The Temporary Travel Office produces a variety of services relating to tourism and technology aimed at exploring the non-rational connections existing between public and private spaces. The Travel Office has operated in a variety of locations, including Missouri, Chicago, Southern California and Norway.
Is MySpace a Place?
Networked Performance pointed me toward an interview (download in PDF)with Networked Publics speaker Henry Jenkins and Networked Publics friend danah boyd about Myspace. The site, popular with teenagers, has become increasingly controversial as parents and the press raise concerns about the openness of information on the site and the vulnerability this supposedly poses to predators (Henry points out that only .1% of abductions are by strangers) and the behavior of teens towards each other (certainly nothing new, only now in persistent form). In another essay on Identity Production in Networked Culture, danah suggests that Myspace is popular not only because the technology makes new forms of interaction possible, but because older hang-outs such as the mall and the convenience store are prohibiting teens from congregating and roller rinks and burger joints are disappearing.
This begs the question, is Myspace media or is it space? Architecture theorists have long had this thorn in their side. "This will kill that," wrote Victor Hugo with respect to the book and the building. In the early 1990s, concern about a dwindling public culture and the character of late twentieth century urban space led us to investigate Jürgen Habermas's idea of the public sphere. But the public sphere, for Habermas is a forum, something that, for the most part, emerges in media and in the institutions of the state:
The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor. The medium of this political confrontation was peculiar and without historical precedent: people's ...
SWITCH: Issue 22
HI everyone. Just wanted to announce the new issue of SWITCH:
SWITCH : The online New Media Art Journal of the CADRE Laboratory for
New Media at San Jose State University
http://switch.sjsu.edu switch@cadre.sjsu.edu
SWITCH Journal is proud to announce the launch of Issue 22: A Special
Preview Edition to ISEA 2006/ ZeroOne San Jose.
As San Jose State University and the CADRE Laboratory are serving as
the academic host for the ZeroOne San Jose /ISEA 2006 Symposium,
SWITCH has dedicated itself to serving as an official media
correspondent of the Festival and Symposium. SWITCH has focused the
past three issues of publication prior to ZeroOne San Jose/ISEA2006
on publishing content reflecting on the themes of the symposium. Our
editorial staff has interviewed and reported on artists, theorists,
and practitioners interested in the intersections of Art & Technology
as related to the themes of ZeroOne San Jose/ ISEA 2006. While some
of those featured in SWITCH are part of the festival and symposium,
others provide a complimentary perspective.
Issue 22 focuses on the intersections of CADRE and ZeroOne San Jose/
ISEA 2006. Over the past year, students at the CADRE Laboratory for
New Media have been working intensely with artists on two different
residency projects for the festival – “Social Networking” with Antoni
Muntadas and the City as Interface Residency, “Karaoke Ice” with
Nancy Nowacek, Marina Zurkow & Katie Salen. Carlos Castellanos,
James Morgan, Aaron Siegel, all give us a sneak preview of their
projects which will be featured at the ISEA 2006 exhibition. Alumni
Sheila Malone introduces ex_XX:: post position, an exhibition
celebrating the 20th anniversary of the CADRE Institute that will run
as a parallel exhibition to ZeroOne San Jose/ ISEA 2006. LeE
Montgomery provides a preview of NPR (Neighborhood Public Radio)
presence at ...
Art & Mapping
The North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) has released a special issue of their journal, Cartographic Perspectives:
Art and Mapping
Issue 53, Winter 2006
Edited by Denis Wood and and John Krygier
Price: $25
The issue includes articles by kanarinka, Denis Wood, Dalia Varanka and John Krygier, and an extensive catalogue of map artists compiled by Denis Wood.
[-empyre-] Liquid Narrative for June 2006
Christina McPhee:
hi all, I am not sure we got this message out to Rhizome!
Please join our guests this month, Dene Grigar (US), Jim Barrett
(AU/SE), Lucio Santaella (BR), and Sergio Basbaum (BR) , with
moderator Marcus Bastos (BR), for a spirited discussion of "Liquid
Narratives" ----- digital media story telling with a dash, perhaps,
of 'aura' .
Here's the intro from Marcus:
The topic of June at the - empyre - mailing list will be Liquid Narratives. The concept of 'liquid narrative' is interesting in that it allows to think about the unfoldings of contemporary languages beyond tech achievements, by relating user controlled applications with formats such as the essay (as described by Adorno in "Der Essay als Form", The essay as a form) and procedures related to the figure of the narrator (as described by Benjamin in his writings about Nikolai Leskov). Both authors are accute critics of modern culture, but a lot of his ideas can be expanded towards contemporary culture. As a matter of fact, one of the main concerns in Benjamin's essay is a description of how the rise of modernism happens on account of an increasing nprivilege of information over knowledge, which is even more intense nowadays. To understand this proposal, it is important to remember how Benjamin distinguishes between an oral oriented knowledge, that results from 'an experience that goes from person to person' and is sometimes anonymous, from the information and authoritative oriented print culture. One of the aspects of this discussion is how contemporary networked culture rescues this 'person to person' dimension, given the distributed and non-authoritative procedures that technologies such as the GPS, mobile phones and others stimulate.state of the planet infographics
a small collection of beautiful information graphics documenting the current state of the planet.
see also gapminder & 3d data globe.
[seedmagazine.com]
Re: notes for a hypothetical essay onrelocating the aura
> Hi Ryan,
>
> We weren't bad or unrehearsed, we were just loud and perpetual.
> I'm thinking of one particular instance, a Voodoo Bar-B-Q reunion
> circa 1990. We hadn't played together in two years, and we were
> all back in town for Christmas. We played an hour-long version of
> "Sister Ray." After 15 minutes, the "audience" had adjourned to
> the neighbor room. We kept playing because we were celebrating
> existence. It was veritably transcendental.
hey curt - didn't mean to imply you would have been bad or
unrehearsed... i actually meant that you probably would have been
pretty good because of your statement (i don't take you to be the
solipsistic genius type i was disparaging ;) ). funny (getting back
to the origin of the discussion), benjamin once said in some lecture
that if a writer isn't teaching other writers, they're not writing
anything worthwhile (sorry for the horrible paraphrasing). i'm sure
the band, as a collective, was both a great audience and performer.
best,
ryan
Re: notes for a hypothetical essay onrelocating the aura
>
> That seems like a pretty open definition of "managerial," almost to
> the point of being tautological. You say the nature of the human
> relations may be positive, so may I infer from this that
> "managerial" is not always negative?
i'm with curt on this question...
>
> Playing in punk bands, we always hoped that our music would affect
> somebody, but we nevertheless continued to play even after everyone
> had stopped their ears and left the room. If the "art" of your art
> is dependent upon social engagement, and everyone leaves the room,
> then I guess you stop playing. Which does seem kind of contrived
> to me.
i don't know about the contrived arg though... affective sincerity
and the "doing it for you" attitude can be just as contrived and
delusional. now, don't get me wrong, i don't say this in a cynical
way to disavow sincerity and "doing it for yourself," but if you
happen to believe that communicating and dialogue, or even conflict,
are what you're into, then why would you keep playing after
everyone's gone. of course, it's better if you practice and actually
get some kind of enjoyment out of what you do.
but i wonder what Rob's response to Warren Sack's take on the
"managerial" criticism of conceptual art (via Buchloh)
http://hybrid.ucsc.edu/SocialComputingLab/publications.php
http://hybrid.ucsc.edu/SocialComputingLab/Publications/wsack-network-
aesthetics.doc
as i understood it, he's attaching a critical function to the
adoption of the bureaucratic (or managerial as you call it), since it
's being used in order to create "intimate bureaucracies." and his
crit also contains arguments against RA (as Bourriaud champions it)
since it's about denying conflict and difference. So, he arrives at
an "aesthetics of governance" in which not all relations are equal,
and can be evaluated aesthetically and politically (well, he uses
"ethics" but i have problems with "ethics" as a discourse).
But, as Sack suggests, the "managerial element" can be a chosen
stance of the artist, at least it can be acknowledged. while you may
argue that the nature of the relations doesn't matter, i think it can
equally be argued that it does.
best - ryan
Fwd: Chris Gilbert's resignation over Venezuelan Exhibition (5.21.06)
>
> more background on the exhibits discussed below are here
> http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibits/nowtime/index.html
> more soon
> d
>
>
> Chris Gilbert - statement on resigning 5/21/06
>
> I made the decision to resign as Matrix Curator on April 28, but my
> struggles with the BAM/PFA over the content and approach of the
> projects in the exhibition cycle "Now-Time Venezuela: Media Along the
> Path of the Bolivarian Process" go back quite a few months. In
> particular the museum administrators -- meaning the deputy directors
> and senior curator collaborating, of course, with the public
> relations and audience development staff -- have for some time been
> insisting that I take the idea of solidarity, revolutionary
> solidarity, out of the cycle. For some months, they have said they
> wanted "neutrality" and "balance" whereas I have always said that
> instead my approach is about commitment, support, and alignment -- in
> brief, taking sides with and promoting revolution.
>
> I have always successfully resisted the museum's attempts to
> interfere with the projects (and you will see that the ideas of
> alignment, support, and revolutionary solidarity are written all over
> the "Now-Time" projects part 1 & part 2 -- they are present in all
> the texts I have generated and as a consequence in almost all of the
> reviews). In the museum's most recent attempt to alter things, the
> one that precipitated my resignation, they proposed to remove the
> offending concept from the Now-Time Part 2 introductory text panel (a
> panel which had already gone to the printer). Their plan was to
> replace the phrase "in solidarity" with revolutionary Venezuela with
> a phrase like "concerning" revolutionary Venezuela -- or another
> phrase describing a relation that would not be explicitly one of
> solidarity.
>
> I threatened to resign and terminate the exhibition, since, first of
> all, revolutionary solidarity is what I believe in -- the essential
> concept in the "Now-Time" project cycle -- but secondly it is
> obviously unfair to invite participants such as Dario Azzellini and
> Oliver Ressler or groups such as Catia TVe to a project that has one
> character (revolutionary solidarity) and then change the rules of the
> game on them a few weeks before the show opens (so that they become
> mere objects of examination or investigation). At first, my threat to
> resign and terminate the show availed nothing. Then on April 28, I
> wrote a letter stating that I was in fact resigning and my last day
> of work would be two weeks from that day, which was May 12, two days
> before the "Now-Time Part 2: Revolutionary Television in Catia"
> opening. I assured them that the show could not go forward without
> me. In response to this decisive action -- and surely out of fear
> that the show which had already been published in the members
> magazine would not happen -- the institution restored my text panel
> to the way I had written it. Having won that battle, though at the
> price of losing my position, I decided to go forward with the show,
> my last one.
>
> One thing that should make evident how extreme and erratic the
> museum's actions were is that the very same sentence that was found
> offensive ("a project in solidarity with the revolutionary process in
> contemporary Venezuela") is the exact sentence that is used for the
> first Now-Time Venezuela exhibition text panel that still hangs in
> the Matrix gallery upstairs. That show is on view for one more week
> as I write.
>
> The details of all this are important though, of course, its general
> outlines, which play out the familiar patterns of class struggle, are
> of greater interest. The class interests represented by the museum,
> which are above all the interests of the bourgeoisie that funds it,
> have two (related) things to fear from a project like mine: (1) of
> course, revolutionary Venezuela is a symbolic threat to the US
> government and the capitalist class that benefits from that
> government's policies, just as Cuba is a symbolic threat, just as
> Nicaragua was, and just as is any country that tries to set its house
> in order in a way that is different from the ideas of Washington and
> London -- which is primarily to say Washington and London's
> insistence that there is no alternative to capitalism.
>
> I must emphasize that the threat is only symbolic; in the eyes of the
> US government and the US bourgeoisie, it sets a "bad" and dangerous
> example of disobedience for other countries to follow, but of course
> the idea that such examples represent a military threat to the US
> (would that it were the case) is simply laughable; (2) the second
> threat, which is probably the more operational one in the museum
> context, is that much of the community is in favor of the "Now-Time"
> projects -- the response to the first exhibition is enormous and the
> interest in the second is also very high. That response and interest
> exposes the fact that the museum, the bourgeois values it promotes
> via the institution of contemporary art (contemporary art of the past
> 30 years is really in most respects simply the cultural arm of
> upper-class power) are not really those of any class but its own.
> Importantly the museum and the bourgeoisie will always deny the role
> of class interests in this: they will always maintain that the kinds
> of cultural production they promote are more difficult, smarter, more
> sophisticated -- hence the lack of response to most contemporary art
> is, according to them, about differences in education and
> sophistication rather than class interest. That this kind of claim is
> obscurantist and absurd is something the present exhibitions make
> very clear: the work of Catia TVe, which is created by people in the
> popular (working-class) neighborhoods of Caracas, is far more
> sophisticated than what comes out of the contemporary art of the
> Global North. The same could be said for the ideas discussed by the
> Venezuelan factory workers in the Ressler and Azzellini film that is
> shown Now-Time Part 1. (Of course, it is not because these works and
> the thoughts in them are more sophisticated that we should attend to
> them; what I am saying is simply that it is clearly an evasion and
> false to dismiss anti-bourgeois cultural production -- work that
> aligns with the interests of working class people -- on grounds of
> its being unsophisticated.)
>
> To return to the museum: I believe that the enormous response to the
> "Now-Time" cycle -- there were 180 visitors to the March 26 panel
> discussion that opened "Now-Time" part 1 and if you google "Now-Time
> Venezuela" you get over 700 hits -- put the class interests that
> stand by and promote contemporary art in danger, exposed them a bit.
> I suppose some concern about this may have given a special edge to
> the museum's failed efforts to alter my projects.
>
> I think it is important to be clear about the facts that precipitated
> my resignation: that is, the struggle over the wording of the text
> panel, which fit into months of struggle over the question of
> solidarity and alignment with a revolutionary political agenda. That
> issue is discussed above. However, it is also important to understand
> the context. Again, it is too weak to say that museums, like
> universities, are deeply corrupt. They are. (And in my view the key
> points to discuss regarding this corruption are (1) the museum's
> claim to represent the public's interests when in fact serving
> upper-class interests and parading a carefully constructed surrogate
> image of the public; (2) the presence of intra-institutional press
> and marketing departments that really operate to hold a political
> line through various control techniques, only one of which is
> censorship; finally (3) the presence of development departments that,
> in mostly hidden ways, favor and flatter rich funders, giving the lie
> to even the sham notion of public responsibility that the museum
> parades). However, to describe museums and other cultural
> institutions as simply if deeply corrupt is, as I said, too weak in
> that it both holds out the promise of their reform and it ignores the
> larger imperialist structures that make their corruption an
> inevitable upshot and reflection of the exploitive political and
> social system of which they form a part. Such institutions will go on
> reflecting imperialist capitalist values, will celebrate private
> property and deny social solidarity, and will maintain a strict
> silence about the control of populations at home and the destruction
> of populations abroad in the name of profit, until that imperialist
> system is dismantled. Importantly, it will not be dismantled by
> cultural efforts alone: a successful reform of a cultural institution
> here or there would at best result in "islands" of sanity that would
> most likely operate in a negative way -- as imaginary and misleading
> "proof" that conditions are not as bad as they are.
>
> In fact, with conditions as they are, a different strategy is
> required: there should be disobedience at all levels; disruptions and
> explosions of the kind that I, together with a small group of allies
> inside the museum, have created are also useful on a symbolic level.
> However, the primary struggle and the only struggle that will result
> in a significant change would be one that works directly to transform
> the economic and political base. This would be a struggle aiming to
> bring down the US government and its imperialist system through
> highly organized efforts.
>
>
> We live in the midst of a fascist imperialism -- there is no other
> way to describe the system that the US has created and that exercises
> such control through terror over populations both inside and outside.
> History has shown that to make "deals" or "compromises" with fascism
> avails nothing. Instead a radical and daily intransigence is
> required. Fascism operates to destroy life. It installs and operates
> on the logic of the camp on all levels, including culture. In the
> face of that logic, which holds life as nothing, compromises and
> deals at best buy time for the aggressor and symbolic capital for the
> aggressor. One should have no illusions: until capitalism and
> imperialism are brought down, cultural institutions will go on being,
> in their primary role, lapdogs of a system that spreads misery and
> death to people everywhere on the planet. The fight to abolish that
> system completely and build one based on socialism must remain our
> exclusive and constant focus.
>
> Chris Gilbert
>
>
> --
> D a n i e l T u c k e r | PO Box 476971 | Chicago IL 60647 |
> tucker.daniel@gmail.com | 773.276.7041(h) 001.312.515.7364(c) |
> Skype/AIM: jumpplease6 | http://www.miscprojects.com/danieltucker/
"fertility tourism" and other recent news in the world of genetics...
yougenics.net/atom.xml and http://www.yougenics.net
Global Coalition Sounds Alarm on Synthetic Biology
In the last few years, synthetic biologists, by re-writing the
genetic code of DNA, have demonstrated the ability to build new
viruses and are now developing artificial life forms. In October last
year, synthetic biologists at the US Center for Disease Control re-
created the 1918 Spanish flu virus that killed between 50-100 million
people (2) and last month scientists at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison created a new version of E. coli bacteria (3). Meanwhile,
genomics mogul Craig Venter, whose former company, Celera, led the
commercial race to sequence the human genome, now heads a new
company, Synthetic Genomics (4), that aims to commercialize
artificial microbes for use in energy, agriculture and climate change
remediation. It is one of around 40 synthetic biology companies
undertaking gene synthesis and/or building artificial DNA.
"Biotech has already ignited worldwide protests, but synthetic
biology is like genetic engineering on steroids," says Dr. Doreen
Stabinsky of Greenpeace International. "Tinkering with living
organisms that could be released in the environment poses a grave
biosafety threat to people and the planet," adds Stabinsky.
In October 2004, an editorial in the journal Nature warned, "If
biologists are indeed on the threshold of synthesizing new life
forms, the scope for abuse or inadvertent disaster could be huge."
The editorial suggested that there may be a need for an "Asilomar-
type" conference on synthetic biology - a reference to an historic
meeting in 1975 where scientists met to discuss biosafety risks
associated with genetic engineering and opted for self-governance
which ultimately pre-empted and avoided government regulation.
Following the Asilomar model the "Synthetic Biology Community"
intends to use their second conference (Synthetic Biology 2.0, 20-22
May 2006) to adopt a code of self-governance for handling the
biosafety risks.
http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsidV2
Open Biometrics
Open Biometrics is a project by Marc Bohlen that began in 2002, but
I'm just now finding out about it... from the website: "The Open
Biometrics Initiative challenges hard and fast classification of
biometric data. Numerous government and private agencies are working
towards large-scale biometric identification systems. Visitors to the
United States are now routinely finger-scanned at border crossings.
In the near future, no official government document will be issued
without a fingerprint or an eye-scan. But are you really who they
think you are? The Open Biometrics Initiative cracks open the clean
fabrication of automated biometric identification at its root. The
machine calculates and prints characteristic points together with
their coordinates, type code (ridge ending or bifurcation) and color-
coded likelihood as a probabilistic IDcard for your reference."
http://www.realtechsupport.org/repository/biometrics.html
Gene bank crisis
A couple of recent articles in the New Scientist discuss the crisis
of gene banks for specific crops, like bananas and corn. While corn
has long been in the spotlight in genetic discussions, the threat to
the global banana supply has been much more under the radar.
According to this article, the common banana is of the Cavendish
variety, originating in India. Due to a pandemic of a banana killing
fungus, the destruction of the Indian habitat of wild varieties and
the fact that these bananas have to be bred from cuttings since their
seedless, bananas are under threat.
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19025513.700-a-future-
with-no-bananas.html
Fertility Tourism
A recent opinion article in the Guardian discusses fertility
treatments, and their "advancement" that is promising the ability to
buy characteristics, ala GATTACA sci-fi narratives. Most interesting
is the term "fertility tourism" which I've never heard before. The
author credits "the media" for inventing the term, which is a kind of
parallel to the more common phrase "designer babies." But, and
perhaps more accurately, as the author suggests, "genetic
imperialism" is a more needed addition to our vocabulary - as
"western women turn to Spanish, Italian and Cypriot fertility
clinics, the source of the donor eggs they are using is increasingly
likely to be poor white Eastern Europeans."
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/madeleine_bunting/2006/05/
post_90.html
Genetically engineered seed liability bill vetoed in Vermont
Gov. James Douglas on Monday vetoed a bill that would have made seed
manufacturers liable for damages caused by genetically engineered
seeds that drift into the fields of farms that do not want to use them.
http://www.checkbiotech.org/root/index.cfm?
fuseaction=news&doc_id786&start=1&control1&page_start=1&page_nr
1&pg=1
CAE Launches Marching Plague, May 21
Critical Art Ensemble present their latest book, Marching Plague:
Germ Warfare and Global Public Health published by Autonomedia and
coinciding with the inclusion of their film "Marching Plague" in the
2006 Whitney Biennial. This event is open to the public free of
charge and will take place at Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st Street between
10th & 11th Aves.
The evening will include brief presentations by artists Gregg
Bordowitz and Paul Chan and CAE Defense Fund representative Lucia
Sommer.
Films from Peggy Ahwesh, Lynn Hershman and the Yes Men, along with
the Critcal Art Ensemble's film "Marching Plague", produced/
commissioned by Arts Catalyst, will be screened on monitors
throughout the evening.
ETC Group: WCC Demands Action to Stop Terminator Seeds
The General Secretary of the World Council of Churches today issued
a strong condemnation of Terminator seeds and called on churches
and ecumenical partners to take action to stop the technology. The
Rev. Dr. Samuel Kobia warned that sterile seed technology would
increase economic injustice all over the world.
World Council Of Churches Take Action to Stop Terminator Seeds
Demands WCC General Secretary</p><p class="mobile-post">The general
secretary of the World Council of Churches, Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia,
called upon churches and ecumenical partners to take action to stop
"terminator technology". "Applying technology to design sterile
seeds turns life, which is a gift from God, into a commodity.
Preventing farmers from re-planting saved seed will increase
economic injustice all over the world and add to the burdens of
those already living in hardship," stated Kobia.
ttp://www.oikoumene.org/en/news/news-management/all-news-english/
display-single-english-news/article/1634/take-action-to-stop-termi.html
Fwd: TRIAL, AND BOOK LAUNCH, OF INDICTED ARTIST MOVE FORWARD
> TRIAL, AND BOOK LAUNCH, OF INDICTED ARTIST MOVE FORWARD
> By CAROLYN THOMPSON, Associated Press
> Last updated: 4:37 p.m., Thursday, May 18, 2006
>
> BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Preparations for the trial of an
> artist whose home laboratory and books on biological
> agents drew the suspicion of police investigating the
> death of his wife continued Thursday just as the book
> and project the artist had been researching were being
> launched.
> Advertisement
>
> At issue in U.S. District Court is Steven Kurtz's
> effort to have any statements he made to police kept
> out of his upcoming trial on mail and wire fraud
> charges targeting the way he obtained bacteria for his
> unconventional artwork.
> In New York City, meanwhile, a companion film to
> Kurtz's book on germ warfare was on view in the
> Whitney Museum Biennial. The book "Marching Plague:
> Germ Warfare and Global Public Health," was published
> in April.
> Kurtz, along with University of Pittsburgh geneticist
> Robert Ferrell, were charged in 2004 with misusing
> Ferrell's account with a biological supply company to
> order bacteria for Kurtz. The University at Buffalo
> art professor is a founding member of Critical Art
> Ensemble, whose work sometimes challenges government
> policy and has touched on issues such as cloning and
> genetically altered food.
> Kurtz supporters say the criminal case is the
> government's attempt to silence artists like Kurtz, a
> claim prosecutors deny.
> The case began when Kurtz dialed 911 in May 2004 after
> finding his wife, Hope, dead of natural causes in
> their bed.
> While in Kurtz's home, police officers grew suspicious
> after seeing books related to biological weapons and
> laboratory equipment, including petri dishes with
> bacteria. The Joint Terrorism Task Force was summoned.
> Kurtz was later indicted on mail and wire fraud
> charges unrelated to terrorism.
> He declined to comment after Thursday's hearing, where
> he was represented by attorney Paul Cambria. Cambria's
> high-profile clients have included publisher Larry
> Flynt and the musicians Marilyn Manson and DMX.
> Supporters said that among items seized from Kurtz's
> home was a first draft of the Critical Art Ensemble
> germ warfare book, which questions the practice of
> channeling public resources into programs to counter
> bioterrorist attacks it says are unlikely to occur.
> A Web site that raises money for Kurtz's legal defense
> promotes "Marching Plague" as "the book and film the
> FBI tried to stop."
> "This is about intimidating people who are critical of
> the current administration," Lucia Sommer of the
> Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund said of the
> criminal case against Kurtz.
> Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hochul responded that
> the case had nothing to do with the book, noting the
> indictment against Kurtz and Ferrell was returned by a
> grand jury.
> "This case involves illegally obtaining two biological
> organisms by fraud and has nothing to do with books or
> any other expression," Hochul said.
> ------
> On the Net:
> Critical Art Ensemble: http://www.critical-art.net
> Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund:
> http://www.caedefensefund.org