Adilkno

ADILKNO / BILWET (Foundation for the Advancement of Illegal Knowledge; Dutch: Stichting tot Bevordering van Illegale Wetenschap) was established in Amsterdam (1983-1999) as a free association of five artists/authors, Bas-Jan van Stam, Geert Lovink, Arjen Mulder, Lex Wouterloot and Ger Peeters. Patrice Riemens acted as travelling ambassador.

This free-wheeling Dutch theory collective rose from the squatters movement and the related free radio and autonomous publishing scene in Amsterdam, about which they published their book Bewegingsleer (1990). Their main interest was media and media theory, about which they wrote from a critical, speculative and often humorous perspective.

In 1985 Adilkno published Het Beeldenrijk [The Empire of Images: Radiation Fear and Space Desire], with analyses of "Paris, Texas," "The Day After," and "The Right Stuff." In 1987 it translated into Dutch a book of essays by the German critic Wolfgang Pohrt. The Cracking the Movement: Squatting Beyond the Media was published in Dutch by Ravijn Books in 1990, in German in 1991 by Edition ID-Archiv (Berlin) and in 1994 in English by Autonomedia. The Data Dandy, a collection of essays on technoculture appeared in German (Bollmann Verlag) and as a Dutch e-book (De Balie) on floppy-disk in 1994. In collaboration with the Academy of Ambulantory Sciences, Adilkno has edited and produced five edition of the yearbook Arcade (1988-1995). Adilkno's last book appeared in German, in 1997, entitled Elektronische Einsamkeit [Electronic Solitude]. In 2019 the Bilwet Fascisme Map appeared, published by Institute of Network Cultures, an unpublished manuscript with fascism research by various Adilkno members, written as single authors and together in the period 1983-1994.

In the mid-late 1980s, Adilkno wrote for the Amsterdam squatters weekly Bluf!, produced a weekly theory radio show for Radio 100, Radio Rataplan and Radio Patapoe with interviews called the Bilwet Portrait Gallery (which have all been digitised and made available on archive.org) and organised and taught two autonomous reading groups in Amsterdam and Nijmegen, one on Klaus Theweleit's Male Phantasies (using the Dutch summarized translation) and one on Jean Baudrillard's Fatal Strategies (translated in Dutch by Maurice Nio), which included a glossary, in Dutch, compiled by Adilkno.

Ever since their first piece in Mediamatic, in 1988, about The Occult Traffic Sign, BILWET/ADILKNO contributed to virtually every issue of Mediamatic Magazine. A collection of these small manifestos - BILWET/ADILKNO calls them UTO's (Unidentified Theoretical Objects) - was published as Media Archief in Dutch and in German translation as Medien Archiv (Bollman Verlag). Due to this publication and their Data-Dandy tour, BILWET/ADILKNO has become known in Germany and Austria. Their latest articles for Mediamatic were about: Virtual Writing, Electronic Loneliness and Concept for a Post-human Nature. Adilkno also wrote similar short essays for the Flemish film magazine Andere Sinema.

Publications

• Bilwet, Het Beeldenrijk: over stralingsangst en ruimteverlangen [Empire of Images: Radiation Fear and Space Desire], Amsterdam: Raket en Lont, 1985, 178 pp, PDF. (Dutch)
• Bilwet, Bewegingsleer, Ravijn, 1990. (Dutch)
• Bilwet, Medienarchiv, trans. Gerrit Boer, Bensheim/Dusseldorf: Bollmann, 1993. (German)
  • Adilkno, The Media Archive, New York: Autonomedia, 1998.
  • Bilwet, Arhiv Medija, trans. Goran Vujasinović, et al., Zagreb: Arkzin, 1998, 272 pp. (Croatian)
• Adilkno, Cracking the Movement: Squatting Beyond the Media, trans. Laura Martz, New York: Autonomedia, 1994. (English)
• Bilwet, De Datadandy, Amsterdam: De Balie, 1994. Floppybook. (Dutch)
  • Der Datendandy, trans. Petra Ilyes, Mannheim: Bollmann, 1994. (German)
• Bilwet, Elektronische Einsamkeit, Cologne: Suppose, 1997. (German)
• Bilwet, Bilwet Fascismemap (1983-1994), Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2019, 292 pp, EPUB. [1] (Dutch)

Links

• Bilwet Archive. Hosted by the Institute of Network Cultures since 2020, after having been hosted for 25 years by desk.nl [2] [3].
• Geert Lovink’s audio archive, 1987-2000. Text in Dutch, which explains the history of the radio archive, digitised in 2010 by INC member Margreet Riphagen and uploaded to the archive.org servers.