Strange Culture

Internationally acclaimed artist and professor Steve Kurtz woke up one morning a widower and suspected bioterrorist. When Kurtz's wife died tragically in her sleep from heart failure in May 2004, the medics were summoned to his home and uncovered experimental art supplies of the scientific variety. The discovery prompted an FBI investigation, resulting in the detention of Kurtz and the confiscation of his materials, his cat and even his wife's body. Steve Kurtz and his aesthetically adventurous collective, Critical Art Ensemble, innovatively intersect art, technology, radical politics and critical theory. Their globally presented work melds performance, installation and exhibition in an attempt to disparage corporate and governmental practices that counter the advancement of social justice. The FBI, however, had a contrastingly suspicious notion of Kurtz's work; three years later the charges still hold and he faces up to 20 years in prison. With an activist spirit intact, this couth reinvention of documentary fluidly mixes dramatic reenactment, news footage, animation and interview to construe the consequences faced by the critical artist in a politically paranoid era.