Steven Kurtz: Crossing the Line
Dr. Steven Kurtz, professor of the Department of Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo. "Crossing the Line: Interdisciplinary Work in a Society of Fear."
This talk is presented as part of two evenings of events concerning civil liberties "Post 911," conjunction with a Rochester premiere screening of Lynn Hershman Leeson's award-acclaimed documentary Strange Culture. This film features Tilda Swinton (Chronicles of Narnia, Michael Clayton), Thomas Jay Ryan (Henry Fool, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Peter Coyote (E.T., Erin Brockovich), and chronicles the surreal nightmare of Dr. Kurtz's post-Patriot Act prosecution by the Department of Justice.
The screening is on Friday, January 25 at 8 p.m. at the Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman House. For more information about the film and screening, contact the Dryden Theatre at (585) 271-4090 or online at www.dryden.eastmanhouse.org.
The event is co sponsored by the Department of Political Science Harrott Constitutional fund, the Graduate Organizing Group (GOG), the Graduate Program in Visual & Cultural Studies, the Department of Art & Art History, the Film & Media Studies Program, the Department of Modern Languages & Cultures, Department of Anthropology; the Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman House; and endorsed by the Rochester Contemporary Art Center, and is endorsed by the Rochester Contemporary Art Center and UR Students for Social Justice.
The talk is free and open to the public. Refreshments and reception will follow.
Abstract:
Dr. Kurtz, founder of the internationally exhibited art and theater group Critical Art Ensemble, will explore the factors that make critical interventions within the intersections of art, science, and politics such treacherous undertakings. Using the work of Critical Art Ensemble as a grounding focus, he will examine issues such as the privatization of knowledge and the militarization of scientific and medical institutions, and will show that if these issues are used as framing devices for cultural interventionist projects, they beckon a broad variety of disciplinary agencies. Over the past two decades, Critical Art Ensemble has encountered nearly all of them. Police, FBI, Department of Justice prosecutors, corporate lawyers, politicians, church officials, and government bureaucrats have attacked, threatened, or denounced CAE for acting against the authoritarian tendencies of Western societies. This lecture chronicles the reasons why CAE's work has elicited such responses, and how the violence against cultural resistance has escalated and intensified over the past five years.
For more information about Critical Art Ensemble, visit www.critical-art.net/.