Art and Law III

Seized
Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) & Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA)

Press Preview: 1. October 2009, 11AM
Opening: 2. October 2009, 8PM
Artist Talk: 4. October 2009, 4PM
Exhibition duration: 3. October - 15. November 2009, Fri-Sun 2-6PM, and by appointment

Film Screening: Strange Culture, 2. November 2009, 7.30 PM
(D: Lynn Hershman Leeson, 2007), followed by a Round Table. The case of Steve Kurtz will be discussed from legal, cultural-political and curatorial perspectives: Eberhard Schultz (lawyer), Mark C. Donfried (Institute for Cultural Diplomacy) and Christian de Lutz (Art Laboratory Berlin); Moderated by Regine Rapp (Art Laboratory Berlin).
Kino Arsenal, Potsdamer Platz 2, 10785 Berlin
Tickets: 6,50 Euro/ 5,00 Euro reduced (Students)

Catalog: Regine Rapp and Christian de Lutz for Art Laboratory Berlin (Hrsg.):
SEIZED. Critical Art Ensemble & Institute for Applied Autonomy. Berlin 2009
44 p., color, text in English and German
ISBN: 978-3-9813234-0-5
9,00 EUR

Press text as .pdf

Art Laboratory Berlin is pleased to announce the exhibition Seized (October 3 – November 15, 2009) by Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) and the Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA) as the third part of our series Art and Law:

The opening of our exhibition SEIZED takes place in an artistically and politically frenetic time. Berlin has just been energized by the Artforum and other art fairs, we are asked to elect a new Bundestag(national elections are taking place ) and the public ceremonies of the German Unification Day are upcoming. Our project fits into this area of tension: As an art exhibition it brings up questions about artistic freedom of expression and governmental repression, reflects about the interdependancy between politics and business and presents artistic strategies, which try to undercut this. America, country of freedom, was the setting for the events which underlie this exhibition. It shows that it is not self-evident for artists, even in a democracy, to criticize the structures of power and to publicly take a firm stand.

The exhibition SEIZED deals with the FBI raid on the home of CAE member and art professor Steve Kurtz in Spring 2004 and the four year law case that followed. In May 2004 Steve’s wife Hope died entirely unexpectedly because of an undiagnosed heart defect. Emergency responders from the Fire Department who answered Kurtz’s call saw a chemistry laboratory, which was part of preparations for an upcoming show, in the couple’s house. The Fire Department found this suspicious and informed the FBI. During the three-day-raid the authorities not only confiscated Kurtz’s computers, archives, artworks and a set of books he was using for research on his upcoming book project, but also his wife’s corpse. Steve himself was interrogated for 22 hours with the aim of charging him with “bioterrorism” and even murder. Later the charges were changed to to “wire and mail fraud”, which finally, in 2008, was dropped due to all evidence of a crime being "insufficient on its face." In their installation Body of Evidence the artists turn the perpetrator-victim-relationship upside-down. As the FBI had stolen their artistic material, they, in return, confiscated the debris left behind on Steve Kurtz’s lawn by the FBI agents - pizza boxes, Gatorade bottles, hazmat suits and biological sample bags, as well as written notes and a single cigar butt. The exhibition’s curators Regine Rapp and Christian de Lutz write about this in the exhibition catalogue:

„The display of the notes and papers which the federal agents wrote during their raid resembles a strategy of counter-appropriation in which CAE and IAA convert those objects left behind as “evidence” for their own investigation. All in all, this turns the ‘case’ inside out and subverts the power structure. The items confiscated are exchanged for items left behind, which in turn form the basis for the exhibition. In a strange act of reciprocity, the artists are able to invert the whole investigator/perpetrator system. The blank space created by the seizure of CAE’s artworks is filled by the debris of the state; and with this the absence of the seized objects is made more tangible.“

Besides the complex installation Body of Evidence the exhibition documents works and performances by CAE, on which Steve and Hope were working just before the raid, such as Free Range Grain (2003-2004) or Molecular Invasion (2002-2003). In addition, Art Laboratory Berlin, in collaboration with the arsenal – institut für film und videokunst e.v, will present the film Strange Culture by Lynn Hershman Leeson, at the Arsenal Cinema, followed by a panel discussion. The film documents the events of May 2004 and their aftermath.

An exhibition catalogue will be published.

(Press release updated 9 September 2009)

For more information please contact Pamina Gerhardt at presse@artlaboratory-berlin.org

Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) is a collective of tactical media practitioners of various specializations including computer graphics, software, wetware, film/video, photography, book art and performance. CAE was founded in 1987 and has produced a wide variety of projects for an international audience at diverse venues ranging from the street, to the museum, to the Internet.
CAE is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation Wynn Kramarsky Freedom of Artistic Expression Grant honoring two decades of distinguished work, and has been invited to exhibit and perform in many of the world's cultural institutions-including the Whitney Museum and the New Museum in NYC; the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington, DC; the London Museum of Natural History; the ICA, London; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; der Volksbüne, Berlin; ZKM, Karlsruhe; El Matadero, Madrid; Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Museo de Arte Carrilo Gil, Mexico City and many more.

The Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA) was founded in 1998 as an anonymous collective of engineers, designers, artists and activists united by the cause of individual and collective self-determination. Toward this end, the IAA has produced numerous projects under its flagship initiative, Contestational Robotics. These include several tele-operated robotic graffiti writers; I-See, which gained worldwide media attention as a web-based navigation service to help users avoid surveillance; and Terminal Air, an installation and website that visualizes the movements of airplanes believed to have been used in the CIA's "Extraordinary Rendition" program.
The IAA has won numerous awards for its work, including the 2000 Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction and several Prix Ars Electronica Honorable Mentions; and a Rhizome New Media Fellowship. The collective's work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, and public spaces internationally, including ZKM, Karlsruhe; the World Information Organization, Amsterdam; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona; the Australian Centre for the Moving Image; and Mass MoCA among others.

Strange Culture documents the surreal nightmare of internationally-acclaimed artist and professor Steve Kurtz which began 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. The film Strange Culture stars Tilda Swinton, Peter Coyote, Thomas Jay Ryan, Josh Kornbluth and Steve Kurtz, and was shown in the 2007 Berlin Film Festival.
Lynn Hershmann Leeson is a filmmaker and new media artist who has been awarded the Siemens-Medienkunstpreis award from the ZKM, Karlsruhe, as well as the Golden Nica Prize at the 1999 Ars Electronica.

(Press text as a .pdf)

If you have any questions or wish material about the exhibition, please contact Pamina Gerhardt (responsible for Press and Public Relations):
presse@artlaboratory-berlin.org

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( Press release from 9 August 2009)
ART LABORATORY BERLIN is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition Seized by Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) and the Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA) as the third part of our series Art and Law.

The exhibition Seized documents the FBI raid on the house of CAE member Prof. Steve Kurtz in May 2004, following the death of his wife Hope. In the weeks prior to the raid Steve and Hope Kurtz had been preparing for an exhibition examining GM agriculture at Mass. MOCA. An emergency worker of the fire department responding to Steve Kurtz's 911 call found materials in their house related to the upcoming exhibition suspicious and informed the FBI. The raid, conducted by FBI-officers wearing hazmat suits, and blocking off a half block radius of the home, caused much media attention.

Even though Hope Kurtz's death was found to be of natural causes and none of the materials found at the Kurtz residence were found to have any health threat whatsoever, the US Department of Justice sought to charge Steve Kurtz, first with "bioterrorism", and when that was unsuccessful, with 'Wire and Mail Fraud' for receiving harmless bacteria samples. After almost four years the charges were dismissed by Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara as being "insufficient on its face," meaning he found that no crime had been committed.

During the raid a number of items pertaining to the Mass MOCA exhibition, as well as other artworks, computers, books, archives and manuscripts were confiscated. The FBI also left behind a substantial amount of garbage - including over 30 empty pizza boxes, several hundred energy drink bottles, hazmat suits, respirator filters, unlabeled biological sample bags, a handwritten checklist culminating in the phrase "sign warrant" and a cigar butt. In the exhibition Seized/ Beschlagnahmt these traces of law enforcement have been combined with documentation of the raid and the court case that followed. In addition the show presents artworks and performances by CAE, including those being worked on by Steve and Hope Kurtz before the raid.

In connection with the exhibition, Art Laboratory Berlin in cooperation with Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art e.V. will screen the film Strange Culture (2007) by Lynn Hershmann Leeson on November 2 at the Arsenal Cinema, Berlin, followed by a panel discussion. The film documents the events of May 2004 and their aftermath.
(Press release from 9 August 2009 as .pdf)

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ART LABORATORY BERLIN was founded as a non-profit organisation in autumn 2006 by an international group of art historians and artists. As a noncommercial art space ART LABORATORY BERLIN was established as a platform for projects concentrating on the border between visual arts and related artistic and scholarly fields on an international level.

The main focus of interest is the exhibition and placement of contemporary visual art
that interacts with other creative fields, (former series have included "Art and Music", "Art and Text" and "Art and Science"). Each of these points of interaction are represented by a series of three or four diverse exhibitions. Our goal is to explore the manifold approaches of interaction and interconnection between these genres. ART LABORATORY BERLIN'S current exhibition series is "Art and Law".

ART LABORATORY BERLIN is also interested in supporting contact between artists and the
public as part of our exhibitions. To improve a better understanding of emerging and
experimental art, we include public discussions with artists and curators. Additionally our program includes lectures, film screenings and workshops.

The current co-directors of ART LABORATORY BERLIN are: Regine Rapp (art historian, curator) and Christian de Lutz (visual artist, curator) Responsible for press and Public relations is Pamina Gerhard (art historian).

For direct information please contact:
presse@artlaboratory-berlin.org