Grand Jury to FBI: Get Lost. (LATimes)

LATimes, June 15, 2004
RIGHTS AND THE NEW REALITY
Making Art a Crime
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-artist15jun15,1,4399087.story

Steven Kurtz's legal nightmare began in grief last month when he awoke at
his Buffalo, N.Y., home to find his wife of 20 years unresponsive. The art
professor called 911 to summon paramedics, who determined that Hope Kurtz
had died in her sleep of heart failure. One of the paramedics noticed
laboratory equipment and petri dishes in Kurtz's home.

Fearing they had stumbled onto a clandestine bioweapons lab, the
paramedics called in local health department officials. Tests found that
the lab equipment and the E. coli bacteria in Kurtz's home posed no
danger, but the professor's trouble had only started. Justice Department
lawyers are expected to argue to a federal grand jury in Buffalo today
that what Kurtz viewed as artistic expression was a national security
threat and that he should be indicted under the Patriot Act.

Kurtz, a University of Buffalo professor, is part of the Critical Arts
Ensemble, an internationally recognized collective of artists focusing on
"the intersections between art, technology, radical politics and critical
theory." Some of his equipment and bacteria were part of an ensemble
exhibit called "Gen Terra," which explores the consequences of genetic
engineering. That show had traveled around the country for two years.

Kurtz explained this to the panicked public health inspectors who
converged at his home and again to the FBI agents and the suited-up FBI
hazardous material team that the agents called. No matter. They carted off
the equipment from Kurtz's exhibit along with his computer, books and
papers. None of that material has been returned.

Kurtz is not the only artist whose work is provocative and biological. A
1993 exhibit by the British artist Damien Hirst that included a
sliced-down-the-middle cow preserved in formalin generated storms of
controversy. Similarly, "Gut Reflections. Israel. Palestine. 2002," by
Israeli artist Adi Yekutieli, incorporates molds of the artist's body
parts filled with raw cow guts to convey an emotional response to the
Mideast conflict.

What sets Kurtz apart is that the U.S. attorney in Buffalo is pushing to
prosecute him under a Patriot Act provision that bars possession of "any
biological agent, toxin or delivery system not reasonably justified by a
prophylactic, protective, bona fide research or other peaceful purpose."

The effort to paint Kurtz as a bioterrorist in the making would be funny
if it wasn't so frightening. Federal officials in Buffalo have been in
hair-trigger mode since six Yemeni American men from nearby Lackawanna
pleaded guilty in recent months to charges that they attended an Al Qaeda
training camp in Afghanistan in the spring of 2001. But given the bacteria
test results, Justice Department lawyers should never have brought the
Kurtz case to the grand jury.

Using the Patriot Act to muzzle lefty art professors defies common sense,
not to mention the Constitution. The grand jurors should tell the Justice
Department to get lost.