I'm down with Julie's going underground. She has to do what she does, ya know? That FBI, it's frightening. What can she do to protect herself? She could try to curl up into the smallest ball possible and try to disappear for a while. I think I'd try to crawl back in the womb so my mama'd just have to kill me, like in Toni Morrison's, Sula.
One bar room friend told me that he thinks culture shock is the problem here. Artist Vs the government people. I can see it. I know that when I go home to my family I'm a fish out of water but I'm used to it and they're used to me. I have a good party story I'll tell later that kind of involves this culture shock idea.
Anyway uh ... oh yeah below is some stuff that they sent on the artist list serve in Atlanta so it's good that people outside buffalo are picking up on the overzealous actions taking place here.

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Here are two stories about the Kurtz case. The first is from the Buffalo News, the second is from the Washington Post.

The different impression made by each is quite startling; perhaps attributable to the differing caliber of the news organizations or the recent prosecutions of the Buffalo sleeper cell (a dubious victory in the war on terrorism).

None the less, this puts the question (at least for me) of art's societal function in a different perspective from the usual navel-gazing answers.

Nicholas Fraser

Here's the Buffalo News story:


Six are said to resist grand jury

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Artists, others wary of Kurtz probe
By DAN HERBECK
News Staff Reporter
6/17/2004
A number of artists and art professors refused to testify this week before a federal grand jury that is investigating Buffalo artist Steve Kurtz.

At least six people who were called to testify before the grand jury in the Kurtz case Tuesday refused to appear, invoking their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, legal sources said Wednesday.

Several defense lawyers involved in the case said federal prosecutors refused to tell their clients whether they might become targets of the probe, and also refused to grant them immunity from prosecution if they
testified.

"My client declined to testify, and so did quite a few others who were called before the grand jury," said Thomas J. Eoannou, attorney for Paul Vanouse, an assistant art professor at the University at Buffalo. "People in the art community are concerned about this investigation, and where it's going. They don't know who is being targeted."

Attorneys James P. Harrington and Daniel J. Henry Jr. said their clients, UB assistant art professor Andrew Johnson and California artist Beatriz da Costa, respectively, also declined to testify.

"I wouldn't call it a protest," Henry said of da Costa's refusal to testify. "It's just a concern she has to protect herself or people associated with her."

Harrington said, "People would love to go into the grand jury and say (Kurtz) is not a danger to anybody. But they don't trust the government."

Kurtz, Vanouse and da Costa all are associated with the Critical Art Ensemble, a controversial group of performance artists who sometimes use
human DNA and bacterial growths such as E.coli in their art exhibits.

The federal investigation of Kurtz, which began last month after the death of his wife, Hope, following an apparent heart attack, has upset many
contemporary artists across the United States and Europe. Public demonstrations supporting Kurtz were held Tuesday in Buffalo, Berkley, Calif., and at least two European cities.

The Joint Terrorism Task Force is conducting the investigation. William J. Hochul Jr., a prosecutor with the task force, declined to comment on the investigation or the testimony of any wi
tn
esses.

"As a prosecutor, I can't even confirm whether there is a grand jury looking into this matter," Hochul said. "Speaking generally, I can say that a grand jury's job is fact-finding, to determine whether a crime has been committed and, if so, by whom. Just because a grand jury is investigating, it doesn't always mean somebody is going to be indicted."

Authorities have told The Buffalo News that the probe is focused on how and why Kurtz got certain biological agents that were found in his Allentown
home after his wife's death May 11.

On May 13, FBI agents in biohazard suits were seen carrying numerous items out of the College Street home. The items reportedly included laboratory equipment, computers and bacterial cultures.

The Erie County Health Department closed down the home after the FBI search and reopened it May 17, after the recovered items were evaluated in a state laboratory.

Dr. Anthony J. Billitier IV, the county health commissioner, said that those who are criticizing the FBI for its investigation are doing so "without knowing all the facts."

"Being careful about public safety should be more important than worryingabout getting beaten up by critics," Billitier said this week. "I can empathize with the FBI's position. On the other hand, Kurtz deserves a fair evaluation of all the facts."

Paul J. Cambria, Kurtz's attorney, said the items Kurtz had in the home were "harmless," similar to those a high school student might use in a science
fair project.

Da Costa has told The News that the FBI appears to be trying to link Kurtz to "bioterrorism."

Kurtz, 46, is an associate art professor at UB. Officials at UB have declined to comment on the FBI probe, except to say that no internal investigation is being conducted by the university.







And here's the Washington Post's story:


The FBI's Art Attack

By Lynne Duke

NEW YORK -- "A forensic investigation of FBI trash." On the telephone, Beatriz da Costa says it wryly. Her humor sounds bitter. She's talking about the detritus of a terror probe at the Buffalo home of her good friends, the Kurtzes.

She's talking about the pizza boxes, Gatorade jugs, the gloves, the gas mask filters, the biohazard suits: the stuff left by police, FBI, hazmat and health investigators after they descended on the Kurtz home and quarantined the place.

The garbage tells a story of personal tragedy, a death in the Kurtz household, that sparked suspicions (later proved unfounded) of a biohazard
in the neighborhood. And it tells a story of the times in which we live, with almost daily warnings about terror, and with law enforcement primed to pounce.

Steve Kurtz, a Buffalo art professor, discovered on the morning of May 11 that his wife of 20 years, Hope Kurtz, had stopped breathing. He called 911. Police and emergency personnel responded, and what they saw in the Kurtz
home has triggered a full-blown probe -- into the vials and bacterial cultures and strange contraptions and laboratory equipment.

The FBI is investigating. A federal grand jury has been impaneled. Witnesses have been subpoenaed, including da Costa.

Kurtz and his late wife were founders of the Critical Art Ensemble, an internationally renowned collective of "tactical media" protest and performance artists. Steve Kurtz, 48, has focused on the problems of the emergence of biotechnology, such as genetically modified food. He and the art ensemble, which also includes da Costa, have authored several books including "Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media" and "Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas," both published by Autonomedia/Semiotext(e).

The day of his wife's death, Kurtz told the authorities who he is and what he does.

"He explained to them that he uses [the equipment] in connection wi
th his
art, and the next thing you know they call the FBI and a full hazmat team is deposited there from Quantico -- that's what they told me," says Paul Cambria, the lawyer who is representing Kurtz. "And they all showed up in their suits and they're hosing each other down and closing the street off, and all the news cameras were there and the head of the [Buffalo] FBI is granting interviews. It was a complete circus."

Cambria, the bicoastal Buffalo and Los Angeles lawyer best known for representing pornographer Larry Flynt, calls the Kurtz episode a "colossal
overreaction."

FBI agents put Kurtz in a hotel, where they continued to question him. Cambria says Kurtz felt like a detainee over the two days he was at the hotel. Paul Moskal, spokesman for the Buffalo office of the FBI, says the bureau put Kurtz in a hotel because his home had been declared off limits.The probe, Moskal says, was a by-the-books affair from the very beginning.

"Post-9/11 protocol is such that first-responders have all been given training about unusual things and unusual situations," Moskal says.

And obviously, says Lt. Jake Ulewski, spokesman for the Buffalo police,what the cops eyeballed raised some alarms. "He's making cultures? That's a little off the wall."

Erie County health officials declared the Kurtz home a potential health risk and sealed it for two days while a state lab examined the bacterial
cultures found inside. Officials won't divulge what precisely was examined, but it turned out not to be a danger to public health. And the house was reopened for use.

Still, federal authorities think something in that house might have been illegal, Cambria surmises. But Cambria denies there was anything illegal in the house. William Hochul Jr., chief of the anti-terrorism unit for the U.S. attorney's office in the Western District of New York, would not comment on the investigation.

Kurtz, on Cambria's advice, isn't speaking to the press either.

Da Costa, a professor at the University of California at Irvine who has flown to Buffalo to help out, says Kurtz is "depressed" and dealing with the loss of his wife, who died of a heart attack.Today the Buffalo arts community will memorialize her.

Adele Henderson, chair of the art department of the State University of New York at Buffalo, where Kurtz has tenure, is among the people who've been questioned by the FBI.

On May 21, she says, the FBI asked her about Kurtz's art, his writings, his books; why his organization (the art ensemble) is listed as a collective rather than by its individual members; how it is funded.

"They asked me if I'd be surprised if I found out he was found to be involved in bioterrorism," she says.

Her response? "I am absolutely certain that Steve would not be involved."

They also asked about "his personal life," Henderson says, but she would not describe the questions or her responses.

The investigation, she says, will have no bearing on Kurtz's standing at the university, where he is an associate professor. (Prior to Buffalo, he taught at Carnegie Mellon University.)

"This is a free speech issue, and some people at the university remember a time during the McCarthy period when some university professors were harassed quite badly," she says.

Nonetheless, considering the kind of art Kurtz practices and the kind ofsupplies he uses, "I could see how they would think it was really strange."

For instance: the mobile DNA extracting machine used for testing food products for genetic contamination. Such a machine was in Kurtz's home. His focus, in recent years, has been on projects that highlight the trouble with
genetically modified seeds.

In November 2002, in an installation called "Molecular Invasion," Kurtz grew genetically modified seeds in small pots beneath growth lamps at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, then
engineere
d them in reverse with herbicide, meaning he killed them.

"We thought it was very important to have Critical Art Ensemble here because we try to have our visiting artist's program present work that takes our curriculum to the next step," says Denise Mullen, vice dean of the Corcoran College of Art and Design, whose Hemicycle Gallery hosted Kurtz's molecular exhibit.

Beyond the cutting edge of art, she says, "we want work that is really bleeding edge."

In Buffalo, in the aftermath of the bioterror probe that has found no terror, activist artists have scooped up the refuse from the Kurtz front
yard and taken it away, perhaps, says da Costa, to create an art
installation.

I love search engines for purposes of research but I'd rather not have this blog so easy to find by certain people (mainly my family).
I can still remember, Eric taunting my 10 year old self while he held my little pink diary. He spoke with a falsetto voice "I think I like Heath, Blah Blah Blah."

11. Lipstick
12. French Fries
13. Toad Stools
14. Elephants
15. Dictionaries
16. Logs
17. Hormones
18. Hair Dye
19. dumpster clothes
20. Blue Balls

1. Sunglasses
2. Regular Glasses
3. Cigarette
4. Missing Sock
5. Belly Button Lint
6. Porcelain Mermaid Bell
7. Empty Coke Can
8. Tape Player
9. VHS Copy of Boys Don't Cry
10. Corpse

I haven't been making any work lately and I think it's because I'm sick of myself. There are things going on in my mind and everything but they're not coming to conclusions.
Last night when I was trying to sleep I thought about an experience I'd had earlier in the day while plant watering. I stopped outside the Sunoco to refill my water buffalo. I was sitting along a short wall smoking and a Sunoco employ sat around 9 feet away on the same wall. We both just sat there smoking our cigarettes watching the passing traffic. It was slightly awkward, I felt like I should say "nice weather we're having" or something like that but I was feeling introverted so I just enjoyed the silent shitty job comradeship.
A man came out of the gas station and addressed my fellow smoker by saying "Just out here enjoying the scenery eh, huhuh." When he said scenery he looked directly at me with good natured smile. I'm sure at the time I just smiled back but lying in my bed later on in the night I replayed this incident in my head and it disturbed me. I don't want to be a woman object. I'd rather just be a plain old object without thoughts, feelings, and emotions and all that bullshit if old funny guys are going to throw me in the object category anyway.