[spectre] Alex Adriaansens (1953-2018)

[Danja Vasiliev]

Alex let me join V2_ at the time when I was a student in Rotterdam and
ever since he was present in my life -- at V2_ events, at Ars,
Transmediale and most recently at a party at Weise7 where both Alex and
Angelica partied with us until 4am.

Many times Alex encouraged me and showed me the right direction as a
mentor and his experience in starting and running V2_ was always a huge
inspiration, for all of which i can only say -

		THANK YOU ALEX


Danja


On 31/12/2018 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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