Hi all, I remember when CAE came back to the Netherlands (1999 or 2000) with their Cult Of The New Eve project. It was the first I’d heard of gene-splicing for art and critical theory. I still have the transgenic beer bottle and sachet of transgenic yeast from it. I remember Steve as a brilliant but also nice and funny guy. I followed from afar his struggles with Bush-era feds trying to bury him to cover up their own overzealousness and incompetence.
Pouring one out for him tonight. May his memory be a blessing. Carl > On 16 Nov 2025, at 20:28, Eric Kluitenberg via nettime-l > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Dear nettimers, > > The moment when someone close and dear passes away is always a confrontation > with mortality. Something, I guess, most of us banish from our minds. Steve > was both a hugely inspirational figure to me (and many many others as is > already apparent from Geert’s, David’s, and Andreas’s posts here), and an > uncommonly nice, sympathetic person. So, I’m shocked and saddened by his > passing and somewhat at a loss for proper words. > > There are so many things to mention: CAE’s seminal understanding of the Data > Body - the total collection of files connected to your existence, and how > that is more real to ‘officialdom’ than your biological body. > > His pioneering with CAE of participatory performances that introduced the > politics of biotechnology to a much wider audience and allowed them to get a > first hand, demystified, experience. > > As Andreas mentioned, in 2004 he became the object of an overzealous > prosecutor, following the death of his wife Hope. It brought a big collection > of artists, curators, theorists / critics together to protest this absurd and > painful four year ordeal in the CAE Defense Fund > <http://www.tacticalmediafiles.net/campaigns/6412>. Steve somehow managed to > get through that period, standing his ground, but the scientist he had worked > with, Robert Ferell, caved in, settled with the prosecutors and passed away > shortly after, dying of cancer - a condition certainly exacerbated by this > groundless prosecution. > > In the CAE book Digital Resistance Steve and his collective celebrated the > figure of the amateur in such contested knowledge spaces. The amateur who is > not invested in funding and reputation hierarchies, who is not delimited by a > particular disciplinary domain, who is motivated only by ‘love’ of their > subject, as the latin root of the word Amateur already indicates. This notion > to me is indispensable in thinking and actualising critical knowledge > practices outside of the sanctified confines of academia. > > And we're just scraping the surface here.. > > We lost, I lost, a dear friend, but there is so much he and CAE left behind > for all of us, for coming generations in particular to draw upon. We can be > eternally thankful to him and his fellow travellers for that. > > Onward indeed Steve! > > -eric > -- > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: https://www.nettime.org > # contact: [email protected] -- # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: https://www.nettime.org # contact: [email protected]
