I also can't ignore the questions that arise. There are other things that I would be interested in investigating later. For example, what is the connection between the banks? Is there supervision over them? In Israel, there is no formal limit on the number of donations ... This is my way of dealing with the confusion, the emotional baggage and the fear of a fateful decision - by documenting in detail the process I'm going through."