Philosophy of the Arts

Philosophy

Making art with bacteria, and being sued for it

Students working on the issue of art’s autonomy and recent works crossing the borderline with morality, may be interested in the following case.
Both Steve Kurtz and Robert Farrell are facing charges of wire fraud brought in connection with absurdly-alleged ‘bioterrorism.’ Their “Critical Art Ensemble” used bacteria to experiment on genetically modified food.
The CAE Defense Fund presently assembles funds to support the CAE’s defence in court.

Critical Art Ensemble is a collective of five artists of various specializations dedicated to exploring the intersections between art, technology, radical politics, and critical theory. Their books include: The Electronic Disturbance (1994); Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas (2001); Flesh Machine (1998) and Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media (2001). Since 1996, biotech projects–the most recent of which is GenTerra–have been their central initiative.” [NetArtCommons]

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