A UUP member’s story that involves government intimidation and overreaction is the focus of an award- winning documentary that will air this month on the Sundance Channel.
Strange Culture, written and directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson, was an official selection at both the 2007 Sundance and Berlin film festivals, and won the Cinema of Conscience Award at the 2007 Wine Country Film Festival. Critics rave that the documentary — which combines reenactments, interviews and news footage — puts post-9/11 paranoia in the fore and exposes the government for its failure to admit a mistake.
The cast includes Tilda Swinton, Thomas Jay Ryan, Peter Coyote and Josh Kornbluth.
The story began more than three years ago, when SUNY Buffalo associate professor and artist Steven Kurtz awoke to discover his wife Hope has died overnight of an apparent heart attack. He dialed 911, and paramedics on the scene noticed unusual art and scientific equipment lying around the couple’s home. Kurtz and his wife — founders of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), an internationally acclaimed art and theater group — were preparing for an interactive art exhibition for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art that questioned whether people could identify organically modified foods. The artist’s conceptual work included live cultures in Petri dishes. The paramedics became suspicious and called in the FBI. Government officials in Hazmat suits descended on the Kurtz home, and confiscated books, art, their cat and his wife’s dead body. Despite evidence that the live cultures were no more dangerous than yogurt, Kurtz was charged with bioterrorism.
Kurtz has since been cleared of the bio-terrorism charges, but still faces federal indictments for mail fraud and wire fraud that could land him in prison for 20 years. The fraud charges were brought against Kurtz and Robert Ferrell, a professor of human genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Ferrell mailed Kurtz the live cultures, which are widely available through the mail from high school science supply catalogs. Citing his deteriorating health, Ferrell in October pleaded guilty in Federal District Court to lesser charges rather than face a prolonged trial.
Kurtz continues to fight the charges. No trial date has been set.
A trailer for the documentary was shown at the union’s recent Fall Delegate Assembly in Buffalo. The government’s complete disregard for Kurtz’s freedom of expression outraged the delegates, who passed the hat and collected more than $600 for the CAE Trial Fund. Further donations can be sent to the CAE Trial Fund, c/o Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 341 Delaware Ave., Buffalo, N.Y. 14202.
— Karen L. Mattison