Homeland Security seizes art 'passports'

[mongo]

Homeland Security seizes art 'passports'
There's no leaving the state of 'Sabotage' now

By Sara Pearce
Enquirer staff writer

Fake passports for the fictional State of Sabotage were to be issued last Friday night at the Contemporary Arts Center during the opening of its new exhibit "Incorporated."

Instead, the 33 passports were confiscated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Detroit en route to the show.

Robert Jelinek, the Austrian artist who is leader of the art group Sabotage, did not discover the items were missing from his luggage until it turned up Thursday, a day after his arrival here. Buried inside the luggage was a folded receipt from U.S. Customs and Border Protection for the missing items, which also included: seventy-seven brochures produced by the CAC and Sabotage, a container of glue, two ink pads, four "State of Sabotage" stamps, a camera and a bottle of Sabotage perfume called "Cash."

The exhibit, which will be at the CAC through May 8, focuses on six artists' groups and is about challenging authority "and looking carefully and critically at how business as usual is managed" through art, said center Director Linda Shearer.

link http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050216/NEWS01/502160387/1077

I didn't find it online, but the AP article in our local paper has an official saying the items were seized because they were "immoral"

[meganmonkey]

1. Immoral?!?!?!

:wtf:

This is out of control.

[flobee1kenobi]

2. seized because they were "immoral"?

If they seize items because someone views it as immoral, what else is on the list?
childrens "spongebob"items?
certain magazines that you could read on long flights?
clothing that contains "questionable" phrasing?

as of this action-America is no longer free
this action just made it official

I wonder if "the Nation" magazine is "immoral"?
going to find out in march

[aquart]

5. Homeland Security is now the morality police?????????

I could see seizing them because they looked like passable forgeries and there was concern for their future use. Dubious, but I could buy that. But "immoral"???????

[merwin]

12. They prefer the term 'thought police'

[merwin]

3. 4 numbers describe this. 1984

[donsu]

4. thank you Sabotage, and Contemporary Arts Center for being

Freedom Fighters

and for them to don their flak jackets and call to duty their food tasters for they are going to be attacked.

friends should attend to their needs.

wish I lived near by and could see the exhibit "incorporated". about 10 yrs. ago I did a painting called "Snools in the Garden, subtitle, Is a Garden Without Spiders a Garden" (snools being corporations and a garden being the world.

[Megahurtz]

6. Seig Heil!

The Gestapo strikes again.

[Ruby Romaine]

7. Gov't persecution of artists----here's the latest on Steve Kurtz-

http://www.caedefensefund.org/

UPDATE: February 15th, 2005

New Hearing Date
Professor Kurtz' s hearing has been scheduled now for March 1st. This is only the hearing which is then used to determine a future trial date. As the process lingers on, we are likely to see the CAE Defense Fund go bankrupt this week despite generous support. Much more support is needed. Every donation counts.

What happened to Steve Kurtz?

Early morning of May 11, Steve Kurtz awoke to find his wife, Hope, dead of a cardiac arrest. Kurtz called 911. The police arrived and, after stumbling across test tubes and petri dishes Kurtz was using in a current artwork, called in the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Soon agents from the Task Force and FBI detained Kurtz, cordoned off the entire block around his house, and later impounded Kurtz's computers, manuscripts, books, equipment, and even his wife's body for further analysis. The Buffalo Health Department condemned the house as a health risk.

Only after the Commissioner of Public Health for New York State had tested samples from the home and announced there was no public safety threat was Kurtz able to return home and recover his wife's body. Yet the FBI would not release the impounded materials, which included artwork for an upcoming exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. (snip)

[MrModerate]

8. You can say Nazi, you can say KGB, you can say Securitate . . .

But I say -- too stupid to live!!!

When I read this, the story was that some overzealous and under-lobed TSA employee thought they were the makings of a fake identity kit. Which begs the question: if they confiscated all this stuff because it could be part of a plot, why the hell would they give the guy a ****receipt**** and then do nothing else?

I'm less concerned that the Schimpanski regime is eroding America's traditions than that they're eroding common sense.

I swear they must be putting lead into the nation's water supply or something.

[uppityperson]

9. Could've been taken be future "terrorists"!

I mean, really. If this sort of thing is allowed to be in an art show, who knows who might walk in and steal them and change the pictures on them to get through security with fake passports. It's got to be the easiest way I know of to get fake passports and I can see the security guards scratching their heads trying to figure out what country they are from and not wanting to look stupid and ask.

By the way, this is sarcasm.

[Cocoa]

10. lots of questions...

for example, how did they know about the passports?

And also, how long and at what expense was the investigation?

Also, doesn't the DHS have actual terrorists to worry about?

[1monster]

11. No. DHS is not to prevent terrorist, foreign or domestic, from carrying

out terroristic plots. It is for control of the population of the United States.