Strange Culture. 2007. USA. Written and directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson. With Tilda Swinton, Thomas Jay Ryan, Peter Coyote, Steve Kurtz. DCP. 75 min.
In 2004, Steven Kurtz, a founding member of Critical Art Ensemble, a collective dedicated to the advancement of social justice through cultural activities, was working with his wife, Hope, on a piece about genetic food engineering for a MassMoCA exhibition. When Hope died suddenly of heart failure, Kurtz called 911. Police arrived, became suspicious of the Kurtzes’ art, and called the FBI. The artist was detained as a suspected “bioterrorist” while federal agents in Hazmat suits sifted through his work and impounded computers, manuscripts, and books, his cat, and even his wife’s body. Lynn Hershman Leeson has employed actors to dramatize parts of the story, and deftly interweaves news footage, reenactments, animation, interviews, and footage of Kurtz himself in this stranger-than-fiction story of the law gone wild.