Peter Weibel


Peter Weibel was an Austrian post-conceptual artist, curator, and new media theoretician. He started out in 1964 as a visual poet, then later moved from the page to the screen within the sense of post-structuralist methodology. His work includes virtual reality and other digital art forms. From 1999 he was the director of the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.

Biography

Weibel was born in Odesa, USSR on 5 March 1944. He was raised in Ried, Upper Austria, and studied French and cinematography in Paris. In 1964 he began to study medicine in Vienna, but changed soon to mathematics, with an emphasis on logic.
Weibel's work was in conceptual art, performance, experimental film, video art, and computer art.
Beginning in 1965 from semiotic and linguistic reflections, Weibel developed an artistic language, which led him from experimental literature to performance. In his performative actions, he explored not only the "media" language and body, but also film, video, television, audiotape and interactive electronic environments. Critically he analyzed their function for the construction of reality. Besides taking part in happenings with members of the Vienna Actionism, he developed from 1967 an "expanded cinema" inspired by the American one and reflects the ideological and technological conditions of cinematic representation. Weibel elaborated on these reflections, from 1969, in his video tapes and installations. With his television action "tv und vt works", which was broadcast by the Austrian Television in 1972, he transcended the borders of the gallery space and queried video technology in its application as a mass medium. In 1966 he was with Gustav Metzger, Otto Muehl, Wolf Vostell, Hermann Nitsch and others a participant of the Destruction in Art Symposium in London.
Weibel worked using a variety of materials, forms and techniques: text, sculpture, installation, film and video. In 1978 he turned to music. Together with Loys Egg, he founded the band "Hotel Morphila Orchester". In the mid-1980s, he explored the possibilities of computer-aided video processing. Beginning of the 1990s he realized interactive computer-based installations.
In his lectures and articles, Weibel commented on contemporary art, media history, media theory, film, video art and philosophy. As theoretician and curator, he pleaded for a form of art and art history that includes history of technology and history of science. In his function as a university professor and director of institutions like the Ars Electronica, the Institute for New Media in Frankfurt and the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, he influenced the European Scene of the so-called computer art through conferences, exhibitions and publications.
In early May 2022, during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Weibel advocated for parts of Ukraine, then under de facto Russian control, and Transnistria to be internationally recognized to allow Ukraine to reach some sort of agreement with the Russian Federation.
Weibel died in Karlsruhe, Germany on 1 March 2023, at the age of 78.

Research and teaching

From 1976, Weibel taught at various institutions, including the Universität für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna, in 1981 at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and, from 1982-85 at the Gesamthochschule Kassel. In 1984 he was appointed to teach for five years as Associate Professor for Video and Digital Arts at the Center for Media Study at the State University of New York in Buffalo, New York. The same year, 1984 he became Professor for visual media at the Universität für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna. In 1989 he was assigned to set up the Institute for New Media at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, which he headed until 1994. From 1993 to 1999 he curated the Austrian pavilion at the Venice Biennale, after which took on curatorship and directorship at Arts and Media Centre in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Curatorial activities

From 1986 Weibel worked as artistic advisor for the Ars Electronica, which he then headed from 1992 until 1995 as its artistic director. From 1993 to 1999, he curated the pavilion of Austria on the Venice Biennial. In the same period, from 1993 to 1999, he worked as chief curator at the Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria. Since January 1999 Peter Weibel has been Chairman and CEO of the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany.
  • 2021: Chiharu Shiota. Connected to Life, ZKM I Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2020: Critical Zones. Horizonte einer neuen Erdpolitik, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2019: Writing the History of the Future, Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe
  • 2019: Seasons of Media Arts. Stadt der partizipativen Visionen, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2019: Schlosslichtspiele, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2019: Open Codes. Leben in digitalen Welten, Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz, Berlin
  • 2019: Negativer Raum. Skulptur und Installation im 20./21. Jahrhundert, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2018: Schlosslichtspiele, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2018: Kunst in Bewegung. 100 Meisterwerke mit und durch Medien. Ein operationaler Kanon, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2018: generator marx: kapital | digital, ""generator. medienkunstlabor trier
  • 2018: DIA-LOGOS. Ramon Llull und die Kunst des Kombinierens, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2017/2018: The Art of Immersion, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2017: Schlosslichtspiele, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2017: Markus Lüpertz. Kunst, die im Wege steht, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2017: Kunst in Europa 1945-1968. Die Zukunft im Blick. Art in Europe 1945-1968, Staatliches Museum für Bildende Künste A. S. Puschkin, Moskau
  • 2017: Bodenlos - Vilém Flusser und die Künste, GAMU, Prag
  • 2016: William Kentridge: More Sweetly Play the Dance, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2016: Schlosslichtspiele, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2016: Liquid Identities - Lynn Hershman Leeson. Identitäten im 21. Jahrhundert, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg
  • 2016: Kunst in Europa 1945-1968. Der Kontinent, den die EU nicht kennt, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2016: Digitale Wasserspiele, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2016: Bodenlos - Vilém Flusser und die Künste, Akademie der Künste, Berlin
  • 2016: Bodenlos - Vilém Flusser und die Künste, West, Den Haag
  • 2016: Beat Generation, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2015: Transsolar + Tetsuo Kondo. Cloudscapes, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2015: Schlosslichtspiele, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2015: Ryoji Ikeda. micro | macro, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2015: Lichtsicht, Projektions-Biennale, Bad Rothenfelde
  • 2015: Infosphäre, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2015: HA Schult: Action Blue, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2015: Exo-Evolution, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2015: Die Stadt ist der Star - Kunst an der Baustelle. Vom K-Punkt am Staatstheater bis zum Marktplatz, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2015: Lynn Hershman Leeson. Civic Radar, Deichtorhallen Hamburg in der Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg
  • 2015: Bodenlos - Vilém Flusser und die Künste, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2014: Lynn Hershman Leeson. Civic Radar, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2011: The Global Contemporary Kunstwelten nach 1989, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2011: Moderne: Selbstmord der Kunst? Im Spiegel der Sammlung der Neuen Galerie Graz, Neue Galerie Graz
  • 2011: Bruseum. Ein Museum für Günter Brus, Neue Galerie Graz
  • 2011: Hans Hollein, Neue Galerie Graz
  • 2011: Francesco Lo Savio – Tano Festa. The Lack of the Other, ZKM Center for Art and Media
  • 2008: youniverse, International Biennal of Contemporary Arts, Sevilla
  • 2005: Lichtkunst aus Kunstlicht, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2005: Making Things Public, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2003: M_ARS: Kunst und Krieg, Neue Galerie Graz
  • 2002: Future Cinema, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2002: Iconoclash, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2000/2001: Olafur Eliasson: Surroundings surroanded, Neue Galerie Graz and ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 2000: Net_condition ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 1999/2000: Der anagrammatische Körper Kunsthaus Muerz, Muerzzuschlag | Neue Galerie, Graz and ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
  • 1999: Open Practice, 48th Biennale de Venise
  • 1998: Jenseits von Kunst, MUHKA, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerpen; Neue Galerie, Graz; Ludwig-Museum, Budapest
  • 1996: Inklusion: Exklusion, Steirischen Herbst 96, Graz
  • 1993: Kontext Kunst, Neue Galerie Graz
  • 1991: Das Bild nach dem letzten Bild, Galerie Metropol, Vienna
  • 1990: Vom Verschwinden der Ferne, Postmuseum, Frankfurt am Main
  • 1987: Logokultur, Universitaet fuer angewandte Kunst, Vienna
  • 1976: Österreichs Avantgarde 1908-38, Galerie naechst St. Stephan, Vienna

    Decorations and awards

  • 2002: Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria
  • 2009: Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class
  • 2013: Honorary doctorate from University of Pécs, Hungary
  • 2020: Lovis Corinth prize