Art, legal circles here stirred by pending obscenity case . i ii i a. ; ft " 1 J...ll M Avnlnininn i By Dennis D. Roddy The Pittsburgh Press Adam Eisenstat wants to be as understandable as the jumble of newsprint, photographs and snippets of headlines pasted to his bedroom wall. "I'm always being called crazy. That's a compliment to me," he said. "I want to be disturbed. I want to look disturbed." As disturbers of the peace go, the 23-year Eisenstat, of 216 Linden Ave., Point Breeze, has capped off a busy season. In April, his punk rock band, Bad Martyrs, was banned from Oakland's Electric Banana, a club known for encouraging the unconventional. In August, Eisenstat was arrested on obscenity charges after handing a photocopied collage to a 17-year-old University of Pittsburgh student. The student glanced at the juxtaposition of Idi Amin, Jesus Christ and a sexually explicit photo, and summoned police. "She didn't look like the kind of person who would arrest me," Eisenstat said, explaining he had never handed out photocopies of his work to strangers before the day of his arrest. Following his arraignment in court Friday, Eisenstat threatens to perform an act titled "Let Freedom Ring" on the steps of the county courthouse. Eisenstat won't describe the piece other than to say it includes song, dance and costume and "will vividly and dramatically summarize my feelings about my arrest, America, free speech and anything else you care to read into it." "Maybe he'll cut off his ear or something. Who knows what's next?" growled Electric Banana owner John Zarra, still furious after throwing Eisenstat's band out of his club after a performance that included pornographic films, sex toys and a 250-pound belly dancer. Although admitting his collages are "very disreputable, unsanctioned kinds of stuff," Eisenstat said his arrest raises questions about free speech for artists. The obscenity charges against Eisenstat, say some observers familiar with both art and the law, present several dilemmas. "To me, the unusual angle is that there's a so-called victim here," said Pittsburgh attorney Paul Boas, who has defended obscenity cases after raids on adult bookstores and movie houses where people paid to see what the law found obscene. "Here the interesting angle is that somebody says, 'He gave it to me and I'm offended by it,'" said Boas. Attorney Ira Lefton, who heads the Allegheny County Bar Association's Art and the Law committee, sees a problem with what limits shnnlrl be nlaced on the title "artist." "I assume you have to start by asking if you declare yourself an artist, is that enough to make you one?" said Lefton. "I don't think anyone who scrawls obscenities on a wall is, for that purpose alone, entitled to the protections we offer those who are creating artistic works. But the definition's always changing." John Caldwell, curator of contemporary art at The Carnegie Museum of Art, has no doubt that Eisenstat's collages constitute art, but he said their creator "is a better writer than he is artist." Nonetheless, Caldwell said he is alarmed by the obscenity charges against Eisenstat and worries about what they might mean to other artists who take their works to the streets of Pittsburgh. Caldwell cited an "obvious political content" of the offending Eisenstat collage. "He believes that pornography is related in tprrnrism " Caldwell said. exDlainine the juxtaposition of Amin, Ghadafy and the sexually explicit photo. "If it were designed to do anything, it's designed to offend and not to seduce." Eisenstat said that is precisely his belief. "I didn't know you could have someone arrested because they offended you on the street. There's no way I'm trying to appeal to prurient interest," he said. The relationship between pornography and terrorism, as Eisenstat sees it, is the implicitly violent nature of both. "When I see a headline that says 'Bomb kills 14,' I don't say 'wow, that's terrible,' " said Eisenstat. "I say 'God, that's exciting.' " Phil Musick ... is on vacation.