JUDGE DISMISSES MAIL FRAUD CASE AGAINST BIO-ARTIST KURTZ

JUDGE DISMISSES MAIL FRAUD CASE AGAINST BIO-ARTIST KURTZ

Buffalo, NY—A process that has taken nearly four years may be coming
to an end. On Monday, April 21, Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara ruled
to dismiss the indictment against University at Buffalo Professor of
Visual Studies Dr. Steven Kurtz.

In June 2004, Professor Kurtz was charged with two counts of mail
fraud and two counts of wire fraud stemming from an exchange of $256
worth of harmless bacteria with Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Human
Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public
Health.

Dr. Kurtz planned to use the bacteria in an educational art exhibit
about biotechnology with his award-winning art and theater collective,
Critical Art Ensemble.

Professor Kurtz' lawyer, Paul Cambria, said that his client was
"pleased and relieved that this ordeal may be coming to an end."

The prosecution has the right to appeal this dismissal. How the
prosecution will proceed is unknown at this time. If an appeal were
undertaken the case would move to the New York Second Circuit Court of
Appeals in New York City.

Lucia Sommer, Coordinator of the CAE Defense Fund, which raises funds
for Kurtz' legal defense, said, "We are all grateful that after
reviewing this case, Judge Arcara took appropriate action." She added
that "this decision is further testament to our original statements
that Dr. Kurtz is completely innocent and never should have been
charged in the first place."

BACKGROUND ON DR. STEVEN KURTZ AND CRITICAL ART ENSEMBLE

Critical Art Ensemble (which Kurtz co-founded in 1987 with Steven
Barnes) has won numerous awards for its bio-art, including the
prestigious 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation Wynn Kramarsky Freedom
of Artistic Expression Grant, honoring more than two decades of
distinguished work. The group has been commissioned to exhibit and
perform in many of the world's cultural institutions—including the
London Museum of Natural History; The ICA, London; the Whitney Museum
and the New Museum in NYC; the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington,
DC; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de
Paris; der Volksbüne, Berlin; ZKM, Karlsruhe; El Matadero, Madrid;
Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Museo de Arte Carrilo Gil,
Mexico City and many more.

For more information about the case, please visit: caedefensefund.org

Jess and tash move in.

Glass performance move into swg3. Hooray.

Overidentification and/or Bust? - discussion with Stevphen Shukaitis on 'Cultural Activism Today: The Art of Over-Identification'

Overidentification and/or Bust?

Public discussion with Stevphen Shukaitis on issues raised by the publication:

Cultural Activism Today - The Art of Over-Identification

1-3pm, Sunday 18th May 2008 -- all welcome

Uisge Beatha

232 Woodlands Road

Glasgow G3 6ND

U - Kelvin Bridge

If, as claimed within the autonomist tradition, capitalism derives its lifeblood from attempts to negate it, where does this leave the position of the subversive artist? Of the aesthetics of resistance? At a point where the distance between the legacy of the modernist avant-garde and the advertising industry grow ever slimmer, or disappear completely, how is it possible to assert an aesthetic or cultural practice that is not immediately utilized against itself by capitalism and the state?

Over the past several decades there have been attempts found upon drawing out the submerged ideological and political content within artistic and cultural works as they act against their stated goals. This 'strategy of overidentification' has been developed, starting within the realm of psychoanalytic theory, and then forged into tools for political intervention by collectives such as Neue Sloweinsche Kunst and the Yes Men, both to counter the concentrated spectacle of state capitalism as well as the diffuse horror of neoliberal governance.

In other words, rather than attempting to create critical, distanced, interventions, to affirm the closure and horror of the current situation of power and exploitation by pushing it to its most extreme position, and to unmask the ways in which such ideologies operate upon and through disguised levels of pleasure. Instead of succumbing to society's demand for small creative acts, artists should over-identify with the ruling, post-historical order and take the latter's immanent laws to their most extreme, dystopian consequences...

Join us for a meander through the  'Creative' think-wonkery of structural maladjustment, from the urban deployment of the Rebel Clown Army to the perverse counter-play of The Yes Men, and beyond...

'Cultural Activism Today - The Art of Over-Identification'

BAVO / Gideon Boie, Matthias Pauwels [eds]

ISBN 978-90-5973-061-8

http://www.episode-publishers.nl/art/activism.htm

Stevphen Shukaitis is an activist and research fellow / PhD student at the University of London, Queen Mary. He is the co-author/editor of 'Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization' (2007) AKPress. He is a member of Ever Reviled Records, the Autonomedia Editorial Collective, and the Planetary Alternatives Network. He seeks to develop non-vanguardist forms of social research as part of the global conspiracy against capitalism.

http://stevphen.mahost.org

http://www.zcommunications.org

http://www.constituentimagination.net

For further information, please see: http://www.variant.org.uk/events.html

Event developed in partnership with Gordon Asher, Shuffle and RIB

NEXT Radical Independent Book-fair project

Saturday 17th May 2008

The Pearce Institute, 840-860 Govan Road, Glasgow G51 3UU

http://www.ribproject.org 

http://www.citystrolls.com

Armando Iannucci - Boris's barnet for bad boys

After a court ruling, I have been ordered to publish my expenses. My expenses for last week are:

1) Hawk: £145.37

2) Hawk training: £650

3) Three Jersey cows as hawk-prey: £3,200

4) Purchase of balloons with face of Jersey cow on them: £23

5) Taxi to BBC TV studios for recording of I'd Do Anything: £17.54

6) Waiting time and return journey of taxi, while I go into BBC TV Centre and hold three balloons with cow heads on them near Andrew Lloyd Webber's face and then release hawk: £219.43 but worth every penny.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/06/boris/

looking for artists (submission call) /west-coast Anti-War survey/ late-nite parking-lot event

in the middle of the whirlwind
**-**-----*****---*****---*--***

Artist Submission Call

Team Colors is coordinating a new Journal Press Project,
a web and poster-based one-off issue meant as a textual intervention
into this summers' DNC/RNC.

on the project
http://www.joaap.org/projects/whirlwind.htm

on team colors
http://www.warmachines.info/

For their project, we are looking for art to round out the project
(this is an amazing project)

---------------il contenti

1. Artists! in the middle of a whirlwind call
2. writers for the middle of a whirlwind (more project info)
3. westcoast anti-war survey
4. parking lot fun

---------------

1. Artists! in the middle of a whirlwind call
(see more info here.... http://www.scribd.com/full/2400308?

access_key=key-1wkf1rk4zvzqo0o75s4b

in the middle of a whirlwind (Whirlwinds) looks at current organizing
efforts in the US, and through that process, assembles a strategic
analysis of current political composition as a tool for building
political power.

Whirlwinds' strategic context is this summer's RNC and DNC protests;
through these documents and the discussions that erupt from them we
hope to directly impact the anti-Convention organizing. In a larger
sense, and in the long-term, Whirlwinds is intended to provide a set
of useful documents for contemporary radical organizing. Each essay
and interview addresses the issues of movement, working class power
and composition, and/or gives strategic insight into organizing, and
the strengths and weaknesses of current movement/s in the U.S.

Note: Conceptual, web friendly projects (photos, audio, video,
websites) work best with this project.
Note: Additionally, agit-prop documentations also may work well.
Note: Community-based projects also work.

what we are looking for then:
• Materials that focus on current political movements and struggles
addressed by the contributors to Whirlwinds.

• Materials that are produced by or in partnership with community
based organizations, social spaces, and radical groups that further
and amplify their activities.

• Materials that document and explore the state of art and artists
own lives under contemporary conditions; the state of the radical art
community; building community support for interventionist art
projects; developing projects that support artists and a diy ethic,
and simultaneously challenge the museum, gallery, and foundation
hierarchy.

• Interventions into and explorations of the conditions of everyday
life, work, social relations, and daily life patterns in the United
States; as a form of struggle, resistance, and exodus against the
attempts and impositions by capital and the state-apparatus.

Those interested in contributing should contact:
whirlwinds(at)inthemiddleofawhirlwind.info, teamcolors(at)
warmachines.info and/or editors(at)joaap.org

---------------
2. writers for the middle of a whirlwind (more project info)

for more info, go to
http://www.scribd.com/full/2400308?access_key=key-1wkf1rk4zvzqo0o75s4b

confirmed writers for the project include:

Jen Angel | Bay Area Radical Health Collective
Bluestockings Books, Café and Activist Center (NYC; written by Malav
Kanuga) | George Caffentzis
Chris Carlsson | Maribel Casas-Cortest & Sebastion Cobarrubias
(Counter Cartographies Collective)
Centro de Jornaleros de Freeport (Long Island) | Emma Cosse
(Precarity Map Europe)
Crimethinc | Direct Action to Stop the War (San Francisco)
Domestic Workers United & Right to the City Alliance in dialog
(facilitated by Harmony Goldberg) | Family Farm Defenders
Silvia Federici | Michael Hardt
The Icarus Project | IWW Starbucks Workers Union
Just Seeds | El Kilombo Intergaláctico (Durham, NC)
Latino Health Outreach Project (New Orleans; written by Jennifer
Whitney) | Peter Linebaugh
Daniel McGowan | Philly Stands Up (written by Esteban Kelly)
Restorative Justice Community Action (Minneapolis; written by Stevie
Peace) | Gigi Roggero (Edu-Factory)
Maggie Schmitt (Precarias a la Dervia) | Ben Shepard
Basav Sen | smartMeme
Brian Tokar | Dan Tucker (AREA Chicago)
US Federation of Workers Cooperatives | United States Social Forum
(Documentation Committee; written by Marina Karides) Interviews with:
Ashanti Alston and various anti-RNC/DNC organizers & groups.

------------------------

3. westcoast anti-war survey

For our upcoming issue (#6), we are still looking for (american west
coast) people to participate in our: ANTIWAR SURVEY AND ANALYSIS

We are seeking a range of respondents for a survey of the West Coast
(CA, OR, WA) that examines individuals and collective's active
responses to the "Global War on Terror". By providing space for
people to present and reflect upon what they have done, we hope to
help envision tomorrow's resistance today. If you have initiated or
participated in an activity generated in response to this, our
current predicament, please write to the JOAAP for the survey form.
What are you up to in Weed? How are you smashing the war machine in
Seattle? What kind of blockading is happening in Bend? Sitting-in in
Santa Barbara? Arguing for anti-war art in Aptos? Dropping out in
Drain? If you wish to participate (and please do) in this open-survey
please contact us immediately and we'll send you a list of questions.
We are also seeking short pieces that provide an analysis of current
forms of anti-war activism

contact editors(at)joaap.org
for more info.

------------------------
4. parking lot performance

On April 20th at 9.45 pm, in collaboration with Routes and Methods,
we are planning an LA release party for An Atlas for Radical
Cartography (Lex Bhagat and Lize Mogel editors) and as a final event
for Issue #5 (released last year, designed by Jessica Fleischmann).

Mark your calendars, get hungry for a good Alvarado Street taco, and
stay tuned for further details.

ps. an atlas and issue 5 are still available for purchase
http://www.joaap.org/press.htm

pps. check out Routes and Methods here
http://routesandmethods.org/

ppps. we mean Alvarado Street in LA

Everyone's at it! - talk by Jeremy Valentine - Thurs 17 April, STUC, Glasgow

Everyone's at it!

The Rentier Economy & the Morality of the Cultural Industries

A talk by Jeremy Valentine

(from Media, Communication & Sociology; QMU, Edinburgh)

Thurs 17 April, 6pm - all welcome 

Venue:

STUC (Scottish Trades Union Congress)

333 Woodlands Road

Glasgow G3 6NG

Written in the spirit, but not the style, of Mandeville's 'The Fable of the Bees' (1705) Valentine begins with a critical analysis of theoretical claims that reduce culture to economy by virtue of the meaningful and embedded nature of the latter. 

There are two aspects of this critique:

- Firstly, an internal one directed at the assumption of a telos of homogeneity in cultural economy approaches. Even though the notion of economy is broadened everything is located within an equilibrium. 

- Secondly, an external one which draws attention to the coincidence between cultural economy approaches and contemporary political rhetorics of 'creative economy'. 

Both aspects naturalise historically specific relations of production through the category of culture and both privilege and generalise cultural industries as the leading edge of wealth production. 

Valentine argues that both approaches are organised by a disavowal of the political dominance of the economic category of rent and the regimes of rights and fees on which it depends. 

Following a discussion of the problem of rent for capitalism - from Smith via Marx and Keynes to Buchanan - Valentine outlines the role of rent in contemporary neo-liberal capitalism and its links to practices of 'value capture'. He concludes with a discussion of the possible reasons for the valorisation of culture in contemporary neo-liberalism and in particular the example of the cultural industries in the formation of moral subjectivity. 

There will also be a MINI BOOKFAIR in conjunction with Glasgow's Radical Independent Bookfair project (RIB) - http://www.ribproject.org

Event also supported by:

Variant - http://www.variant.org.uk

Autonomi - http://www.autonomi.tv

Electron Club - http://www.electronclub.org

City Strolls - http://www.citystrolls.com

april the 12th. GlasgowFiveMinuteFreeze

Big Freeze in Glasgow? 

check this video of the New York Central Station freeze to see what it's about.. 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo

Meet 3pm saturday 12th April inside Queen St Station (to synchronise our watches and reveal/decide location!). We'll then have a fiveminutebigfreeze at 3.30 exactly, with no cue needed other than watches and each other. Hold it for five minutes and move when everyone else starts moving as if nothing out of the ordinary happened...

Tell your friends, lovers, grandparents , your boss's vet, your cousin's neighbour's favourite actor... there was 700 people at the Edinburgh freeze...let's make this one even bigger!