Critical Art Ensemble
It encourages the use of any media that will engage a particular socio-political context in order to create molecular interventions and semiotic shocks that collectively could diminish the rising intensity of authoritarian culture.
[1] Since its formation in 1987 in Tallahassee, Florida,[citation needed] CAE has been frequently invited to exhibit and perform projects examining issues surrounding information, communications and bio-technologies by museums and other cultural institutions.
In 1989, the group collaborated with Gran Fury to release Cultural Vaccines, a multimedia event in Tallahassee, Florida, which critiques U.S. policy on HIV.
In 1990, the group collaborated with Prostitutes of New York to create Peep Show which premiered at Window on Gaines in Tallahassee, Florida.
In 1991, a body of work titled Fiesta Critica was developed in Indiantown, Florida, with local migrant workers; addressing Floridian agricultural labour relations.
In 1994, Autonomedia publishes The Electronic Disturbance and construction begins to create CAE's website Critical Art Ensemble.
The group goes to Documenta X in Kassel, Germany to begin the editing and conceptualizing process for the book README: Ascii Culture and the Revenge of Knowledge at Hybrid Workspace.
The performance of Flesh Machine is toured, premiering in Vienna and closing in Helsinki at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in summer 1998.
The group's street action occurs in Sheffield, UK, with the performance of The International Campaign for Free Alcohol and Tobacco for the Unemployed.
The project used basic molecular biology techniques over a 72-hour period to test foods that others deemed suspicious of "contamination" even when the authorities were guarding against them.
[3] This performance sought to explore biotechnology and the science behind it, as the artists felt it was "one of the most misunderstood areas of production in the cultural landscape".
[10] CAE goes on to observe that occupation theory itself is challenged by cyberspace and the difficulties it presents in terms of focusing a group effort against one authority as opposed to a singular hacker, fiddling with code.
An important distinction is made that when rebellious acts are carried out by an individual as opposed to a group in singularity, that the dissenter is seen as a vandal instead of a protester.
[11] In 1999, CAE began a new project to draw attention to the ways in which scientific discourses surrounding biotechnologies drew upon promissory religious rhetoric.
[14] Triscott states through her own experience of participating in the performance that members of the audience were given the opportunity to grow and store their own bacteria, with full instructions and guidance.
[14] As CAE wear lab-coats and appear as professional scientists, they simulate actual biotechnology corporations, emphasizing their intentions even further.
Most important, however, amateurs are not invested in institutional systems of knowledge production and policy construction, and hence do not have irresistible forces guiding the outcome of their process…'.
The house was given the all clear, yet a week later, Kurtz's CAE collaborators were ordered to appear before a grand jury to investigate possible violations of the law regarding biological weapons.
[21] According to Nicola Triscott, the FBI 'thought they had a situation out of which they could manufacture a terrorism case, which potentially brought great personal rewards', based upon the 'Lackawanna Six Sleeper Cell' case where six Yemeni Americans were convicted of supporting al-Qaeda[22] Critical Art Ensemble is the recipient of awards, including the 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation Wynn Kramarsky Freedom of Artistic Expression Grant UB Art Professor "Strange Culture" Case Goes to Court | WBFO Archived 2011-07-24 at the Wayback Machine, the 2004 John Lansdown Award for Multimedia [1] Archived 2006-11-19 at the Wayback Machine, and the 2004 Leonardo New Horizons Award for Innovation.
