Culture Crash

What Strange Culture says about art, politics and paranoia in post-9/11 America.


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Published: Nov 7, 2007

CULTURE ATTACHÉS: Tilda Swinton and Thomas Jay Ryan as Hope and Steve Kurtz in Lynn Hershman Leeson's <i>Strange Culture</i>.

Charlie Kuttner

CULTURE ATTACHÉS: Tilda Swinton and Thomas Jay Ryan as Hope and Steve Kurtz in Lynn Hershman Leeson's Strange Culture.

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It was tragedy that brought the FBI into Steve Kurtz's house. On May 11, 2004, he awoke to find that his wife, Hope, a 45-year-old woman with no history of health problems, had died during the night. In shock, he called 911, expecting medical assistance and perhaps a comforting word. But instead of calling for help, the authorities called in the Feds, and within days, Kurtz went from being an unexpected widower to an accused bioterrorist.

What caught the authorities' attention was the presence of Petri dishes and a mobile lab used by the Kurtzes in their work with the Critical Art Ensemble, an activist collective dedicated to biotech issues. As part of "Free Range Grain," the CAE tested food to show the presence of genetically modified organisms in "organic" foods. The bacteria were for use in "GenTerra," an interactive piece that used participants' own blood to educate them about transgenic organisms. Commonly found in the digestive tract, they are utterly harmless. "Anyone is allowed to have them," Kurtz says. "They live in our bodies and they live in our homes. That's not impugning anyone's hygiene. That's just a fact."

But more than three years later, the Department of Justice is still pursuing charges against Kurtz, although the offense has dropped from bioterror to mail fraud and wire fraud. Kurtz is now accused of violating a Material License Agreement by engaging University of Pittsburgh geneticist Robert Ferrell to purchase the bacteria for him. (Ferrell, who has been critically ill for several years, recently pled guilty to a lesser charge.)

The DoJ under Ashcroft and Gonzales is not known for admitting mistakes, and Kurtz ventures that part of the reason for the government's tenacity is simply to justify the resources spent on pursuing a college professor for possession of harmless bacteria. But Kurtz also believes that the anti-corporate slant of the CAE's art plays a part in his prosecution.

"They didn't see it as art," he says. "They saw it as political advocacy. And the kind of politics I was advocating was the kind that Ashcroft said should be put in jail."

Kurtz's case has set off alarm bells in the art world. It has also made him something of a cause celebre, profiled in Lynn Hershman Leeson's Strange Culture, an experimental documentary incorporating re-enactments with Thomas Jay Ryan as Kurtz and Tilda Swinton as Hope, since Kurtz is legally barred from discussing the details of his case. The film will be screened Thursday as part of the First Person Festival, and followed by a panel discussion addressing First Amendment issues in a post-9/11 world.

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Kathleen Carignan, executive director of Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, says she sees no signs of a government crackdown on artists. But she is regularly contacted by artists who are concerned they might be breaking the law or leaving themselves vulnerable to legal action. She recalls one call from an artist who was concerned that his use of the American flag in a piece critical of the Patriot Act might violate the law. "I'm not sure a few years ago someone would have thought to ask those questions," she says.

What's disturbing about her example is that desecrating the flag is not, and never has been, illegal. But even without passing a law, the message has been sent: It's not safe. "We get a lot of calls from artists who want to make sure they're complying with the law," Carignan says. "I think that's coming from this edge of knowing, if I'm doing anything that's illegal, I'm much more likely to be shut down."

Law enforcement officials are duty-bound to investigate infractions. But civil rights attorney David Rudovsky points out that prosecutors are given wide latitude as to which cases to pursue. "There are a lot of technical violations of the law that the Department of Justice doesn't prosecute," he says. "So why this case, particularly when it's intertwined with First Amendment expression? That's the key issue to me."

"The neoliberals were bad enough, but they just cared about business," he says. "The neocons, they actually care about culture. They have a certain idea what social solidarity should be made of, and those that deviate from it are considered serious enemies."

The case's notoriety has indisputably raised the CAE's profile, but the attention has come at a price. Although cultural institutions in the U.S. have been supportive, inviting Kurtz to speak and holding auctions for his defense, Kurtz says they draw the line at actually allowing the CAE to perform one of their "wetware" projects. "They love us to come and talk about it, and they love us to show our videos" he says. "But they don't want us to really do anything."

(s_adams@citypaper.net)

Read Shaun Brady's review.