CAE

Critical Art Ensemble

Collective of five tactical media artists dedicated to exploring the intersections between art, technology, critical theory, and political activism. Each artist has her or his specialised talents and skills, including performance, book arts, graphic design, computer art, film/video, photography and critical writing.

CAE chooses a subject in a specific cultural situation and creates a work within that context, with that particular audience, and within the social space and performative matrix of everyday life. They use the skills and the media that will best address the content and situation, moving to any site - galleries, the internet, the street – in Europe and North America.

For the past seven years, CAE has focused on biotechnology, its colonising effects and ideological layering, and the biorevolution in global capitalism. The public’s access to the processes of biotechnology is limited; it is only the resultant product that appears as a commodity, resulting in misleading speculation, fear, disinformation and communicative disorder. CAE hopes these performances contribute to the development of an informed, critical public discourse on biotechnology.


Case: May 2004

In May 2004, the Joint Terrorism Task Force illegally detained artist and SUNY Buffalo professor Steve Kurtz of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). They seized documents, computers, and equipment used in four of CAE’s projects, including scientific equipment used to test food for the presence of genetically modified organisms. The seized materials included a project that was to have been part of an exhibition and performance at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) and three other projects that had been safely displayed in museums and galleries throughout Europe and North America. The New York State Commissioner of Public Health determined that the materials seized by the FBI pose no public safety risk. All of the materials are legal and commonly used for scientific education and research activities in universities and high schools, and are universally regarded by scientists as safe. Nevertheless, today Steve Kurtz and Robert Ferrell, Professor of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health, face a possible 20 years in prison in what has become increasingly clear is a politically motivated attempt to silence an artist and scientist whose work is critical of government policy.

.....Dr. Steven Kurtz is a Professor of Art at SUNY Buffalo and a founding member, with his late wife, Hope, of the internationally acclaimed art and theater collective Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). Over the past decade cultural institutions worldwide have hosted CAE’s participatory theater projects that help the general public understand biotechnology and the many issues surrounding it.
In May 2004 the Kurtzes were preparing to present Free Range Grain, a project examining GM agriculture, at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), when Hope Kurtz died of heart failure. Police who responded to Kurtz's 911 call deemed the couple's art suspicious, and called the FBI. The art materials consisted of several petri dishes containing three harmless bacteria cultures, and a mobile lab to test food labeled “organic” for the presence of genetically modified ingredients. As Kurtz explained, these materials had been safely displayed in museums and galleries throughout Europe and North America with absolutely no risk to the public.

The next day, however, as Kurtz was on his way to the funeral home, he was illegally detained by agents from the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force, who informed him he was being investigated for "bioterrorism." At no point during the 22 hours Kurtz was held and questioned did the agents Mirandize him or inform him he could leave. Meanwhile, agents from numerous federal law enforcement agencies - including five regional branches of the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the Buffalo Police, Fire Department, and state Marshall's office - descended on Kurtz's home in Hazmat suits. Cordoning off half a block around his home, they seized his cat, car, computers, manuscripts, books, equipment, and even his wife's body from the county coroner for further analysis. The Erie County Health Department condemned his house as a possible "health risk."

A week later, only after the Commissioner of Public Health for New York State had tested samples from the home and announced there was no public safety threat, was Kurtz allowed to return to his home and to recover his wife's body.
While most observers assumed the Task Force would realize its initial investigation was a terrible mistake, the feds have instead chosen to press their "case" against Steve Kurtz, Robert Ferrell, and possibly others (see below for more information on the charges). Despite the Public Health Commissioner's conclusion as to the safety of Kurtz's materials, and despite the fact that the FBI's own field and laboratory tests showed they were not harmful to people or the environment – it would actually be impossible to make any sort of weaponized or dangerous germ from them – the U.S. District Attorney continues to waste vast sums of public money on this outrageous and politically motivated persecution.


Dr. Ferrell got minimum sentence.



June 11, 2008: Kurtz is cleared of all charges.
Department of Justice Fails to Appeal Dismissal
FBI returned the art projects, research materials and personal belongings that they took in 2004 at Steve’s house during his detention.

Claire Pentecost
Background on CAE... Analysis compiled by her
Reflections on the case...Reflections on the Case by the U.S. Justice Department against Steve Kurtz and Robert Ferrell by her