Art
and government policy have never co-existed comfortably in the United States.
And you don’t have to look far for examples of the discord.
There’s
the so-called NEA Four, a group of controversial performance artists whose
National Endowment for the Arts grants were summarily vetoed in 1990. Or Andres
Serrano, who had a photo of his Piss
Christ infamously torn by New York State Senator Alfonse D’Amato during a
1989 congressional session. And, of course, there’s the more municipal example
of then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani threatening to revoke the Brooklyn
Museum’s lease and remove its funding unless it removed its notorious 1999
exhibit Sensation.
Now
there’s Buffalo-based biological artist-activist and University of Buffalo
professor Steve Kurtz, who’s been federally indicted after an unfortunate
run-in with Patriot Act-era policies.
The
facts surrounding Kurtz’s case have been well documented: On the morning of May
11, 2004, Kurtz awoke to find his wife, Hope, dead beside him. He called the
local authorities, whose suspicions were immediately raised by a home
DNA-extraction laboratory for Free Range
Grain, an installation Kurtz was
preparing for exhibition at Mass MoCA. Within moments, Kurtz was descended upon
by the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Feds in hazmat suits confiscated
his lab materials, his dead wife, even his housecat. Kurtz was detained for 22
hours, and he was facing charges of biological terrorism.
The
bio-terror charges were eventually thrown out, after local and federal agencies
determined Kurtz’s lab was innocuous — certainly not capable of preparing
biological weaponry — and that Kurtz’s wife died of natural causes.
But
on June 29, the 40-something Kurtz was indicted on four counts of wire and mail
fraud, felonies carrying sentences of up to 20 years. The federal prosecutor in
the Kurtz case (William J. Hochul Jr., the same person who prosecuted the
Lackawanna Six) is alleging that Kurtz illegally obtained $256 worth of
biological samples through University of Pittsburgh professor Robert Ferrell,
who’s also been charged. The fraud charge stems from licensing agreements
between the school and its bio supplier.
Free
Range Grain would have enabled museum visitors to find out whether
there were undisclosed genetically modified organisms in any food they brought
to the gallery. It was to be shown at Mass MoCA as part of a group show with
the Critical Art Ensemble, of which Kurtz is a member.
The
CAE’s activism — gaining more exposure now than it ever did before the Kurtz
case — is what has many artists convinced that Kurtz’s ordeal has more to do
with First Amendment rights than mail fraud.
The
CAE dedicates itself “to exploring the intersections between art, technology,
radical politics, and critical theory.” Its website (www.critical-art.net)
includes links to biotech, tactical, and book projects the collective has been
involved in since forming in the 1980s. Among the book titles (all of which are
free for download as PDFs on the site): The
Electronic Disturbance, Electronic
Civil Disobedience, Digital
Resistance, and Molecular Invasion.
Those titles alone might explain the feds’ keen interest in Kurtz.
“They’re
critical. They’re radical,” says Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center Director Ed
Cardoni. “They’re dissenting in their viewpoints. But they’re without question
entirely protected by the First Amendment. And I think this was a First
Amendment issue as soon as it was determined there were no hazardous biological
materials in Kurtz’s home. Still, because of the CAE’s writings, the
prosecution’s finding things they feel advocate bio-terrorism. But if you read
their books carefully, you’ll find they actually argue against the sabotage of,
for example, genetically modified crops because it would hurt farmers and
workers and wouldn’t really hurt the big corporations.”
Cardoni,
who is also acting board president of the National Association of Artists’
Organizations, has volunteered in that capacity to administer the CAE’s Legal
Defense Fund. More than $50,000 has been raised so far, and most of it has been
spent on Kurtz’s legal fees and the legal fees incurred by fellow artists
subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury on the matter.
Cardoni’s
position at Hallwalls places him near the center of Buffalo’s thriving
contemporary art community, where he says a “chilling effect” is being felt.
And, he says, it extends way beyond Western New York. Artists and academics all
over the world are watching the Kurtz case closely.
“As
long as only people of Arab origin or people with Muslim names are targets,
other people in the academic and art communities will feel free to dissent and
support those people,” he says. “But if they themselves become targets,
regardless of someone being an established university professor, then that will
have a chilling effect. And in fact that’s proven to be the case.”
He
refers to an invitation Kurtz had to speak at a CUNY Center for Humanities
program called “The History of Academic Freedom” just a few weeks ago. Kurtz,
who is out on parole and has to report to a probation officer and submit to
random drug and alcohol tests at any moment’s notice, gave the talk. But his
funding for the lecture was yanked unexpectedly at the last second.
Still,
a visit to the CAE’s overwhelmingly thorough website dedicated to this issue, www.caedefensefund.org,
reveals that Kurtz has maintained a fairly constant speaking schedule. The site
also archives all the Kurtz-case press, which has been plentiful and plenty
sympathetic to Kurtz, who seems to have achieved near folk-hero status among
his sympathizers.
Despite the
support,
Cardoni says Kurtz’s time since that tragic morning last May “is being totally
taken up by defending himself legally. He teaches, but when you add all the
time the case is taking to teaching, leaves no time for artwork.”
Free Range
Grain remains
in some sort of government holding cell. And the question lingers: Why, with
the bio-terror charges dismissed, are the feds still pursuing this case?
Claire
Pentecost, a CAE associate and professor at The Art Institute of Chicago, has
just days ago issued a paper with that question at its center.
“The
Justice Department,” she posits, “now has to justify the time and money they
spent on this case in the first few weeks and has to answer to the publicity
the case has attracted.”
She
includes raw data from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access
Clearinghouse, an independent analyzer of federal records. According to a study
found on the TRAC website (trac.syr.edu), federal investigators had recommended
6,400 matters for prosecution on suspicion of terrorism from September 11, 2001
to September 30, 2003. As of September 2003, the feds had processed 2,681 of
those cases. Five were sentenced to 20 years or more in prison. “For those
categorized as international terrorists the median sentence was 14 days,” the
study states.
“These
kinds of punishments,” Pentecost writes, “do not suggest that for all the
people being investigated and dragged through the system, serious terrorists
are being snagged.” (Interestingly, the Bush administration is now withholding
information the government had previously released to TRAC.)
In January,
Kurtz’s attorneys moved to have the entire case dismissed.
In
the meantime, Kurtz’s hearings have been continually postponed. And one of
Kurtz’s CAE colleagues, Steve Barnes, has been re-subpoenaed to appear before a
federal grand jury with offers of immunity.
“They’re
trying to find a rat,” Cardoni says. “But what does Barnes need immunity from?
He hasn’t done anything they could prosecute him for. And there’s nothing
illegal Kurtz has done that Barnes will be able to tell them about.”
To
prepare for what will surely be mounting legal fees, the CAE Defense Fund is
holding an art auction in Chelsea’s Paula Cooper Gallery, with donated works
from artists like Chris Burden and Cindy Sherman. And Buffalo’s Soundlab is
holding a benefit concert with DJ Spooky next Wednesday (see infobox below).
Yet
the question will remain: Why are the feds prosecuting this case?
For
Cardoni, the answer’s simple. And it has everything to do with First Amendment
rights.
“This
prosecution is really a form of persecution,” he says, “for the ideas that have
been expressed by the CAE through their exhibitions and published writings.”
The Critical
Art Ensemble Defense Fund’s benefit concert with DJ Spooky That Subliminal
Kid takes place on Wednesday, April 20, at Big Orbit Gallery’s Soundlab, 110
Pearl Street, Buffalo, at 9 p.m. $10. Advanced sales: bastazine@hotmail.com
This article appears in Apr 13-19, 2005.
