Peter Weibel

Peter Weibel (Austrian German: [ˈvaɪbl], ; 5 March 1944 – 1 March 2023) 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 (Austin, Jakobson, Peirce, Wittgenstein), 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 (together with Valie Export, Ernst Schmidt Jr. and Hans Scheugl) 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 (ORF) 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 (DIAS) 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 " (orchestra). 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 (in Linz, Austria), 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 2009: Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class 2013: Honorary doctorate from University of Pécs, Hungary 2020: Lovis Corinth prize