[spectre] Alex Adriaansens (1953-2018)

[Shu Lea Cheang]

Alex!

For years, years, at transmediale conferences and other (im)possible 
occasions,  I turned my head, there seated Alex... and Angelica!

He fought bravely, passionately through the curves of treatment, 
standing tall.

at the year end, at the junction of a new year. the loss is tremendous 
and heartbroken.

condolence.

sl


On 31.12.18 07:13, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
> Alex Adriaansens, artist, curator and long-time director of the 
> Rotterdam-based V2_Organisation, V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media, 
> passed away yesterday, 30 December 2018, after several years of 
> struggling with cancer. For over thirty-five years, Alex was active in 
> the field of art and technology, as an initiator, an organiser, and as 
> an advisor. His influence on many of us was enormous. He projected an 
> amazing, passionate engagement with art and with the ways in which new 
> technologies impact society. Perhaps even more importantly, he was one 
> of the most gentle, friendly and optimistic people I can think of. 
> This optimism, coupled with a clear vision and a strong sense of 
> urgency for what needs to be done, fuelled his work and put the V2_ 
> Organisation, and many of the projects that Alex was involved in, 
> among the most influential initiatives in new media art since the 
> 1980s. Now he leaves behind his wife, Angelica, and will be missed 
> immensely by many others, as a friend and colleague, mentor, and as 
> one of the guiding spirits of a whole international scene.
>
> Alex Adriaansens was born in 1953 (on Valentine's Day) and studied at 
> the art academy in Den Bosch from 1972 to 1976. In 1981, he, together 
> with Joke Brouwer and a whole group of artists and activists, set up 
> the artist collective "V2" which became, in 1986, the V2_Organisation, 
> Institute for the Unstable Media. The organisation grew and moved to 
> Rotterdam in 1994, developing a regular program of exhibition, 
> performance, festival, workshop and publication activities, which it 
> continues after Alex, due to his declining health, passed on the 
> directorship to Michel van Dartel last summer.
>
> In the course of more than three decades, many of the now hotly 
> debated topics of digital culture – from interactivity and virtual 
> reality, to social media and artificial intelligence – were pioneered 
> in exhibitions, conferences and book publications by V2_, under the 
> directorship of Alex Adriaansens and Joke Brouwer. Alex was not an 
> egocentric leader, but a deeply social, collaborative animal who, 
> rather than insisting on this or that, stimulated things to evolve and 
> to happen. This turned all the projects he was involved in into 
> permeable platforms in which he would collaborate to achieve the best 
> possible results, piloting ideas and concepts which would often reach 
> the mainstream media and art circles only years later. The 1987 
> "Manifesto for the Unstable Media" remains a crucial document of the 
> critical avantgarde spirit that infused the early years, insisting on 
> the necessity to engage the new electronic and digital technologies 
> both aesthetically and politically.
>
> For Alex, whatever the situation was, there was no other way than to 
> go on, to imagine the next step, to push ahead. In this moment of loss 
> and sadness, there is nothing better to do in his spirit. Pause, 
> mourn, and press on.
>
> Andreas Broeckmann
>
>
> (There will probably be a funerary service on 7 January 2019 at 11:00 
> hrs in Rotterdam.)
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