And now, the case of Steve Kurtz.

    Founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) and University at Buffalo Associate Professor Steve Kurtz was brought before a grand jury in Buffalo on June 15, 2004 following the bioterrorism related investigation of his home by the FBI in May. Kurtz and his 'suspicious biological agents' came to the attention of the Joint Terrorism Taskforce after members of the Buffalo Fire Department noticed petri dishes, beakers, and other lab equipment in his home when responding to a 911 call. Kurtz awoke on May 11, 2004 to find his wife of 20 years not breathing; he immediately called the emergency line to get help. When the first responders arrived, they reportedly were alarmed by the presence of biological materials and lab equipment in the house. The local authorities contacted the Buffalo office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the FBI contacted the Joint Terrorism Taskforce. Within days a hazmat team from Quantico, Virginia had cordoned off my block and proceeded to empty Kurtz's house of research materials, files, computer equipment, and anything else that might arouse suspicions. His wife's death was later determined to be of natural causes and unrelated to the FBI's ongoing investigation.

A grieving Kurtz was removed from his home and questioned by FBI agents while hazmat officials removed the contents of his home and investigated his wife's body for evidence of foul play.

Until I saw his picture in the papers, I never realized that Steve Kurtz, the unassuming guy I sat next to at local cafes and stood behind in line at Holly Farms when I was waiting to buy cans of Miller Highlife...

The Buffalo News reported that Kurtz was taken out to dinner by federal agents who then put him up in a nice hotel while the health department condemned his house. An email from early June that was attributed to Kurtz and widely circulated on the Internet describes the process in less rosy terms: "I was detained for 22 hours by the FBI. They seized my wife's body, house, cat and car. These items were released a week later." Kurtz has ceased making public statements about the situation since the government has made clear their intention to pursue charges against him.

As a resident of Buffalo familiar with the work of the Critical Art Ensemble, I was surprised to learn that members of the CAE lived just a few doors away from me on College Street. Kurtz is an artist whose work on transgenic organisms and biotech policy as part of the Critical Art Ensemble is intended to inform audiences about information outside the 'official discourse' with an aim at opening a wider, and more democratic, conversation about the stakes involved in the private, profit-driven corporate genetic manipulation of the food supply. Though I have read several of the CAE's books, before the Kurtz incident I would not have been able to name any of the group's members. CAE works as a collective whose individual members tend not to trumpet their own achievements; all of their books are attributed collectively to the ensemble, not to individual members. Until I saw his picture in the papers, I never realized that Steve Kurtz, the unassuming guy I sat next to at local cafes and stood behind in line at Holly Farms when I was waiting to buy cans of Miller Highlife, was part of a dedicated and respected group of activist artists (not to mention a potential threat to national security).

In the 90s, CAE focused on the rise of 'virtual space' at the expense of geographical space and on the emergence of 'tactical media,' a term they seemed to embrace with reluctance. The first book by the ensemble I remember encountering was entitled Electronic Civil Disobedience. It was a guidebook of sorts for engaging authoritarian culture on its own terms. In their writings, I recognize a multitude of tactical and theoretical inspirations, including Bataille, the Situationists, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Paul Virilio, and Marshall McLuhan. In the book, the group enumerated a variety of tactical possibilities, focusing on effective and pragmatic ways to inhabit the hegemonic drivers of culture and power in order to recombine and re-present their products to achieve subversive ends. At that time, they theorized that electronic space was the new privileged venue for cultural resistance and described strategies to stage nomadic and recombinant actions of intervention.

A few years ago, CAE switched its attention, recognizing the human body as the emerging site of capitalist colonization and placing the biotech industry in its sites. Subsequent tactical engagements, installations, and book projects have considered the impact of the corporate monopolization of transgenic products and techniques. One of CAE's central goals is to migrate knowledge and decision making ability from elites and specialists to an informed public. To this end, the group has learned their subject and developed tools for political and cultural resistance in the realm of biotechnology. This is part of what CAE refers to as 'contestational biology.'

My first news of the supposed terrorism threat to my neighborhood came when I arrived home from work on May 14. My block (College Street) was cordoned off with yellow police tape and a wall of squad cars blocked access to the road from Allen Street. I could reach my front door, but it looked as though residents who live in the middle of the street were in a lockdown zone. I could make out a chemical shower/tent setup and could plainly see people in hazmat uniforms carrying bags and cans full of unknown stuff out of a house in the middle of the block. It looked like the site of a nuclear emergency. I asked my neighbor, who runs a musical instrument shop in my building and had a first row view of the police action all day, what had happened and was filled in on the unofficial story, complete with sketchy details involving alarming words: dead wife, unknown bacteria, bioterrorism. Police and FBI agents at the scene weren't answering any questions from residents. It didn't seem that they were much more forthcoming with the multiple news crews filming on-the-scene updates throughout the day that were essentially devoid of content. About an hour after I got home, the news crews apparently got word that no further excitement would occur that day and packed up their trucks, lowered their camera platforms, and went home. A while later, the police called it a day and scaled down their forces to two squad cars who spent the night in front of Kurtz's house obstructing the street. The next few days followed a similar schedule.

As neighbors to the proceedings, we were first alarmed at the happenings, but soon grew suspicious of the FBI's actions. A bioterrorism lab on College Street seemed too outlandish to seriously contemplate. Surely the cops were overreacting, succumbing to paranoia by puffing up a harmless situation into a national emergency. College Street residents seemed overwhelmingly supportive of Kurtz. Over the next few days, we got over the shock of awaking to a police cordon and full hazmat decontamination team gutting the contents of an apartment on our block and began to contemplate unpleasant realizations about how arbitrary, and possible, an invasion of our own home was. (Not to mention our disgust at the waste of public funds while several squads were parked and running at the intersection of Allen and College upwards of 12 hours daily for the several days that the FBI crew was at work on Kurtz's home. Though the dollars wasted on gasoline, the salary squandered on officers standing in the street for hours doing nothing, and the noxious fumes emitted by their multiple idling vehicles are minor points, they are emblematic of this strange, seemingly superfluous investigation.)

Most frightening is the precedent the FBI set in choosing to pursue this case under the auspices of counterterrorism. If Kurtz did indeed possess 'controlled substances,' illegal or hazardous materials that posed a potential health risk to neighborhood residents, then he should be prosecuted under the appropriate jurisdictions. However, Kurtz doesn't fall into any terrorist profiles and the FBI's pursuit of him seems to signal a foreboding expansion of homeland defense.

Police Barricade at the Intersection of College Street and Allen Street, as Seen from butchersam's Apartment Window, May 2004

Kurtz and the Critical Art Ensemble do not act in secret. They are not a clandestine operation who seek to hide the details of surreptitious research. They are artists and activists whose projects attempt to inform their audiences about the democratic potential of contemporary technologies as well as to demonstrate the reality of the authoritarian and restricted access to these crucial technologies. Critical Art Ensemble publications, which contain explanations of the collective's theoretical grounding, activist tactics, and descriptions of the group's work, are available for purchase through their publisher, Autonomedia; the full texts of all their works is available online as well. The ensemble's choice to credit their output to the group, and not individual members, is not a move to mislead or evade; it is the result of a coherent political and economic stance that rejects the unipolar pursuit of personal profit and fame so essential to capitalism in favor of a collective and shared effort and reward. This perspective is not doctrinaire nor is it violent, but it is committed to dissolving walls of privilege and stature. CAE seeks to democratize knowledge and means, and in doing so, give a voice to people who will not profit from the commercial development of genetically modified foodstuffs and other organisms, but will surely suffer from any unintended/unexpected negative consequences produced as a result of the dispersion of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into native populations. By immediately escalating this situation to the concerns of bioterrorism and homeland security, the FBI sends a clear message to activists and artists who seek to engage and inform audiences regarding pressing, and often undiscussed, topics of our society: unsanctioned voices are not welcome in these debates, and those butting-in can and will be aggressively shushed.