USA PATRIOT act is BULLSHIT
What happened to Steve Kurtz?Early morning of May 11, Steve Kurtz awoke to find his wife, Hope, dead of a cardiac arrest. Kurtz called 911. The police arrived and, after stumbling across test tubes and petri dishes Kurtz was using in a current artwork, called in the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Soon agents from the Task Force and FBI detained Kurtz, cordoned off the entire block around his house, and later impounded Kurtz's computers, manuscripts, books, equipment, and even his wife's body for further analysis. The Buffalo Health Department condemned the house as a health risk.
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 able to return home and recover his wife's body. Yet the FBI would not release the impounded materials, which included artwork for an upcoming exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
Regardless of the fact that Kurtz has not been charged with anything yet, this occurrence raises serious questions about the police state created by the USA PATRIOT act. Arguably America has been out of touch with contemporary art since Jackson Pollock, but this is a very strong example of two connected trends: the inability of artists to articulate their position as important cultural critics and the even more difficult time that the American public has had understanding the critical role of art.
More than any personal empathy for the loss of Kurtz's wife, I feel a deep sense of anger as an American citizen. The confusion of Kurtz as a terrorist suspect is pathetic hyperbole and misjudgment by the law enforcement forces of our country. A simple glance at his CV shows that Kurtz has been involved in critical artworks dealing with issues of the body and technology for some time-- since at least 1999, well before the PATRIOT act was a twinkle in anyone's eye. "Biotech Lounge", "Flesh Frontiers", "The Biotech Initiative": these are names that are intended to raise an eyebrow. The fact that they're attached to some other names-- The Kiasma Museum in Helsinki, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, even The Corcoran Gallery of Art located just two blocks from 1600 Penn.-- should tell any curious party that Kurtz is no terror suspect, he's a credentialed artist. Last time I checked, terrorists don't make an effort to publicize themselves by holding exhibitions in some of the world's most prestigious galleries and museums.
The FBI should take a lesson from any college freshman. If there's something you need to know more about, the first step is to Google it.Which is to say... how stupid can you get? Do we really send out hazmat crews before even looking into the suspects who we intend to investigate?
More links to news reports are available here.
--Posted 06/06/04 01:33AM