Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday February 27, 2005
The Observer
On 10 May last year, Steven Kurtz woke to find that his wife, Hope, had suffered a heart attack in the night and was lying lifeless next to him.
The experience was traumatic, but events that followed have turned the professor's ordeal into macabre persecution. Today he faces a 20-year jail sentence on terrorism-related charges. 'I am facing a long stretch in jail for my beliefs and my art,' Kurtz, 47, an art professor at Buffalo University, New York, told The Observer.
The affair also threatens to jeopardise academic freedom and scientific exchange on either side of the Atlantic, lawyers have warned.
The ordeal of Kurtz, who is to appear in court on Tuesday on charges of mail and wire fraud, began after he called medical emergency services. Paramedics arrived to try, unsuccessfully, to revive his wife and noticed the biological equipment in his flat. Kurtz is a member of the Critical Art Ensemble, a group that aims, according to its website, to explore the connections between art, technology and radical politics. He uses the biological equipment to work on presentations such as Flesh Machine and GenTerra, in which audiences participate in DNA experiments.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1426321,00.html
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