FBI INDICTS CRITICAL ART ENSEMBLE FOUNDER
Attorney General John Ashcroft's Department of Justice is continuing to persecute Steven Kurtz, a co-founder of the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) and an art professor at the University of Buffalo, for artworks that are critical of the biological politics of the Bush administration. On June 30, a Buffalo grand jury indicted Kurtz on four counts of mail and wire fraud, charges that each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, for possessing $256 worth of harmless bacteria whose use is restricted to scientists. Kurtz employs the material in artworks that address issues of genetic engineering in food, U.S. government germ warfare research and other questions of public policy involving biology. His collaborator, Robert Ferrell, a professor of genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, has also been indicted.
During the raid by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force of Kurtz’s home on May 11, 2004, government agents confiscated Kurtz’s artwork, computers and equipment, and even the body of his wife -- whose sudden death had prompted the raid in the first place (no connection was found between the bacteria and her death, and she has since been buried). Also taken was a mobile DNA extraction lab that was part of a Critical Art Ensemble examination of genetically altered food that was slated to be included in “Interventionists” exhibition at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass. Numerous scientists, artists, the ACLU, the PEN Freedom to Write Committee and other groups have protested the prosecution of Kurtz and Ferrell. For more info, see www.caedefensefund.org
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