"When Taste Politics Meet Terror:

The Critical Art Ensemble on Trial"

Joan Hawkins, C Theory

"And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has
been created to teach us that first of all." — Antonin Artaud, "No More Masterpieces," 1938. [1]

Setting the Stage

In late September 2001, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus
Ohio, announced that the performances of ~Charlie Victor Romeo~
scheduled for September 26-30 had been cancelled. "We hope you'll
understand that this is not an appropriate time to present this
award-winning Off-Broadway show," the letter accompanying my refund
said. "We will continue to stay in contact with the Collective
Unconscious company who created and perform ~Charlie Victor Romeo~
regarding the potential for rescheduling CVR at the Wexner Center at
an appropriate time in the future."

~Charlie Victor Romeo~ is a documentary play, based on transcripts
taken from the black boxes of downed airplanes, the final
communication between air personnel and the tower. A serious and
sober look at the way people actually behave during a crisis, it won
the 2000 Drama Desk Awards for Best Unique Theatrical Experience and
Outstanding Sound Design, the 2000 New York Fringe Festival awards
for Excellence in Drama and Outstanding Sound Design, and the
Backstage West Garland Award for Best Sound Design. It was filmed by
the U.S. Air Force to be used as a training video for pilots and "has
been invited to be performed for groups of physicians and healthcare
administrators studying the effects of human error and emergencies in
a medical context" (www.charlievictorromeo.com). It also belongs to a
group of experimental dramas — the plays of Anna Devere Smith, ~The
Laramie Project~, etc — which have been mixing ethnography,
documentary (with the emphasis here on documents) and theater in
provocative and compelling ways. Theater which has learned and
borrowed from performance art, one could say.

In late September 2001, I was still badly shaken by the events of
9/11. I had cancelled my planned sabbatical trip to New York when the
apartment I had sublet was needed to house a writer-friend who'd been
evacuated from her flat, and nothing I heard from her about life in
the City in the immediate aftermath of tragedy bore any resemblance
to anything I was hearing on the mainstream news (with the exception
of "Democracy Now", U.S. news broadcasts were all about spin). Weary
of platitudes and patriotic cant, I was looking forward to seeing the
play, to hearing something real (in the street sense of that term)
and to feeling some connection with the New York art scene that had
been. I wanted to be challenged and I wanted to think, to be
addressed as an adult rather than as a slightly addled child. I was
disappointed when the play was cancelled. The box office staff member
who took my call was surprised at my reaction. "Most people have been
telling us they're happy we're rescheduling the show," she told me.
"When has it been rescheduled for?" I asked. "We don't know yet," she
said.

I've chosen to open this essay on the recent harassment of the
Critical Art Ensemble with this older story because it seems to me to
highlight some of the problems confronting the art world in this post
9/11, Patriot Act-hysterical, time. I understand some of the reasons
the Wexner felt it had to postpone the performance. The Wexner Center
for the Arts is small, and totally dependent on public funding and
the support of its patrons and members for survival. It certainly
cannot afford to bring a New York show to Columbus and play to a
near-empty house. And it probably can't really afford the loss of
community good will which such a move might entail.

But the cancellation also served to unmask the ambivalence with which
we (even those of us in the art world) regard truly provocative,
risk-taking art. ~Charlie Victor Romeo~ was rescheduled because of
its content, because it wasn't "an appropriate time" to present the
material.[2] As I indicated above, for me it was exactly the
appropriate time. And my initial reaction of disappointment remains
my final one. But I'm disappointed not only because I didn't get to
see the show when I wanted, but because the cancellation seemed to
trivialize (or at least to contain) the entire project of cutting-
edge art. By cancelling the performance, the Wexner effectively
communicated that provocative and radical theater can be mounted and
tolerated only when nothing serious is at stake. That to mount
provocative art — especially art which deals with disaster — when
something real IS at stake is somehow in bad taste. And that to raise
the question of the politics of taste — the fact that the whole
notion of bad taste is itself an ideologically inflected construct —
is also intolerable in the face of real crisis. This episode, then,
seemed to signal that art and theory both are reduced, in times of
crisis, "to an academic parlor game" — something we do when there's
nothing really on anyone's radar screen.[3] Something we do only when
it's "appropriate."

The question of the appropriate role and function of art post 9/11 is
one which has been framed largely in terms of taste. The removal of
Eric Fischl's commemorative sculpture, ~Tumbling Woman~, from
Rockefeller Center, the elimination of three choruses from John
Adams' opera ~The Death of Klinghoffer~ from a November 2001 Boston
Symphony program, and the quiet de-funding of work by performance
artist William Pope (he lost an NEA grant for a series of works on
racial and social injustice; the Andy Warhol Foundation magnanimously
stepped in and funded the exhibition) all were done in the name of
taste — the fear of offending the public in its still-sensitive,
post 9-11, traumatized state.

But as I have written elsewhere [4], questions of taste are never
ideologically neutral, and almost immediately the issue of taste in
post 9/11 cultural production began to overlap with heavy-handed
manifestations of political corporate and state power. Bill Maher's
television show, ~Politically Incorrect~, was taken off the air by
several ABC affiliates after Maher called the U.S violent response to
the 9/11 attacks "cowardly." John Lennon's song "Imagine" and all music
by Rage Against the Machine were placed on a "don't play" list by the
corporate giant Clear Channel. The woefully misnamed group "Students
for Academic Freedom" launched a number of websites, inviting
students to turn in professors who had made "anti-patriotic" remarks
in class and the U.S Legislature introduced a bill that would tie the
continued funding of area studies programs in American universities
(American Studies, Near Eastern Studies etc.) to governmental
"curriculum oversight." In the bill, renowned scholar Edward Said was
specifically named as the kind of thinker we have to guard against in
these troubled post 9/11 times. Finally, Steve Kurtz, founding member
of the Critical Art Ensemble, was arrested for bio-terrorism.The Case

On May 11, 2004 Steve Kurtz, a filmmaker, performance artist and
founding member of the Buffalo-based Critical Art Ensemble, phoned
911 after waking to find his wife, Hope Kurtz, unconscious in bed
beside him. Apparently, Ms. Kurtz had died in her sleep. But it was
not only her death that worried the emergency aid team that came in
response to Kurtz's call, but also the laboratory equipment and inert
biological compounds which Mr. Kurtz uses as part of his art work and
which he had stored in his home. The 911 team phoned the FBI (this is
where things get murky — because the group that actually came was
the Joint Terrorist Task Force). Steve Kurtz was arrested on
suspicion of bio-terrorism. Hope Kurtz's body was impounded (which
meant that it couldn't be released for a funeral). Kurtz's equipment,
computer, art supplies, books, films and biological material were
confiscated. The Joint Terrorist Task Force Agents also took Mr.
Kurtz's car, his house, and his cat.

Authorities searched Kurtz's home and tested the biological material
for two days, before declaring that there was no public health risk
in Kurtz's work and that no toxic material had been found. Kurtz was
allowed to return to his home on May 17, his car and cat were
released, and his wife's death was attributed to heart failure. But
while the case should have ended there, it was only beginning. In
June, Kurtz and other members of the Critical Art Ensemble were
brought before the Grand Jury and again investigated on the charge
of bio-terrorism. Again it was found that there was no evidence that
any members of the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) had been involved in
bio-terrorism. Nonetheless, their case was referred to a Federal
District Court and on July 8, 2004 the Federal District Court in
Buffalo charged the Defendants with four counts of mail and wire
fraud, charges connected with the purchase of the inert biological
material used in their installation work. Dr. Robert Ferrell,
Professor of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, the
researcher who helped the CAE procure the biological material, has
similarly been indicted. They were enjoined from performance,
travel, or even speaking about the case. In addition, Mr. Kurtz has
been subject to random visits from a probation officer and to
periodic drug tests.

On March 17, 2005, Steven Barnes, also a founding member of the CAE,
was served a subpoena to appear before a Federal Grand Jury in
Buffalo. According to the subpoena, the FBI is once again "seeking
charges under section 175 of the US Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism
Act of 1989 as expanded by the USA PATRIOT ACT — charges which a
previous Grand Jury appeared to reject when they handed down
indictments of mail and wire fraud last summer."[5]

Autonomedia, the
independent book company which publishes and distributes books
written by the Critical Art Ensemble, as well as books by theorists
like Foucault and Deleuze, has also been under investigation. Records
of mail orders, purchases, editorial reports and the press's
correspondence have all been subpoenaed.

Kurtz's hearing was originally set for January 11, 2005, and was
postponed to give the Defense an opportunity to review the
Prosecution's case. It was postponed a second time at the
Prosecution's request. As I mentioned earlier, Kurtz and Ferrell have
been charged with four counts of mail and wire fraud (US Criminal
Code Title 18; US Code Sections 1341 and 1343), which each carry a
maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Charges of mail and wire fraud are normally brought against those
defrauding others of money and property, like telemarketers who try
to sell unwitting consumers swamp land in Florida or Web scams
that try to persuade respondents to authorize fictive bank
transactions by giving them real bank account information. As the
Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) Defense website (www.caedefensefund.org)
points out, historically these laws have been used when the
government could not prove other criminal charges (Marcus Garvey, for
example, was indicted under similar charges).

It is clear from both the indictment and the statutes, however, that
what Ferrell and Kurtz did WAS, strictly speaking, a breach of
contract. Prof Ferrell identified himself as the "primary researcher"
to be using the compounds on the application form which he submitted
when purchasing the materials. And he signed a document acknowledging
that the material could be used in his laboratory only. Such breaches
of contract with a seller, however, are usually matters of civil
suits, not federal cases; and while they may involve a fine, there is
no risk of a lengthy prison term.

At the time of this writing, there is cause for cautious optimism. On
May 17, 2005 in Buffalo, Judge Kenneth Schroeder heard motions to
dismiss the federal charges against Kurtz. Defense Attorney Paul
Cambria argued that "a dangerous precedent would be set by 'exalting'
into a federal criminal case of wire and mail fraud what is at best a
minor civil contract issue — the purchase of the bacterium Serratia
marcescens by scientist Robert Ferrell for use by Kurtz in his
artwork. Judge Schroeder seemed to agree, asking Federal District
Attorney Wiliam Hochul whether an underage youth who uses the
internet to purchase alcohol across state lines, for example, should
be subject to federal wire fraud charges. 'Yes,' Hochul answered
after some hedging, and Schroeder chuckled. 'Wow, that really opens
up a Pandora's Box, wouldn't you say?' he asked.

Schroeder also asked Hochul whether there are any federal regulations
concerning Serratia. Hochul admitted that there aren't. ("The alleged
danger of Serratia forms the basis of the government's argument for
making this a federal case, rather that simply allowing the
bacterium's provider to pursue civil remedies"). In the course of the
hearing, Cambria further argued that "FBI intentionally misled a
judge into issuing the original search warrant. That judge was never
told of Kurtz's lengthy, credible and complete explanation of what
the seized bacterial substances were being used for, nor of the fact
that Kurtz tasted Serratia in front of an officer to prove it was
harmless. Also the judge was told of Kurtz's possession of a
photograph of an exploded car with Arabic writing beside it, but not
of the photograph's context: an invitation to an important museum art
show. The photograph, by artists the Atlas Group, was one of several
exhibited pieces pictured on the invitation."

As the CAE website is quick to point out, however, "the apparent
courtroom victory" for the Defense does not necessarily mean that
Judge Schroeder will grant any of the defense motions. And if he
does, it is likely that the Prosecution will appeal the case.
Whatever the outcome of the May 17 hearing, "it will not come
quickly: rulings in such hearings typically take two or three
months." In the meantime, Steven Barnes is still under indictment for
bio-terrorism, and the cost of the case is rising at a ruinous rate.
The defense so far has cost the Critical Art Ensemble $60,000.

(a href="http://www.caedefensefund.org/releases/051705_Release.html">here)

The Scientific Community has been alarmed by the case. Despite the
fact that scientists are enjoined, by the letter of law, from sending
compounds through the mail to other unauthorized labs, they do it on
a regular basis. "I am absolutely astonished," said Donald A.
Henderson, Dean Emeritus of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and
Public Health and resident scholar at the Center for Biosecurity at
the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "Based on what I have
read and understand, Professor Kurtz has been working with totally
innocuous organisms...to discuss something of the risks and threats
of biological weapons — more power to him as those of us in the
field are likewise concerned about their potential use and the threat
of bio-terrorism." Henderson noted that the organisms involved in the
case — Serratia marcescens and Bacillus atrophaeus do not appear on
lists of substances that could be used in biological terrorism.

Natalie Jeremijenko, a University of California San Diego Professor
of Design Engineering, noted that scientists ship material to each
other all the time. "I do it. My lab students do it. It's a basis of
academic collaboration. They're going to have to indict the entire
scientific community" (quoted at www.caedefensefund.org).

Some believe the entire case is a face-saving tactic of the FBI.
Others see the intent as a much more insidious attack on the art
world. "It's really going to have a chilling effect on the type of
work people are going to do in this arena and other arenas as well,"
noted Steven Halpern, a SUNY Buffalo law professor who specializes in
constitutional law. Clearly the Arts community agrees. Since June
2004, the art community has mounted public events in support of the
CAE Defense Fund. On April 17, 2005, the Paula Cooper Gallery in New
York hosted a benefit auction which attracted donations from some of
the biggest names in the contemporary art world — including Vito
Acconci, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, Martha Rossler, Sol LeWitt,
Kiki Smith, Chris Burden and many others. Even fairly conservative
organizations, like the College Art Association have come out in
favor of Kurtz in what appears to be a clear case of artistic and
academic freedom. CAA has been running updates about the case on its
website since May, 2004. And for awhile it provided links to the CAE
Defense Website.

The Critical Art Ensemble

The Critical Art Ensemble is a collective of 5 artists of various
specializations dedicated to exploring the intersections between art,
technology, radical politics and critical theory. Drawing on feminist
theory, as well as the theoretical writings of Hardt and Negri,
Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault, Adorno, Stuart Hall, and Walter
Benjamin, The Critical Art Ensemble has consistently seen its mission
as one of education and provocation. Seeking alternately to inform
audiences about the corporate influences that affect our lives and to
inspire people to what it calls "electronic disobedience," The CAE is
one of the latest practitioners of an avant-garde art tradition that
has extended from the early work of the Dadas and Surrealists to
contemporary performance art. They are also indebted in no small
measure to both the cinematic and political work of Jean-Luc Godard.

They formed in 1987; originally from Tallahassee, they soon moved
into the Eastern urban scene and became participants in a
fin-de-sicle cultural formation that elsewhere I have called
"Downtown art."[6] They have made films, done theater, produced
installations and written books. Along with other downtown artists
like Kathy Acker, Amos Poe, Patti Smith, David Wojnarowicz and
others, they share a commitment to formal and narrative
experimentation, a view of the human body as a site of social and
political struggle, an intense interest in radical identity politics,
and a mistrust of institutionalized mechanisms of wealth and power.
And while they have not participated in the taste-transgressive
productions that people like Nick Zedd favor (where art cinema meets
true in-your-face, gross-out aesthetics), they have consistently
challenged the normatization of middle class taste-culture and the
politics of affect which usually accompanies it.

Their earliest productions were what might be called "traditional"
avant-garde art. That is to say they were made for people with a
certain kind of cultural capital, who could easily get the references
and enjoy the joke. The film "Excremental Culture" (1988), for
example, references Duchamp's famous urinal, as well as Freud's
notion that feces frequently equal money in the neurotic imaginary.
"Godard Revisted" (1987) is a 5 minute pastiche of the Eve Democracy
segment in Godard's edgy 1968 film "Sympathy for the Devil" (a.k.a
"One Plus One"). "Speed and Violence" (1987) is a nod to the theory
of Paul Virilio and to the experimental collage film technique of
Bruce Conner.

In the 1990s, CAE's work took an interventionist turn. Following
Godard's famous dictum, elaborated in ~Tout va bien~ (1972),[7] they
moved away from making political art towards making art politically.
That is, they stopped making films which merely had overt political
content and started making cultural products which directly intervene
in the Spectacle. In one famous project, for example, they procured a
number of GameBoys, which they reprogrammed along more Reichian
lines. Here, the end goal for the player is to reach a brothel. She
receives information that will help her, as well as game points, by
running the numbers, selling crack and so on.[8] The CAE placed these
"improved" games, which they call "Super Kid Fighter" back on store
shelves in time for the Christmas shopping season. Similarly, they
built a series of contestational robots, which distribute pamphlets
on street corners, spray graffiti slogans, and perform other
political acts for which human agents are frequently arrested.[9] In
1994 they updated Debord's notion of the spectacle and elaborated a
plan for digital civil disobedience, a move which led participants at
the Terminal Futures conference in London to accuse them of
"terrorism."[10]

While CAE advocates denying corporate and political agencies access
to data and information (through hacking and online political
intervention), they have increasingly seen their mission as one of
increasing the public's access to data and information (information
which, they believe, the power structure would like to deny
consumer-citizens). In service of this educational mission, CAE's
recent installation work, computer websites, and theater pieces have
taken both their art and the very concept of "artistic production" in
radical directions. And this has provided something of a challenge to
the affect-ive politics usually embraced by cultural institutions
like museums and theaters. For one thing, members of the CAE don't
call themselves "artists," but rather "tactical media
practitioners."[11] And it's clear that they see their role more in
terms of political engagement than they do in terms of formal
experimentation.

If CAE has to pick a label, we prefer 'tactical media
practitioners.' However, in keeping with this tendency we use
labels in a tactical manner. If the situation is easier to
negotiate using the label 'artist,' then we will use it; if it's
better to use 'activist' or 'theorist' or 'cultural worker,'
then we will use those labels. Regardless of the label, our
activities stay the same...

The label that best taps the knowledge resources of the audience
is the one we try to choose. A lot of this problem has to do
with the social constructions of the roles of artist and
activist. For the most part, these roles are placed within a
specialized division of labor, where one role, segment or
territory is clearly separated from the other. We view ourselves
as hybrids in terms of role. To CAE, the categories of artist
and activist are not fixed, but liquid, and can be mixed into a
variety of becomings. To construct these categories as static is
a great drawback because it prevents those who use them from
being able to transform themselves to meet particularized
needs."[12]

The five principles of tactical media as outlined by the CAE are as
follows:

— specificity (deriving content and choosing media based on the
specific needs of a given audience within their everyday life —
so they're not wedded to a particular medium or approach)

— nomadicality ( a willingness to address any situation and to
move to any site)

— amateurism (a willingness to try anything, or negatively put, to
resist specialization — they take great pride in their roles as
'amateur scientists' for example)

— deterritorialization (an occupation of space that is predicated
upon its surrender, or anti-monumentalism — a way of
de-sacralizing space)

— and counterinduction (a recognition that all knowledge systems
have limits and internal contradictions, and that all knowledge
systems can have explanatory power in the right context [13])

Clearly these tactics put the CAE at odds with the traditional
politics of theaters and art museums, which generally rely on notions
of expertise, the sacralization of space, and the assurety that
certain forms of knowledge are appropriate to specific historic
situations (putting Surrealist techniques in historical context makes
them seem like a necessary response to an admittedly grim historical
situation, for example). They also, however, dictate a different
affect-ive relationship between viewer and cultural object than the
ones that museums routinely favor — and highly different notions of
both the viewer and the object itself.

If you've been to any large museum shows in the U.S. lately, you will
probably have encountered the study area that is usually spatially
situated at the end of the exhibit, just before the room where you're
invited to buy mugs, mousepads and notecards. Generally there is a
table or bench that has copies of the exhibit catalogue and other
books by and about the artists whose work you've just seen. There may
be some art history texts or a copy of Aperture magazine. In more
explicitly political shows, there may be books of political theory as
well. At a recent exhibit at the Smart Museum on the University of
Chicago campus, for example, I ran across Hardt and Negri's Empire,
Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, some works by Foucault and Derrida's
book on Marx in the study area — and people were indeed reading this
selection of continental political theory.

It is the geographic placement of the study area that interests me.
In most museum shows, it comes as I've said, at the end of the
exhibit. And while throughout the exhibit itself, there may be
placards or notes guiding you to read a work of art in a certain way,
or there may be historical contextualization provided, for the most
part the pure "aesthetic" experience of the work is privileged over
academic discourse, and over intellectualization of the art. In this
way, I would argue that museum culture — and to some degree
mainstream theater, as well — privileges affect and sets the
intellectual aspects of the work apart — in the study area, or in
notes included in your program or out in the lobby. I should say
here, though, that avant-garde theater and some experimental
exhibition culture does have a tradition of directly instructing the
audience.

What the CAE has done in its most recent installation work has been
to move the study area front and center, to make it an integral part
of the art exhibit itself. What you see when you enter a CAE exhibit
is something that looks like an open science classroom. There's art
on the walls, and video installations and digital displays, but there
are also computer terminals and science experiments set up for you to
do, and a group of artists dressed like lab assistants who are there
to help you.[14]

A major part of the CAE's current project is to demystify science,
"to provide a tactile relationship to the material" which goes beyond
reproduction. To that end, the artists guide you to do hands-on work
that will give you the tools you/ we/all of us need in order to
understand the political and social economy of science/technology in
our present age. Not only is the object itself different here —
since the CAE makes no distinction between the traditional art on the
wall of the exhibit and the science lesson you the viewer complete on
the computer terminal — but clearly the notion of audience is
radicalized. "Viewers" of a CAE exhibit are more like participants,
and in the sense that the finished "work" of art — the finished
product — is the sum of all the contributions viewers have made via
experiments and computer screens, they can be seen as co-producers as
well.

The use of biological compounds in these installations is key to
helping participants understand the risks and dangers of
biologically-engineered food, to cite the example of one show, or of
true bio-terrorism, the show they were preparing when Steve Kurtz was
arrested.[15] Here, participants really do perform chemistry
experiments, with the guidance of the CAE cultural workers. Mixing
materials and looking through microscopes, museum visitors can see
first-hand what happens when you mutate or "modify" certain cells,
can see first hand what the basic structure of that apple you've just
given your child actually resembles. In a sense this is "autopsy"
art. It depends — as Stan Brakhage's famously disturbing avant-garde
film of an autopsy does — on "the act of seeing with one's own eyes"
(the literal meaning of the term "autopsy"). But as in Brakhage's
film, the act of visual examination in CAE pieces encroaches
radically on what is normally considered the proper bounds of art and
of taste.

As I've hinted above, the CAE's engagement with the affect-ive
politics of space and product frequently tips over into the realm of
taste politics. Their play, "Flesh Machine", which is about eugenics,
opens with a biology lecture — delivered without irony — to the
audience. As Rebecca Schneider points out, "CAE finds the lecture to
be both the gentlest and most reliable entry into what quickly
becomes a more complexly challenging event." In the second act, the
audience becomes more involved — this is the lab part of the
production, where spectators participate in actual laboratory
processes and encounter various models of artificial reproduction.
For this section, CAE builds its own "cryolab" to house living human
tissue for potential cloning, so that audience members become
hands-on genetic engineers.[16] Also during Act 2, audience members
sit at monitors and take a standardized test to assess their
individual suitability to be further reproduced through donor DNA,
cytoplasm, and/or surrogacy. If they "pass" the test, they are given
a certificate of genetic merit. They can even donate cell samples and
tissue to lab technicians there at the site, if they wish their DNA
to be stored for some real (non-theatrical) eugenics project. "The
artists have been collecting photos of audience members who 'pass'
this standardized test, and they claim that the similarities among
those deemed fit for reproduction is astounding. By now they can
predict 'passes' just by looking at them: straight-looking white
white-collars, usually male."[17]

"After this hands-on cell-sharing experience, the audience
re-assembles as a group for the close of the performance. This final
section of "Flesh Machine" is intended to underscore the class
politics, economics, and logic of human commodification implicated in
eugenics," writes Rebecca Schneider in a passage which is worth
quoting at length.

At this point, CAE presents a frozen embryo to their audience —
an embryo that CAE inherited from a couple who no longer needed
their eggs. A live image of the embryo is projected through a
video beam onto a screen. The image has a clock marking the time
the embryo has until it is 'evicted' from its clinical cryotank.
If enough money is raised to pay the rent (approximately $60) on
the cryotank through the performance, the embryo will live. If
not, it will be 'terminated.'

Put another way, if no one buys the embryo, it dies.

CAE then takes donations from the audience. To date, every
performance has ended with the death-by-melting of the embryo.
This part of the performance, CAE claims, speaks for itself —
though on more than one occasion CAE has had to speak in the
wake of their actions. In Vienna, for instance, they found
themselves on national TV debating the ethical implications of
'embryo murder' with the Archbishop of Salzburg live via
satellite."[18]

What Schneider calls the "death-by-melting" of a live embryo as part
and parcel of a live theater performance clearly pushes the envelope
on the norms of good taste, even those that have already been
stretched by theatrical representations of similarly controversial
actions. And it is precisely because the CAE has been so
spectacularly willing to violate the norms of artistic good taste
that their work has been so controversial (this more than the
political content gets them into trouble with the art world).
Encroaching vigorously on low culture (not in a playful safe way, the
way someone like Jeff Koons encroaches on porn, but in a profoundly
disturbing way), the CAE's work is frequently criticized as not being
art at all.[19]

Final Acts

The title of this article is "When Taste Politics Meet Terror." I
have put the two terms "taste politics" and "terror" together, not in
order to suggest a causal link (implying that the CAE was
specifically targeted because of the radical content of their work,
as some commentators have claimed) — but I do believe that the
content of their work and their entire demystification project has
made them vulnerable to the law — particularly in these post 9/11
times.

As Stephanie Kane has argued, the current political regime of the U.S
depends on a certain illusory performance art of its own — a mimesis
of control, if you will — to gain legitimacy for its post 9/11
policies. Central to that performance of control is the demonstration
of containment. That is, people have to believe that biological
compounds can be policed, regulated and contained, that their
circulation can be controlled — if only we're vigilant enough and
give up enough of our civil liberties — in order for the system to
work. If organisms can travel outside the bounds that are policed,
then the metaphors that organize the discourse of bioterrorism and
public safety — at least in the U.S. — are challenged. (The links
to the control of other substances — like recreational drugs — are
interesting here — as I mentioned earlier, as part of his current
status, Steve Kurtz is subject to random drug tests, presumably
because he is a substance offender).

In that sense this case is more about the system than it is about the
people critiquing the system. The FBI didn't set out to bust the
Critical Art Ensemble, but once the compounds were found they weren't
able to drop the case. In the most blatant and simple way, what the
CAE has done through the very materiality of its art is challenge the
illusion of government control — "you can't control the commerce of
this stuff; through our art, we make it obvious you can't." As
Stephanie Kane has noted, this case is really about the battle for
and over the political unconscious of the U.S., and the ways in which
art can tap into (or at least temporarily intersect with) that
unconscious.

But there's more here that needs to be unpacked here. Progressives
have been arguing against the Bush Administration and fighting it
within a territorialized flow of logic. Our attention is continually
drawn to artifacts (the pictures from Abu Ghraib, the testimony of
human rights organizations, and in this case, the results of chemical
tests) and to outcomes/results (the pathetically tiny number of
actual terrorists caught) to prove the moral and political bankruptcy
of the current political machine. Oppositional political discourse —
in the States anyway — seems frozen in a concomitant territorialized
zone of disbelief. We don't understand how the Bush Administration
could start the Iraq war in the face of so much global opposition
(our attention drawn by even mainstream news broadcasts to the
marchers in London, in Paris, in Rome, in New York), we don't
understand why it continues to pursue a strategy that is financially
and politically (in the international arena anyway) ruinous, we don't
understand why it can't simply admit a mistake and let the CAE
continue their activities in peace.

But that's because we're not taking the nature of the political
machine as machine seriously. In her article "Reflection on the
Case," Claire Pentecost writes:

One can imagine that investigative agencies and U.S. attorneys
are under enormous economic pressure to produce results in the
"War Against Terror." To put it crudely, in the last three and a
half years, probably nothing has influenced promotions and
funding more.[20]

But she moves from this observation back into a territorialized
discourse which critiques the Administration's actions on the basis
of logical outcomes — the racist nature of the incarceration
process, the incompetence (in terms of procedures and convictions) of
the military and the police, the "shame of ... [the U.S. Justice
Dept's] waste."

If you've read much Deleuze and Guattari you probably see where I'm
going with this. Ironically I myself didn't until I read a news
article the other night. Journalist Ted Rall reported on the
terrifying case of 2 teenaged girls from Queens who have been
arrested — one for rebelling against parental authority and the
other for an essay she wrote as part of a school assignment.
According to reliable news sources, "'the FBI says both girls are an
imminent threat to the security of the United States based upon
evidence that they plan to become suicide bombers.'" The feds admit
that they have no hard evidence to back their suspicions. Nothing.
Just an essay written for a school assignment and parental claims
that one girl was defiant of authority. "'There are doubts about
these claims, and no evidence has been found that... a plot was in
the works,' one Bush administration official admitted to the New
York] Times. 'The arrests took place after authorities decided it
would be better to lock up the girls than wait and see if they
decided to become terrorists.'"

Rall writes that he himself defied his mother's authority when he was
a teenager and wrote school essays which betrayed his fascination
with "morbid, violent subjects." During the calmer days of his youth,
however, nothing much happened — a few quarrels with his mother, a
trip to the school principal's office. But for these girls the case
is much different. They are both facing possible deportation to
countries they have never seen (their parents are immigrants),
because "this is post-9/11 America and post 9/11 America is out of
its mind."[21]

Out of its mind. Crazy. Schizophrenia. Schizoanalysis. That was more
or less the thought chain that brought me back to Deleuze and
Guattari.

In terms of political analysis, we need to return to the notion of
desiring machines, to Deleuze and Guattari's idea of
deterritorialized flows of desire. Put in terms that some of my
political friends would find more congenial, we need to focus our
analytical attention more on processes than on products, but in such
a way that logic is not taken to be the defining feature of process
(so that if you show something doesn't make logical sense, you expect
that everyone will just say "oh all right then, release the prisoners
and bring the soldiers home"). One thing that the Vietnam war should
have taught us about political activism is that these policies are
not about logic. And they are not sold to the American people on the
basis of logic. Instead they belong to that economy of flows by which
political economy and libidinal economy are seen as inextricably
linked. That economy whereby "the rule of continually producing
production" (be it the production of terror or terrorists or
criminals) is the dominant mode.[22] This is production for its own
sake, production without a "logical" goal. That is what we're up
against under the current regime — the desiring machine of the
State, what Foucault might call "governmentality" — with a
particular schizo-twist.

This doesn't mean that no action is possible. At the conclusion of
his preface to Anti-Oedipus, Michel Foucault writes:

...if I were to make this great book into a manual or guide to
everyday life:

— Free political thought from all unitary and totalizing
paranoia

— Develop action, thought, and desires by proliferation,
juxtaposition, and disjunction, and not by subdivision and
pyramidal hierarchization.

— Withdraw allegiance from the old categories of the Negative...
which Western thought has so long held sacred as a form of
power...Prefer what is positive and multiple, difference over
uniformity, flow over unities, mobile arrangements over
systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but
nomadic.

— Do not think one has to be sad in order to be militant, even
though the thing one is fighting is abominable...

— Do not use thought to ground a political practice in Truth,
nor use political action to discredit, as mere speculation, a
line of thought. Use political practice as an intensifier of
thought, and analysis as a multiplier of the forms and domains
for the intervention of political action.

— Do not demand of politics that it restore the 'rights' of the
individual as philosophy has defined them. The individual is
the product of power. What is needed is to "de-individualize"
by means of multiplication and displacement, diverse
combinations. The group must not be the organic bond uniting
hierarchized individuals [as it is under the Oedipal
structure] but a constant generator of de-individualization

— Do not become enamored of power.[23]

What we need to begin doing under this set of guidelines is to turn
our analytical attention away from logic (especially as it relates to
social and political outcomes) and to begin thinking instead about
desire. We have to begin analyzing the function of desire, both
within our own political organizations and within the
State-controlled agencies whose legitimacy we question.

This is a much more radical project than the one that most political
organizations on the left are currently undertaking. And it is one
which will bring us closer to both the affective and political
projects of the Critical Art Ensemble — whose art can be read in
Deleuzian terms as a combination of artistic machine, revolutionary
machine, and analytical machine.

I began this article with an epigram. A quote by Artaud. Artaud —
who later in life went mad, went as far as he could go toward
dissolving his own sense of ego — is the schiz who here provides
the point of departure and the point of destination. In 1938, Artaud
called for a theatre that would be like the plague. Not a nice
theatre. Not a theatre that respects boundaries and limits. Not a
theatre that waits for the appropriate time to mount its dark myths.
A theatre, an art, that is truly radical and which can, therefore,
make a difference. He called such theater the theater of cruelty.
The current political regime of the U.S. sometimes calls it a
theater of terror.

Support the CAE

In very material terms, we need to try to help the CAE. Whatever
judicially happens to Steve Kurtz, Professor Ferrell and the members
of the CAE, they may never recover financially from this case (this
is true despite the incredible generosity shown by the art world).
The defense cost at the time of this writing is over $60,000. The
additional cost in cancelled appearances and lost work is staggering.
Even if the group is acquitted, it is highly unlikely that the kinds
of institutions who can afford to bear some of the costs of mounting
their shows (like Universities and grant-receiving public art
agencies) will be willing to book them and hence possibly come under
scrutiny themselves, unless we put pressure on them to do so. And in
material political terms, this is a place to start. In recent months
Kurtz and members of the CAE have begun making limited fundraising
appearances. If you are connected with an organization that might be
able to arrange a fundraiser or visit, log on to the CAE defense fund
website (www.caedefensefund.org), and when you are casting about for
something interesting to read, take a look at the Autonomedia
catalogue (www.autonomedia.org), and remember that this radically
theoretical press is itself still under threat.

Notes

An earlier version of this article was presented as part of the
"Politics of Affect/Politics of Terror" American Studies Series at
Indiana University, Bloomington, Feb. 17, 2005. A revised version was
presented at the annual meeting of Society for Cinema and Media
Studies, London,

March 31–April 3, 2005. I would like to thank Andrew Allred, Chris
Dumas, Skip Hawkins, Jonathan Haynes, Stephanie Kane, Lin Tian and
the students of my G604 class for their help and suggestions.

[1] Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double. Trans Mary Caroline
Richards. (New York: Grove Press, 1958) 79. Originally published in
French by Gallimard, 1938.

[2] "Charlie Victor Romeo" finally came to Columbus in 2002 (May
29–June 2).

[3] Joan Hawkins. "When Bad Girls Do French Theory," in Life in the
Wires: The CTheory Reader, Arthur & Marilouise Kroker, eds. Victoria
(Canada): NWP, 2004. p. 202.

[4] Joan Hawkins. Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific
Avant-garde, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press,
2000.

[5] See "Auction to Support Indicted Artist" (April 13,2005)
here Accessed April 13,2005.

[6] Joan Hawkins. "Dark, Disturbing, Intelligent, Provocative and
Quirky: Avant-Garde Cinema of the 1980s and 1990s," in Contemporary
American Independent Film, Christine Holmlund & Justin Wyatt, eds.
London and New York: Routledge, 2005.

[7] In "Tout va bien", a filmmaker played by Yves Montand, explains
the difference between making political films and making films
politically. Political films are films which have leftist content and
pretensions but are made within the system they mean to critique.
Making films politically is a more radical gesture, one which calls
traditional modes of production into question and which attempt to
intervene directly in the spectacle.

[8] For more information on this and for instructions for turning any
GameBoy into what CAE calls "Super Kid Fighter," see Critical Art
Ensemble, Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media, New
York: Autonomedia, 2001. p.144, 146.

[9] See Critical Art Ensemble, README:ASCII Culture and the Revenge
of Knowledge, New York: Autonomedia, 1999.

[10] Critical Art Ensemble. "Mythology of Terrorism on the Net."

[11] It is interesting to note that while the CAE still views itself
as a media group, they have received very little academic or critical
attention from media scholars. To date, the best and most complete
analysis of their work has appeared in drama journals. See
particularly Rebecca Scheider's articles in The Drama Review. The
Drama Review articles are archived here.

[12] Ryan Griffis. "Tandom Surfing the Third Wave," Lumpen #81. p.
2.

[13] Jon McKenzie and Rebecca Schneider. "Tactical Media
Practitioners," The Drama Review, Winter 2000, Vol 44, issue 4.

[14] For photos from the actual installations, go to
www.gene-sis.net/artists_cae.html
.

[15] The importance of this work can hardly be over-stated. As I was
working on this section of the essay, I took a break and went
upstairs. My husband was watching the "Democracy Now" news program,
and as my foot touched the top step I heard Amy Goodman announce that
Monsanto had tried to suppress a report which shows biological and
structural change and damage in chickens fed an exclusive diet of
genetically engineered corn. The chickens developed misshapen organs
and had irregularities in their blood. ("Democracy Now," May 23,
2005. www.democracynow.org)
.

[16] Rebecca Schneider. "Nomadmedia: On Critical Art Ensemble" The
Drama Review, Winter 2000, vol 44 issue 4, p. 2.

[17] Rebecca Schneider. "Nomadmedia: On Critical Art Ensemble" The
Drama Review, Winter 2000, vol 44 issue 4, p. 3.

[18] Rebecca Schneider. "Nomadmedia: On Critical Art Ensemble" The
Drama Review, Winter 2000, vol 44 issue 4, p. 3.

[19] One thing I've found both interesting and disturbing is that
while the CAE still uses media as an intrinsic part of its art and
advocates media activism, critical writing on the group has moved
outside the realm of media studies altogether. As far as I can tell,
independent filmmaker Gregg Bordowitz and I are the only media people
working on the group, even though many of my colleagues use CAE's
essays on documentary and the net in their classes. And neither
Bordowitz nor I are publishing our work on the CAE in the major film
and media publications. In fact when I submitted an essay to a film
and video journal, I was advised to send it to Performing Arts
Journal instead. Most of the critical and scholarly work on the CAE
has appeared in theory-forums like CTheory or performance journals
like The Drama Review.

[20] Claire Pentecost. "Reflections on the Case," 2005.
www.caedefensefund.org/reflections.html. p. 1.

[21] Ted Rall. "Teen Terrorists." The Progressive Populist, June 1,
2005.

[22] Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism
and Schizophrenia, Robert Hurley, Mark Seem & Helen R. Lane, trans.,
Preface Michel Foucault. Minneapolis and London: University of
Minnesota Press, 1983. p. 7.

[23] Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, op cit. p. xiv. italics mine.

Bibliography

Artaud, Antonin. 1958. The Theater and Its Double. Trans. Mary
Caroline Richards. New York: Grove Press. Originally published in
French by Gallimard, 1938.

Critical Art Ensemble. 1995. "Mythology of Terrorism on the Net"
(here.) Accessed March 26, 2005.

— 1999. README:ASCII Culture and the Revenge of Knowledge. New
York: Autonomedia.

— 2001. Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media. New
York: Autonomedia.

Debord, Guy. 1967. La societe du spectacle. Paris: Editions
Buchet-Chastel. English translation 1970, 1977. Society of the
Spectacle. Translation Black and Red Publishing. Detroit: Black and
Red.

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1983. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism
and Schizophrenia. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R.
Lane. Preface Michel Foucault. Minneapolis and London: University of
Minnesota Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1991. "Governmentality" in The Foucault Effect:
Studies in Governmentality. Eds. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and
Peter Miller. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 87–104.

Griffis, Ryan, 2001. "Tandom Surfing the Third Wave: Critical Art
Ensemble and Tactical Media Production." Lumpen #81. Archived
here. Accessed
8/12/04.

Hawkins, Joan. 2005. "Dark, Disturbing, Intelligent, Provocative and
Quirky: Avant-Garde Cinema of the 1980s and 1990s." Contemporary
American Independent Film, Eds. Christine Holmlund and Justin Wyatt.
London and New York: Routledge.

-- 2004. "When Bad Girls Do French Theory." Life in the Wires: The
CTheory Reader. Eds. Arthur and Marilouise Kroker. Victoria, Canada.
NWP Books. 192–206.

— 2000. Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific Avant-garde.
Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.

Kane, Stephanie. 2002. "Putting Public Health at the Center of
Homeland Defense: A Semiotic Analysis of Bioterrorism." Unpublished
ms. Presented at the annual meetings of the American Society of
Criminology in Chicago and the annual meetings of the American
Anthropological Association, New Orleans, November 2002.

McKenzie, Jon and Rebecca Schneider. 2000. "Tactical Media
Practitioners," The Drama Review; Winter 2000, Vol 44 issue 4 p.
136, 15 p. Archived at web20.epnet.com/citation.asp?tb=1&
ug=sid+67EFIBF%2D866752D41B5%2D. Accessed 8/122004.

Pentecost, Claire. 2005. "Reflections on the Case."
www.caedefesnefund.org/reflections.html. Accessed 5/18/05.

Rall, Ted. "Teen Terrorists." ~The Progressive Populist~ (June 1,
2005) 19.

Schneider, Rebecca. 2000. "Nomadmedia: On Critical Art Ensemble."
_The Drama Review_; Winter 2000, vol 44 issue 4, p 120, 12 p.
Archived here.
Accessed 8/12/2004.

The United States of America v. Steven Kurtz and Robert Ferrell. May
2004 Grand Jury Indictment 04-CR-155E. Found at the Critical Art
Ensemble Defense website. www.caedefensefund.org.

[Joan Hawkins is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Communication and Culture at Indiana University Bloomington. She is
the author of Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific
Avant-garde, (University of Minnesota Press, 2000) and is currently
working on a book on Todd Haynes.

She is a frequent contributor to CTheory.]