Wednesday Blog Watch - Bio Art or Bio Terror?

Yesterday, Boing Boing reported that bioterror charges against artist Steve Kurtz have finally been dropped. Four years ago, Kurtz, a University at Buffalo professor and a member of Critical Art Ensemble, was working on an educational biotechnology art project and was arrested after police, upon responding to Kurtz's wife's heart attack, found biological lab equipment and bacteria in his house.  Kurtz was initially investigated for bioterrorism but later indicted for mail and wire fraud.  Kurtz’s story is retold in graphic-novel format in Alphabet City's Suspect, with text by Timothy Stock, a PhD student and philosophy lecturer at the University of Toronto, and graphics by illustrator Warren Heise.  For more information about the growing phenomenon of Bio Art and its theory and practice, you might want to read Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond. Also, Kurtz's collective, Critical Art Ensemble, is one of the artists featured in The Interventionists.  In fact, Kurtz's incident occurred shortly after The Interventionist show opened at Mass MOCA.