Background on Critical Art Ensemble for Monday's screening

On Monday, we will be watching Lynn Hershman's documentary film, Strange Culture, which re-enacts

"the surreal nightmare of internationally-acclaimed artist and professor Steve Kurtz" "when his wife Hope died in her sleep of heart failure. Police who responded to Kurtz�s 911 call deemed Kurtz�s art suspicious and called the FBI. Within hours the artist was detained as a suspected "bioterrorist" as dozens of federal agents in Hazmat suits sifted through his work and impounded his computers, manuscripts, books, his cat, and even his wife�s body. Today Kurtz and his long-time collaborator Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, await a trial date."

Kurtz is a founding member of Critical Art Ensemble.
For more information about this case and others like it see The Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund