Lynn Hershman Leeson

Strange Culture

Lynn Hershman Leeson’s genre-bending documentary Strange Culture tells the story of how one man’s personal tragedy turns into persecution by a paranoid, conservative, and overzealous government. Through interviews, scripted acting, and illustrations, Hershman Leeson outlines the series of absurd events that led to New York state’s case against the former SFAI Associate Professor and artist Steve Kurtz. By closely following Kurtz’s story, Hershman Leeson reveals a strange ripple effect of the Bush administration’s destructive policies. 

Strange Culture discusses the dangerous reverberations of xenophobia splintering from the case against Professor Kurtz. Kurtz and his wife Hope Kurtz were preparing an exhibition on genetically modified food for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art when Hope died in her sleep of heart failure. Upon the arrival of the paramedics to Kurtz’ house, they noticed scientific paraphernalia as well as a flyer with Arabic writing. In Bush’s Post-9/11 America, this was enough to alert the F.B.I. to his case. Within hours, Mr. Kurtz quickly went from the shock of his wife’s sudden passing to finding himself suspected of bioterrorism and his home quarantined.