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Twisted Tale of Art, Death, DNAJune 4, 2004

By Mark Baard 

Steve Kurtz is an artist operating in an unusual medium. Rather than exploring ideas with brushes and paint, he uses bacteria and DNA to create works meant to spark debate about the safety and morality of genetic research.
But Kurtz's work and his beliefs are more radical than those of many of his peers. He has written proposals for releasing mutant flies into restaurants, and demonstrated methods for destroying genetically modified crops. And it is Kurtz's views, his supporters say, that have Kurtz on the wrong side of a federal investigation sparked by the death of his wife, Hope Kurtz.

It now appears that a judge and jury will ultimately decide whether and how artists will be allowed to work with the materials that scientists are trusted with daily inside biotech laboratories. The Department of Justice this week took steps toward charging Steven Kurtz with running an illegal biotech laboratory in the Kurtzes' home in Buffalo, New York.

FBI agents are trying to find any connections that may exist between the Kurtzes' radical agenda, their DNA lab and Hope's untimely, and unexplained, death last month.

Rescue workers from the Buffalo Fire Department responded on the morning of May 11 to a 911 call from the Kurtzes' home, where they found Hope Kurtz, whom a fellow artist and Kurtz family friend described as healthy and in her 40s, dead.

The rescue workers attending to Hope Kurtz were alarmed by the presence of petri dishes and lab equipment in the home, and called in local and federal hazmat teams, who quickly sealed off the residence and removed bacteria samples for testing by the New York State Department of Health in Albany.

The Erie County Medical Examiner's Office was unable to determine the exact cause of Hope Kurtz's death after an autopsy and toxicology tests, and ruled that she died of natural causes, said the family friend, Beatriz da Costa.

FBI agents between May 14 and May 17, acting on a sealed search warrant obtained by the U.S. Attorney's Office, searched the Kurtz home and removed petri dishes bearing bacteria, lab equipment, computers, disks, books and the couple's passports and birth certificates, said da Costa.
FBI agents last month also interviewed the chair of the art department at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York school where Steven Kurtz is an associate professor. The FBI agents asked Adele Henderson why the Kurtzes were operating a lab in their home, and not at the university.

"(The FBI agents) didn't seem to get it," said Henderson. "They're used to the science model, with scientists working in a lab with government funds. In an art department that's rarely the case. Things get down more in an entrepreneurial way."

And this week the FBI subpoenaed da Costa and two other artists connected to the Critical Art Ensemble, a group that Steven and Hope Kurtz collaborated with. Paul Vanouse and Steve Barnes are set to appear before a grand jury June 15.

The subpoenas cited Section 175 of the U.S. Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which prohibits the use of certain biological materials for anything other than a "prophylactic, protective, bona fide research, or other peaceful purpose."

Kurtz, reached at his home, referred all inquiries to his lawyer, Paul Cambria Jr.

Cambria said the FBI is overreacting to the discovery of Hope Kurtz's body and the Kurtzes' DNA laboratory "in a colossal way," because it does not understand art that uses bacteria and DNA as media.

The CAE presents its performance arts pieces as satire. But the group's electronic books, with introductions featuring quotes from the likes of Malcolm X ("By any means necessary," is one of the quotes), may have the federal government suspecting that artists connected to the ensemble harbor sinister motives.

One of the ensemble's e-books advocates releasing mutant organisms into the environment to disrupt the work of biotech firms. Another proposes secretly releasing mutated flies into restaurants.

The CAE says this tactic, which it calls "fuzzy biological sabotage," would encourage "those who never would join a movement (to) become unknowing cohorts or willing allies" in the struggle against the biotech industry.

The FBI has contacted an artist who has collaborated with the CAE, as well as the director of a gallery that has shown the group's work. The agents asked the gallery director whether she believed Steven Kurtz holds anti-American sentiments, according to an e-mail from the gallery director received by da Costa.

For their work in the CAE, the Kurtzes operated a home biotech lab with several strains of bacteria, chemicals and enzymes, a centrifuge and a PCR machine, the device scientists use to amplify genetic markers for visualization.

Scientists in biotech labs every day operate centrifuges and PCR machines in their attempts to create new, genetically modified and transgenic organisms for the global food supply, and genetic therapies for treating devastating diseases.

Tests of the suspect materials at the Kurtzes' home could only have found nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, Serratia and Bacillus globigii, according to Da Costa, who contributed to the CAE's GenTerra piece.

But local and federal authorities are reacting appropriately to the discovery of a suspect biological and chemical laboratory in the Kurtzes' home, said a law enforcement analyst with the University of Maine who helped formulate protocols for responding to bioterrorism attacks in Maine's urban areas.

"Unless you know what the heck you're doing," said Richard Mears, assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Maine at Augusta, "you can get hurt playing games with microbes."

Even harmless bacteria can become harmful under certain, but extremely rare, circumstances, said Richard Roberts, a leading DNA researcher.
"It's pretty unlikely," said Roberts, co-winner of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1993 for discovering the biological process that made gene-splicing technology possible. "It takes a lot more than a simple little gene to make something pathogenic. But you could teach these skills to a high-school student, and you could probably teach them to an artist."

Da Costa said that none of the Kurtzes' unusual artistic creations could have led to Hope's death. "Hope could have eaten all of the stuff the FBI found in that house," da Costa said, "and no harm would have come to her."

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