Strange Culture

Sometime in 2005, I attended a talk by Steve Kurtz, an Art professor, who was in the midst of being persecuted by post-Sep 11 paranoia. Just a few days ago, browsing the shelves of the public library, I came across this cool documentary, Strange Culture, that was made in 2006/7, which was about his case. It not only traces the tragedy with enormous sympathy and precision, it also employs a clever blend of dramatization (Tilda Swinton plays his wife, whose tragic death was the genesis of the entire bizarre affair). Even more remarkable is that fact that at the time that they were making the doc, Kurtz's case was still unresolved, and he was still facing the prospect of many years in jail. The film is not only a sensitive rendering of the entire affair, but also fleshes out the broader implications of the case for basic human and academic freedom.

In brief, here's what happened. Kurtz was, and still is, a critical artist. So his stuff is radical art that questions the relationship between art and science. In the talk I attended, he said that his mission has always been to try to use art to put science in the hands of the people, because the general population has been alienated from science by big corporate interests. Anyway, he was working on a project that involved the critique of bio-warfare when his wife died of a heart attack in her sleep. He called 911, and when responders came, they noticed that he had a lot of science equipment at home. And so, the FBI and the bioterrorism task force was notified, and he was eventually taken away (illegally) on the suspicion that he was a bioterrorist. Despite repeated attempts by him and his colleagues to explain to the FBI that "this is what he does, and has been doing all along ...", the government was set on charging him with something. In the end, because there was no way that the bioterrorism charges could be filed (all the stuff he had was legal, harmless, and could be bought over the Internet), they decided to charge him with "wire fraud" and "mail fraud".* In essence, the government, riding on post Sep 11 paranoia, was using its expanded powers to silence voices of dissent by concocting scenarios that are best described as Kafkaesque.

The good news is that he was cleared of everything in April this year, and I found this interview from June where he recounts the entire ordeal, being able to speak openly about the facts of the case for the first time. His interview with Amy Goodman begins at 35:35.



* As I understand it, the prosecution's attempt to charge Kurtz with mail and wire fraud stood on the fact that he'd gotten his research collaborator to buy the reagents that he needed for his work from a supplier who does not sell to individuals, but only to institutional accounts that are registered with them. It's as if I bought a second hand book from Amazon.com on behalf of someone in Singapore because Amazon.com second hand book sellers won't ship internationally. Because I bought the books with the intent of circumventing this system, I (as well as the person receiving the books) am guilty of mail fraud along the lines of the crime that the govt was trying to charge Kurtz with.