Some of you out there may have been following the story of artist Steve Kurtz, founding member of Critical Art Ensemble and his case running for years with the FBI attempting to throw him in jail for twenty years for having cultures of the mold that grow in the grout of your shower. The FBI (yes, I am shaking my head in shame right now) radically overreacted after paramedics reporting seeing lab equipment at Kurtz's house after his wife's death of natural causes. Even though the cultures proved harmless quickly, the FBI doggedly pursued the case adding insult and indignity to what she have been a quiet family tragedy.
Why did the FBI pursue its case to the last possible moment, only turned away by a judge that said the the government's case was "insufficient on its face"? Some out there suspect it was to send a message to other artists, others think that the FBI acts like fascists often enough that why should we be surprised our rights were trampled on, I think that the FBI are just bureaucrats, that in a Kafkaesque turn, aren't able to get an accusation out of their system once the error has been introduced. Think Brasil.
Th court case came down a couple of weeks ago, and surprisingly, I only heard about by reading an old story in a British newspaper. Why have American newspapers and magazines not printing anything on Kurtz's case being thrown out? Curious, I remember this being such a huge scandal and everyone cursing and swearing support, and the case dragging along for years, seeing Kurtz occasionally, (he came to speak at the Getty about a year ago and hearing kvetch about the never ending case), and now it's over. I'm sure Kurtz just want to put this nightmare behind him, but you'd think that the victory might have garnered half as many headlines as the arrest.
Janet Malcolm writes in "The Journalist and the Murderer" about her own name being tainted by a false bit of reporting in the New York Times, and that though a retraction/correction was printed, everybody always remembers the initial accusation, no matter how groundless or false. Which is to say people only care if you're arrested not if it was under false charges?
In the end, whose to keep the FBI from doing this again? Attorney General Michael Mukasey, President Bush, Director of the FBI Robert S. Mueller, III, who's held his job since September 4, 2001. I'm not sure if it's this administrations regular bullying and freedom shredding that I find so troublesome, or that most of us have simply gotten used to it.
The Expanded Field is published by Andrew Berardini, a writer and sometimes editor from Los Angeles. He's written for Art Review, Artforum, Paper Monument,The Fillip Review, La Stampa, MOUSSE Italia, Afterall, and X-TRA, amongst others. He's taught at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and is currently editor for Check-In Architecture. He was the longtime Assistant Editor at Semiotext(e) Press, where he helped translate Jean Baudrillard's In The Shadow of the Silent Majority. He graduated from CalArts with an MFA in Writing from the School of Critical Studies. He can be contacted at andrew.berardini (at) gmail.com to perform at birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, and weddings.
