Associate professor of Visual Studies at SUNY Buffalo, Steve Kurtz is a founding member of the art and theater group Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). Founded in 1987 by Kurtz and Steven Barnes, CAE is an award-winning collective of artists of various specializations: computer graphics and web design, wetware, film and video, photography, text art, book art, and performance. The collective is dedicated to exploring the intersections between art, technology, political activism, and critical theory. For two decades, CAE has produced and exhibited art that examines information, communications, and biotechnologies. It has performed and produced a wide variety of projects for international audiences at diverse venues—from the street to the museum to the Internet. CAE has been invited to exhibit and perform in many of the world’s leading cultural institutions: the Whitney Museum of American Art and the New Museum in NYC; the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC; the ICA in London; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (Germany); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; the Natural History Museum in London; Matadero Madrid; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki; the Moscow Performing Arts Center; ZKM in Karlsruhe (Germany); and many more. The ensemble has collectively written six books, some of which have been translated into a number of languages. In 2000, TDR, The Drama Review dedicated a special section to CAE. Work by the ensemble is included in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including MoMA in NYC; the Neue Gallerie in Graz (Austria); the Tate Gallery in London; the SFMOMA Library; the Banff Centre for the Arts (Alberta, Canada); and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. CAE received the 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation Wynn Kramarsky Freedom of Artistic Expression Award, the 2004 John Lansdown Award for Multimedia, and the 2004 Leonardo New Horizons Award for Innovation.
