The Art | Crime Archive

The Art | Crime Archive (ACA) is a mobile art space, teaching and performance center, and web-based platform (www.artcrimearchive.net) devoted to the study of the spaces where art and crime overlap. The ACA is currently a part of SDSU’s Institute for Public and Urban Affairs (IPUA), and is organized by a criminologist (Paul Kaplan), an artist (Brian Goeltzenleuchter), and a computer engineer (Dan Salmonsen). The ACA investigates ‘criminal art’ and ‘creative crime.’ The ACA’s mission is to catalyze a global discussion on culture, deviance and crime. Like crime, art can be disruptive and deviant, but also seductive and pleasurable. Like art, crime can be frightening and dangerous, but also commodified and consumed. A core distinction is that art’s dangers are often celebrated while crime’s dangers are condemned; this is partly because crime that harms is conflated with crime that offends but does not harm.  These contexts often overlap or drift between categories. It is this shadow space that the ACA examines.