Steve Kurtz is not someone who should be sitting across the interrogation table, submitting to random drug tests and regularly meeting with his parole officer. He is an artist and educator who masterfully subverts the aesthetic to serve his goals. Kurtz, an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at SUNY, Buffalo, is the founding member of the Critical Arts Ensemble (CAE), a group of artists “whose multi-media projects fuse the political pedagogy of Bertolt Brecht with the madcap performance of Mr. Wizard. Donning lab coats and armed with household supplies and high school lab equipment, they assume the persona of amateur scientist. Their aim is to demystify the shadowy world of bio-weapons, trans-genetic manufacturing and the corporate appropriation of visual culture as well as more broadly, the public sphere itself,” writes Gregory Sholette, former Chair of the Art Administration Department at SAIC. The CAE take their performances into museums, festivals and the streets. They are actively engaged in theorization of their practice and regularly publish manifestoes advocating “tactical media activism.” They are “specialists in revolt,” according to Gregg Bordowitz, Assistant Professor, Film Video and New Media.