Re: <nettime> RIP Steven Kurtz

[Andreas Broeckmann via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Dear friends,

I also feel very sad about Steve passing away. The news comes as a 
shock, even though he had already indicated that he wouldn't be there 
for long; in March he wrote about the work on the new book and said, "My 
time is short. ..."

I remember how impressed I was by him and the Critical Art Ensemble when 
they came to perform at the V2_ in Rotterdam for the Next 5 Minutes 2 in 
1996. They cohered like a rockband, but they were doing this very sharp 
art-theory thing, very serious and yet not academic at all. Weird and 
amazingly inspiring. Like the books, the lecturing, the artworks.

I don't know whether I have come across somebody who was like Steve, at 
the same time so incredibly bright, brave and gentle, critical and 
caring. And with such a great, dry sense of humour which he didn't even 
seem to lose in times of utter desperation. (Remember what Steve went 
through after the death of his wife, Hope, in 2004 from which a 
four-year judicial ordeal ensued...)

When in September 2016 we prepared an invitation for him to come to 
Germany the following winter, he wrote a message from which I would like 
to quote:

"We need to start thinking environmentally through the lens of death as 
well, which no one wants to talk about, because when management and 
death come together traditionally bad things have happened. The 
situation is even more complicated by the fact that ecological science 
is mostly beyond the human capacity to model making it very difficult to 
think environmentally through reason. Then there is the problem of 
anthropocentrism. The idea that we can escape it is absurd to me. We can 
only adjust the predisposition. This is the kind of thing I have been 
thinking about. These topics are incredible difficult and I am not sure 
that I am smart enough to work through them (but when has that stopped 
me before?)."

He signed his message last March, "Onward, Steve." It's now the sad 
moment of responding: onward, Steve, and thanks for everything.

Andreas
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