Bad Art

I'm still weirded out about the whole legal skirmish around Steven Kurtz, an art professor at SUNY Buffalo whose work deals with biology and bioterror. In late May, Kurtz called 911 from his home in New York because his wife had suffered a fatal heart attack. When an emergency team arrived, they saw items from Kurtz's artwork in the house – petri dishes and other things that alarmed them. So they called in the feds on suspicion of bioterrorism.

OK, it was a little bit of an overreaction but understandable under the circumstances. You go into a guy's house, his wife is dead from causes you haven't yet determined, and he's got all this strange home-brewed laboratory equipment everywhere. It's scary, and you want to make sure you're not in the middle of some garage bioterror operation.

When the feds arrived, though, things started to get hinky. First they confiscated all Kurtz's computers and art materials, along with his car and his cat. They also kept his wife's body for a week before releasing it to him. Intense but fine so far. They're doing an investigation. But when it became obvious that Kurtz was a bioartist – given his long record of writing and exhibiting on the topic, as well as the public statements of respected artists and scientists on his behalf – they should have just let the guy go. It was an understandable but unfortunate mistake, and now the guy needs to go deal with the death of his wife.

But the feds wouldn't give up on their investigation. Maybe it was because they'd read a little bit of Kurtz's writing and discovered that his work was critical of the Bush administration's involvement in bioweapons. Or maybe it was because they couldn't admit they'd been wrong.

Either way, they convened a federal grand jury and started subpoenaing Kurtz's colleagues in the Critical Art Ensemble, a small group devoted to exploring politically progressive art and technology. (The CAE, incidentally, has an excellent page devoted to this case, where you can learn more and donate to Kurtz's defense fund.)

Last month the federal grand jury found that Kurtz isn't guilty of bioterrorism. But in a move that seems the very definition of "grasping at straws," they came up with something else they could charge him with: mail fraud. Mail and wire fraud laws are generally used to prosecute people for conning others out of money or property, with penalties including up to 20 years in prison.

Why is Kurtz being charged in such a preposterous way? Apparently Kurtz's colleague Robert Ferrell, a professor of genetics, sent the artist $256 worth of harmless bacteria for use in his work. Both men are being brought up on mail fraud charges because, as the grand jury's indictment states, they misled the company supplying the bacteria. The company allegedly believed the bacteria would be used in a classroom, rather than in an artwork. Also, according to the indictment, Kurtz wasn't a "registered customer" of American Type Culture Collection, the bacteria supplier.

So what message is the federal government sending out here? That you need to register with anyone who sends you crap via mail and state what you intend to do with his or her wares? I can understand why such precautions would be necessary with hazardous materials or weapons – which you shouldn't be able to order by mail anyway – but the bacteria Kurtz got was no more dangerous than a cup of yogurt. Hell, kids buy chemistry kits over the counter all the time that contain materials that, when combined, have the potential to be far more toxic than this bacteria. Should every little geek with a chemistry set register with the American Chemical Association and send in weekly updates to let the ACA know what he or she is doing?