Junkyard of Dreams

Specflic 2.0 © Adriene Jenik

Specflic 2.0 © Adriene Jenik

Specflic 2.0 © Adriene Jenik

San Jose’s Club Glo hosted Michael Lew’s Junkyard of Dreams and the Night Culture: Live Cinema Nights. The first being experimentation with live editing of sound and image aided by narrative intelligence and database design, programmed in such a way that the computer keeps track of the progression of the story while leaving improvisational freedom to the interpreters. While Night Culture consisted of a 3-night program of sound and moving image fusing electronica with live experimental video.

Another strand, and this time staged at the Martin Luther King Jr. Main Public Library, was that of Speculative Cinema – presenting Adriene Jenik’s, SPECFLIC 2.0, SPECFLIC being a series of performative media events set in 2030.

Just down the road at Camera 12, a more conventional multi-complex setting, Morten Schjodt, presented the U.S. premiere of his interactive film, Switching. A love story that allows you to slip into a storytelling labyrinth, Switching is one of the first commercial successes to radically insert interactivity into storytelling and narrative technique. As with gaming, the audience actually becomes a ‘user’.

However, most moving and breathtaking was Camera 12’s screening of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s, Strange Culture (Work in Progress). A critical documentary, Strange Culture examines the story of the arrest of Steve Kurtz, an Associate Professor of Art at the State University of Buffalo and a founding member of the internationally acclaimed Critical Art Ensemble, and Robert Ferrel, a geneticist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health.

Medics called to Kurtz’s house, following the untimely death of his wife. They became suspicious of Kurtz's art supplies that were in his home - petri dishes (some of which he apparently tasted in front of an officer to prove their lack of killer chemicals) – Kurtz being a noted bio-artist. Within hours the FBI charged Kurtz as a suspected bio-terrorist, whilst dozens of agents sifted through his work,  and confiscated his computers, notes, books, his cat, and most tragically even his wife's body. It didn’t take long for Kurtz’s collaborator on the project in question, Dr. Robert Ferrell, to also get caught up in this irrational whirl-wind; with both being charged with bio-terrorism and mail fraud, each potentially carrying a sentence of 20 years.

Kurtz and Ferrell have since been found innocent of plotting to destroy America! However, to avoid complete government embarrassment, the FBI decided to charge Kurtz with mail fraud - an offense which could still get Kurtz up to 20 years in prison. Kurtz is still awaiting trial.

What is revealed through Hershman’s film is that the FBI’s investigation has been more motivated by risk management of complete humiliation and an attempt to censor the meanings and intentions behind his practice, than dealing with serious crime. The investigation and media coverage have blown Kurtz’s actions out of all proportion and in a sense dramatised the entire tragic fiasco.

Hershman has dedicated much screen-time to, through ‘film’, exhibiting Kurtz’s practice. In a sense what she achieves is an unveiling – the shroud of mystery is removed and an entry point is created that clearly demonstrates the work of the Critical Art Ensemble is anything but criminal or dangerous.

Obviously screening the film in the context of a major international festival, finished or not, was a key motivation and vital to continuing to spur on what has become an international movement among artists, civil rights activists and others in raising a defense fund and staging exhibitions and protests on Kutz’s behalf. However, it is interesting in itself that Hershman took the step of screening her work whilst ‘in progress’, she in fact even asked and welcomed feedback. Although it is unlikely that the film itself will directly impact on the case, the publicity generated and awareness-raising certainly contributed to Kurtz’s current liberty.

Strange Culture, it has to be said was one of the most powerful pieces of work to be exhibited as part of ZeroOne San Jose – literally leaving one speechless and definitely one of the few works to have true political relevance.

It should be noted that Strange Culture features an impressive cast, including Tilda Swinton, Peter Coyote, Thomas Jay Ryan, Josh Kornbluth and Steve Kurtz. Written, directed and edited by Lynn Hershman Leeson and shot by Hiro Narita, an original score by the Residents, the film also features Greg Bordowitz, Steve Dietz, Robin Held, Claire Pentecost, and Nato Thomson. Produced by Lynn Hershman Leeson and Lise Swenson.

[Helen Wewiora]

www.specflic.net
www.varoregistry.com/hershman/index.html
www.recirca.com [Steve Kurtz]