Steve Kurtz died in 2025. He was a founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble.
I conducted an interview with him in 2009 in Berlin, we repost the article below on his practice.
"In the Wedding neighbourhood there is one gallery I think outstanding among the others and that is
Art Laboratory Berlin. In one of my former posts I wrote about their exhibition in june 2009 with work of '
Ztohoven', a Czech art collective, which was already very interesting, because of its political intentions.
Art Laboratory Berlin seems to focus on what I prefer to call 'political art'; as one of the curators told me, they are working with themes and theme is now 'Art and Law'. The exhibition of work of
Steve Kurtz is the latest one in this serie.
Steve Kurtz is an artist and
professor of visual studies at the University at Buffalo in the USA. His '
Seized' is a documentation and installation based on his battle with the American justice department, that sued him for
bioterrorism. He was accused of keeping illegal biological samples. For this the prosecutors messed up his house to find 'evidence' to could lead to a 20-year imprisonment, according to new laws on terrorism in the USA. After a long legal battle Kurtz was
acquitted on all charges. The exhibition in Art laboratory Berlin is an installation based on these experiences, consisting out of video, sculpture, photography and text.
To understand the nature of the work, as the reader might not have visited the exhibition, it's necessary to know a bit more about the work of Steve Kurtz. I would describe his work as '
public interventions', using
performances in the
public space (which Kurtz denies to exist) to point out political issues. An important theme in his work is his analysis as Western society as being '
bunkerized', which means that there are institutions, public or '
pseudo public' as Kurtz calls it, where behaviour is strictly
disciplined and disguises itself as an open public space, but in reality is strongly managed.
Shopping malls are the clearest example of this, in the USA mostly privately owned, a phenomenon disseminating in '
Northern' societies (HK) (contemporary, industrialised, state-capitalist societies). But also the streets, squares and other public places are 'pseudo-public', as there is only space for a certain type of 'disciplined behaviour' (Kurtz doesn't refer to
Foucault, but there are similarities in themes). Kurtz gives an example of '
free city'
Amsterdam as a completely managed town, you are only welcome if you spend or do not disturb ' the
consumer spending process' and this is exactly what is the aim of Kurtz' and his fellow artists. Important for the performances is to 'stay within the realm of the law', while unveiling the hidden strategies of commercial and state institutions.
Photo:Tim Deussen
Kurtz uses the word '
militarization' of the public space to describe the social intervention of state or private 'watchdog' officials, like police or guards, as soon as their strategies to
colonize public space are threatened. "
If there is more investment, there is more police" is a statement of Kurtz. "Circulation should not be bothered", that's why street musicians (at least in the USA, not in Amsterdam!) are left alone, as long as they attract people and 'enhance the circulation' and for example an artist of Kurtz' collective is banned by the police because of
playing with model cars in a boulevard in Daytona Beach, USA.
An interesting example of a project Kurtz did was the one in Halifax, Canada: the '
Sorry project'. All spots in the town which where labeled with stickers to apologize for 'ugliness', like statues and certain buildings and all kind of 'various problems' bothering tourists. Kurtz describes it as a friendly action but still the harbour authorities where alarmed by '
gismo's ' and thought that it were '
suspicious objects'. They informed the police and the the police sealed off the whole area ("it's a bomb!"); this project was initiated just after the new
terrorism laws: Kurtz was in trouble, because of the 'suspicious gizmo's' placed by Kurtz and his companions; although harmless, it resulted in a '
little overreaction' of the local police. Many projects of the
Critical Art Ensemble, which Kurtz cofounded, end up in these kind of conflicts, that's why Kurtz is on some
black lists in the USA now.
The Art Laboratory Berlin shows
remnants of the project which bothered Kurtz the most: '
Seized'. The objects are resulting from a seizure of his house and belongings by the local authorities. Kurtz' wife had died and the local police found some suspicious biological samples that Kurtz had in his house for using in a project critically assessing biological research. Now Kurtz had been involved before in some projects concerned with re-enacting artistically '
biological warfare' programs from the sixties and he has earned a name as an artist in this realm; The police research resulted in Kurtz becoming a suspect of '
bio terrorism' and he had to fight for 4 years to prove his innocence. Being a
professor at the Department of Visual studies at the University at Buffalo, Kurtz was lucky to get legal and financial support from his university to win this case. Kurtz states that if someone would have been charged without this backing, this person would have been 'in big trouble'; Kurtz sees himself as having been an 'ideal example' in the tensed '
after 911' situation in the USA, so that the governmental institutions tried to show they 'were in control'.
The projects Kurtz does are describable as
political, interfering in a, according to Kurtz,
non-existent public space, which, as mentioned above, is
'bunkerized',
'militarized' and where
authorities structurally are breaking into civilian rights. Kurtz is annoyed by this situation and refuses to accept this. '
Nomadic intervention' is a self-chosen name for his actions; He is against the idea of
monumentality in public space, as this blocks certain public spaces. That's why his interventions are temporarily. No
artefacts are left, "people are left with the experiments".
Bunkers, on the contrary, are described as '
friendly authoritarian space',
shopping malls are another example of this. These bunkers are mostly objects of his interventions.
Photo: Tim Deussen
The exhibition is a residu of the actual actions-performances. Kurtz and his
Critical Art Ensemble are
politically motivated artists that work mainly outside the art institutions like musea and galleries though they exhibit there later on. Next to the actions they have published many
books (downloadable via their website) where they lay out their theories."
Hans Kuiper
Steve Kurtz exhibited in Art Laboratory Berlin, till 15/11/09.
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