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Strange Culture: Art in post 911 is a bitch . . .

Posted by mr grits on September 26, 2010 at 22:46:30:
This is a documentary of Steve and Hope Kurtz who were members of a rather unusual university art group. Steve and his partner were experimenting and developing art based on their research of genetically modified food. (No explanation of what the art actually was given.) Steve had ordered $250 worth of bacteria and lab supplies from a school supply company on line. Completely legal and legitimate.

Just before his project was completed Steve awoke one morning to find Hope dead beside him. He called 911 and help came. One of the ambulance techs noticed petri dishes on a coffee table and called the police who in turn called the FBI who in turn sent a hazmat team that invaded his home tagging and bagging all things and materials related to the art. The FBI noticed a printed card on his coffee table that had a sentence of Arabic on it. Steve explained it was an invitation to an art show at another college that he didn't attend. No matter, that was enough for the FBI anti-terrorist squad. They took Steve down town and began questioning and drawing up charges for possessing WMD's. The released him long enough to arrange his wife's funeral before they started a campaign of contacting him and sending other agents to coax things out of him such as "would you like to kill the president".

Fortunately for Steve, the ACLU in Buffalo got involved and took the lead in his defense. Since the bacteria cultures were found to be non-toxic and legally available through the internet the WMD charges were dropped. Still, Steve and his partner were charged with two counts of wire fraud and internet fraud of which fraud had not occurred.

At the end of the documentary Steve had still not been to trial and it has been 29 months since he was charged. Steve and his fellow artists think the government is using post 911 laws to stifle art and self expression as a test case for the future.

Tilda Swinton plays Hope in the very brief dramatization of what happened to Hope. She is a big anti-genetically modified food girl and said her county in NE Scotland is the first to be free of genetically modified food. Apparently this was a cause for which she volunteered.