Art is not terrorism! Steve Kurtz, Robert Ferrell, bioterrorism and mail fraud

摘要

The title of this piece is taken from the internet banner that is being distributed following the arrest of artist Steve Kurtz, genetics professor Robert Ferrell and their indictment for mail fraud. Before discussing these arrests and their ramifications in more detail, it is instructive to look at this statement and to consider its implications. At first glance, it seems so obvious a statement as to be barely worth saying; of course art is not terrorism. And yet on closer examination the difference between the two is not so clear. Inverting the statement makes this clear. The statement 'terrorism is not art' is ostensibly far harder to justify. Days after September llth, Karlheinz Stockhausen famously commented: What happened there is - they all have to rearrange their brains now - is the greatest work of art ever. That characters can bring about in one act what we in music cannot dream of, that people practice madly for 10 years, completely, fanatically, for a concert and then die. That is the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos. I could not do that. Against that, we composers are nothing.