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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Steven Kurtz is coming to Toronto this Saturday to give a talk hosted by InterAccess (details here). Kurtz is a political artist -- a founding member of the collective Critical Art Ensemble -- and he was spuriously charged with bioterrorism last spring.
Here's a bit from the IA press release: "Kurtz’ appearance in Toronto offers the public the opportunity to hear Kurtz and Gregg Bordowitz, spokesperson for the CAE Defense Fund. They will speak about the work of CAE and the importance of creative freedom and privacy rights to educating the public about the effects of “militarized” biotechnology practices. A moderated discussion period will follow Kurtz's talk, led by Sally McKay."
CAE employ "Contestational Biology" as a means of bringing amateur citizens into the ethical discourse around biotechnology. Says CAE: "Within a very brief period of time, anyone who is modestly literate can learn the fundamentals of scientific study and ethics." The publisher Autonomedia puts out the collective's highly readable manifestos in the form of cute little books, and CAE also makes the papers available in PDF format on their website. The stuff is easy to read, and while they play with coporate terms and turns of phrase, the stance is only a tad tongue-in-cheek, offering very solid analysis on modes of resistance, the power dynamics of technological mythmaking, and functional info on how science works.
CAE is all about information, and the website provides an excellent access to the work. In the project "Free Range Grain", the group set up in Europe with a portable lab for testing food for genetic modifications. The equipment they use is detailed in a webtour, as well as photos of the event and an articulate, thorough position paper, which states: "Biotechnology and the science behind it have to be one of the most misunderstood areas of production in the cultural landscape. Myths, fantasy, misleading speculation, disinformation, and so on abound in the public sphere. Part of the reason for this state of communicative disorder is that the scientific process never makes a public appearance, only the miracle products as commodity fetish. We want to bring the routinized processes of science to the public to let them see them and act within them.
For information on the US federal case against CAE, and how you can help, go here.
NB: On the occasion of Kurtz' arrest back in May, I made a post on CAE quoting their publication Flesh Machine on the false promise of virtual reality.