So who is RxAxLxF?

Coming from a mixed multinational ancestry, things were definitely exciting, but never easy when RxAxLxF grew up. Born out of parents who emigrated from the places they had come from in the search of greener pastures, RxAxLxF wondered from the first day he could think what might be behind that distant line called horizon, where his ancestors came from.
For RxAxLxF, growing up was a constant interaction and/or battle between Dutch, German, French and Limburgian culture and language. And growing up in the times of the Great Anglo-American Empire, a constant deep influence with American and British culture was soon added to all of this.
In this whole mix of languages, cultures and connected sentiments, RxAxLxF got lost on the way, became a school drop out and headed for a career in drugs and criminality.
Darkness became as dark as it can be and RxAxLxF went deep down into the sewers of Western society.

Somewhere on the darkest point, after having seen prison and hell from inside, RxAxLxF got hooked up with a youth self help organization, took up the chance and turned into a youth social worker, working with rebellious youth to do good to them, himself and the rest of the world. RxAxLxF realised soon that only operating socially and politically was not enough for him. With the photocamera of his granddad he started to photograph the world around him, started to write stories, started to paint, make music and much, much more. After he had organized a couple of art festivals for street and underground art, somebody suggested to him to give it a try with formal art education.
Coming from genuine street culture, RxAxLxF hesitated for a long time, till one day he gave it a try and was admitted to Art Academy.
A new world opened up. And a new phase in RxAxLxF's life started. Being still curious what is behind the horizon, RxAxLxF became a travelling student, studying at the Art Academies of Maastricht, Brussels, Amsterdam, Wroclaw, Dresden and Enschede. At the (in)famous Academy for Art and Industry (AKI) Enschede, he graduated in 1993 as a formal Bachelor of Media Art.
And a new period started again.
RxAxLxF started to travel, work and have endeavours in many possible and impossible corners of this world. Many places, many faces. When awards for his work started to shower on him, he decided to set up base in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
As if Amsterdam is otherwise a boring city, RxAxLxF listed up with a program of the City Council of Amsterdam to set up his atelier in the Southeast of Amsterdam (commonly known as the biggest ghetto of The Netherlands)(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijlmermeer), according to the philosophy that in urban settings where the overall state has lost control, artists might have a positive influence on the hood. Five truly remarkable years followed, in which RxAxLxF made a career as autonomous artist, designer and art director in the art and media industry of Amsterdam and beyond,at the same time not losing touch with reality back home in the 'ghetto'. The five years ended when a gang war broke out in RxAxLxF's particular neighborhood, with the attacking gang being victorious. As part of taking over control over the neighborhood, RxAxLxF's atelier was raided one night and RxAxLxF's archive of his work was lost to the biggest extent.
And a new phase started again.
Having become by now a seasoned multi-media artist and designer, RxAxLxF was asked amongst several other Amsterdam based media artists, to conduct a 3-months workshop for youth from the ghetto's of Nairobi. Goal of the workshop was to train them how to express themselves and their culture on a worldwide stage and to acquire skills with which they will have a chance on the local job market.
Having never been in sub-saharan Africa before, RxAxLxF arrived at night, and was shipped next morning to a neighborhood of Nairobi called 'Dandora' (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandora). His first impression was that he missed something in the preparation he had gotten about Kenya. Dandora looked as if yesterday a bloody war had found its conclusion. But the history lessons RxAxLxF had gotten about Kenya, said that the last war (the Mau Mau independence war) ended at the end of the 1950's.
That day in Dandora became one of the most remarkable days in his life. People say, if you come to an African slum, you might run away immediately and never come back, or you stay.
RxAxLxF stayed. The 3 months workshop became 10 years in which he build up for 4 years a multimedia design school (amongst others) called NairoBits: www.nairobits.com for and with the youth from the ghettos of Nairobi.
After 4 years, RxAxLxF realized that most of the graduates went back into unemployment, so he decided to leave NairoBits and set up a company with the most talented students of NairoBits to provide jobs for them. This company became SasaHivi Media, www.sasahivi.com, which is working in the fields of ICT, Multimedia, Internet production. Special focus of the company is on the outsourcing of foreign jobs to Kenya and on promoting genuine Kenyan culture by Internet and Multimedia globally.
Nowadays, SasaHivi Media produces for a wide variety of Kenyan and foreign clients.

---

The above is in a nutshell the life of RxAxLxF so far. His journey as a Rolling Stone through a Roller Coaster world, where behind each horizon a new adventure waits. His transformation from a Number in a Statistic of Misery to an Agent of Positive Change. A journey through a Wonderful Wide World.

This website is an archive about the many people, situations and sceneries RxAxLxF has come across, and keeps on coming across. Due to the huge amount of works, www.rxaxlxf.net is a never ending backward and forward growing archive of visuals of this world. Keep on checking, see it growing!

Be suprised, laugh, cry and enjoy.
Never stop.
Never.
Ever.