Critical Art Ensemble
Steve Kurtz is a founding member of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). CAE is a collective of five tactical media practitioners of various specializations, including computer graphics and web design, _wetware_, film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance. Formed in Florida in 1987, CAE’s focus has been on the exploration of the intersections between art, critical theory, technology, and political activism. The collective has performed and produced a wide variety of projects for an international audience at diverse venues ranging from the street, to the museum, to the Internet. Critical Art Ensemble has also written five books: Their most recent work is The Molecular Invasion (Autonomedia, 2002). Kurtz holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Humanities, and is currently an Associate Professor of Fine Art at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Uselessness Wetware and Demented Strategies
The Critical Art Ensemble argues that the weapon apparatus of
germ warfare has no strategic or tactical value for any nation’s military, and
that it continues to exist only to support an artificial sign-network of threat
that can be appropriated by numerous social and military institutions to raise funds for the production of goods and services that lack utility. The germ warfare apparatus is created for the sake of wasting excess capital rather than for redistributing it in socially functional programs within the public sphere.